Fr. Moran Homily - December 7, 2021

• Fr. Terrence Moran

Some of you are probably familiar with William Herzog’s book Parables as Subversive Speech. It made the rounds in Catholic Worker circles a while ago. The parables fall so familiarly on our ears that they have lost their disconcerting punch. We hear them as nice fables to teach morality. But they are intended to be disturbing stories; to subvert our expectations about what is possible for ourselves, what is possible for our world.

Jesus begins the parable of the lost sheep with the question, “Who of you would act like this?” Who of you who leave the sure thing of 99 sheep to expend great effort to go off in search of one? The honest answer is, “No one!” A good business person factors in a certain percentage of loss into the business plan. Especially in a risky business like shepherding – with the threat of predators, the challenge of rough terrain, and the congenital stupidity of sheep. You expect to write off a few. Who would risk 99 for 1 – nobody.

So the subversive speech of this parable is that God is a very poor business person. God accepts no margin of loss, however small. God exerts the greatest effort where there is the least hope of profitable return. God bets not on the sure thing but on the loser. This is very subversive speech aimed at the very cornerstone of the economic edifice of our world.

You all know the scandalous but utterly unsurprising statistic that the billionaires of the US got 62% richer during a global pandemic. Our system does not will that a Great One ever suffer loss.

The 2021 US Defense budget is 753.5 billion dollars. Our bombs will never be unhoused but tonight a half-million unhoused persons will sleep on the streets or in shelters. During most of human history, 4-6 species of non-human creatures went extinct each year. This year 1000 species will go extinct mainly due to habitat loss because of rapacious business practices. So many hear these things and shrug their shoulders and say, “that’s just the way things are.”

Advent is subversive speech. It says, “Stop shrugging your shoulders! Be a voice crying in the wilderness. Go up on the highest spot you can find and shout until your voice gives out, “It is not God’s will that a single one be lost.”

Cornell West makes an interesting distinction between hope and optimism: “Hope and optimism are different. Optimism tends to be based on the notion that there's enough evidence out there to believe things are gonna be better, much more rational, deeply secular, whereas hope looks at the evidence and says, "It doesn't look good at all. Doesn't look good at all. Gonna go beyond the evidence to create new possibilities based on visions that become contagious to allow people to engage in heroic actions always against the odds, no guarantee whatsoever." That's hope. I'm a prisoner of hope, though. Gonna die a prisoner of hope.” Advent is a season not of optimism but of hope. Advent is a subversive hope that goes beyond the evidence to create new possibilities.

We hear a lot about the little town of Bethlehem this time of year. In the time of Mary and Joseph and Jesus, about 4 miles from the little town of Bethlehem, on the highest point in the Judean desert, King Herod built an immense palace called the Herodium. It was one of the largest buildings in the world at the time, an immense and luxurious palace visible for miles around. Not content to dominate the horizon during the day, Herod had the palace illuminated by thousands of torches at night. The message was clear-I rule the day. I rule the night. I have colonized even your dreams. Think of Mary, getting up in the middle of the night and going out into the courtyard to feed Jesus. How subversive she was to believe not in Herod’s Disneyland but in the hungry child, the utterly inconsequential little one at her breast.

Let’s become believers in the child; prisoners of Advent’s subversive hope. Captives to God’s economy that no little one be lost. Not one single one.