[stephenkhoo]

Monday, 5 December, 2011, 2nd Week of Advent
JESUS AS THE REALIZATION OF OUR DREAMS

SCRIPTURE READINGS: ISA 35:1-10; LK 5:17-26

All of us need to have a dream. Man lives on because of a dream. We remember the great speech of Martin Luther Jr when he said, “Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends. And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream … I have a dream that one day ‘every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together’” (cf Isaiah 40:4-5).

Yes, this too was the dream of the Israelites when they were in captivity. They lost everything when they were exiled in Babylon; their families, their land, their kingdom and their Temple. Jerusalem was reduced to ruins under the ravage of their conquerors and became a desert, a wasteland. They could only recall with nostalgia, the glory of the Kingdom under King David and Solomon. But with great hope and confidence, the Prophet revived the dream of Israel when he declared, “Let the wilderness and the dry-lands exult, let the wasteland rejoice and bloom, let it bring forth flowers like the jonquil, let it rejoice and sing for joy. The glory of Lebanon is bestowed on it, the splendour of Carmel and Sharon; they shall see the glory of the Lord, the splendour of our God.”

Was this an impossible dream? In all human reckoning, it was impossible and unthinkable. Like the Israelites, we too might feel the same. Your family is breaking apart. Your relationship with your spouse seems to be getting nowhere; both of you are drifting apart. The friction you have with your in-laws and your children remain tense and hostile. Life at work is no better as your colleagues are plotting against you to see your downfall; and your boss is piling you up with loads of work and unreasonable demands. So what is this dream of peace and of liberation that we talk about?

Truly, it is impossible in human calculation. The scribes and the Pharisees who gathered around Jesus in today’s gospel thought so too! They would never have thought that the paralyzed man could walk again. More than that, they would never have believed that God could forgive sins through man, or that God would even forgive at all. Perhaps, the paralyzed man himself must be wondering about the fuss his friends went to, so as to get him to Jesus for healing. It was just too much hassle with the crowd gathering around Jesus as “the crowd made it impossible to find a way of getting him in” and so they had to resort to doing the unthinkable, “they went up on the flat roof and lowered him and his stretcher down through the tiles into the middle of the gathering, in front of Jesus.” Who would do such a ridiculous thing to make a hole on the roof to bring the paralytic to Jesus? You might call it stupidity or ingenuity! For those who do not dream, this is simply ludicrous.

Yet, Advent tells us precisely that this dream is being realized here and now in our midst. God is coming. In fact, He has already come, and He is coming now. “’Look, your God is coming, vengeance is coming, the retribution of God; he is coming to save you.” So too the psalmist declares, “Our God will come to save us! I will hear what God proclaims; the LORD –for he proclaims peace to his people. Near indeed is his salvation to those who fear him, glory dwelling in our land.” Truly, He has indeed come, not by sending us a messenger. He has come to us in person in our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the coming of God. He is the visitation of God. “He has visited his people, he has come to their rescue and he has raised up for us a power of salvation.” (Lk 1:68)

In the gospel, we truly see Jesus as the Visitation of God. He is the fulfillment of the dream of Israel and that of the prophets. For Isaiah tells us that when the Lord comes, “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, the ears of the deaf unsealed, then the lame shall leap like a deer and the tongues of the dumb sing for joy; for water gushes in the desert, streams in the wasteland, the scorched earth becomes a lake, the parched land springs of water. The lairs where the jackals used to live become thickets of reed and papyrus.” The evangelist noted that “among the audience there were Pharisees and doctors of the Law who had come from every village in Galilee, from Judaea and from Jerusalem. And the Power of the Lord was behind his works of healing.” Jesus heals because the power of the Lord was with Him.

But Jesus’ healing goes beyond mere physical healing. Jesus our healer and liberator and restorer, strikes at the core of all healings; the healing of the heart, the healing of the spirit. If there is any healing that we need, it will be a healing of the soul. Isn’t this what we say at every mass especially in the New Translation, which is more explicit than the old text for it says, “Lord I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” This is truly an important clarification that the healing of the sick is not just physical, but also of our soul, mind and spirit. The ‘roof’ here of course has nothing to do with the roof of our house, but that of our body and our soul, which is so contaminated by sin, and reminiscent of the Centurion who found himself unworthy for Jesus to come to his house as it was a house of sin and thus not fit to welcome Him.

We are miserable and burdened because of sin. All sin leads to the inner division of the human heart before it is expressed in our relationships with people and in other areas. When our hearts are selfish, then all other sins will consequently result and Jesus reiterates this in the gospel when He remarked, “What comes out of a man is what makes him ‘unclean.’ For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘unclean.’” (Mk 7:20-23) As a result, our hands are weary, knees trembling and hearts faint (cf Isa 35:3-4).

But today, we can find hope because the dream we have is no longer farfetched. We can see with our own eyes. The Lord is coming and He is here. So let us take “Courage! Do not be afraid.” God is working miracles in our lives through the Lord Jesus. In the gospel, we read that Jesus not only told the man to pick his stretcher and go home, but He also forgave his sins so much so we read, “they were all astounded and praised God, and were filled with awe, saying, ‘We have seen strange things today.’” Presumably, even Jesus’ skeptics were amazed at the way the Lord worked beyond their imagination and expectations. How could it be possible? Simply because the “Power of the Lord was behind his works of healing!”

We too must come to the Lord. Let us not remain skeptical but be open to the power of the Lord at work in our lives. We must walk the Sacred Highway where our enemies will not walk. Indeed, “No lion will be there nor any fierce beast roam about it, but the redeemed will walk there, for those the Lord has ransomed shall return.” Let us return to the Lord and “come to Zion shouting for joy, everlasting joy on their faces; joy and gladness will go with them and sorrow and lament be ended.” Yes, let us come back to Him with all our hearts and our strength. For if we make ourselves available to the Lord and trust in Him, He will save us.

Alas, some of us rely on our own strength and we might not find the faith to come to Jesus because we are so disillusioned and disheartened because of repeated failure and disappointments. That is why we must be like the friends of the paralytic who took the trouble to bring him to Jesus. The paralyzed man so weighed down by sin, would not have the strength and the will to come to Jesus if not for the persistent faith of his friends. And we read that he was healed on account of their faith. The evangelist noted that Jesus seeing their faith said, “My friend, your sins are forgiven you.” Will we therefore be those who inspire faith to those who have lost faith? Will we be those who dream dreams for those who have lost their dreams? Will we be like Martin Luther Jr, whose dream is now realized for America; the dream of equality, justice, freedom and the dignity of every human person – the right to worship God? In a secular world that is so hostile to God and all religions especially the Christian faith and the gospel of Jesus Christ, let us continue to dream that the Lord will be victorious in the end. That was what Isaiah said, “Here is the Lord coming with power, his arm subduing all things to him. The prize of his victory is with him, his trophies all go before him.” (Isa 40:10)

So be the visitation of God to our brothers and sisters! Let us inspire hope by our faith in the Good News of our Lord Jesus Christ. Hope is made real by faith and this faith is realized in love. “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And this hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.” (Rom 5:1-5) Truly, St Paul said, “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” (Gal 5:6) In the same vein, urging the Thessalonians, He also said, “We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Th 1:3)