Instruction Shall Go Forth

“Johnny, don’t go beyond the curb,” my mother would admonish me when I asked to go outside.  And if the ball goes out into the street, let someone go get it for you.  All instructions to keep me safe.

Later there would be other instructions and advice.  Like that from my father when I slacked on my homework or came home with terrible grades.  I was told that I needed to get an education so I didn’t have to rely on my back to make a living. 

My dad, growing up in West Virginia coal country, had seen the ravages of that industry on the men who moiled for that coal underground.  Men whose bodies were spent before they were forty.  Men with black lung disease slowly wasting away.  Families consumed by poverty and despair as union rights were violated by the owners. 

And some of that instruction sunk in.  Even though my grades and diligence did not substantially improve, his admonition idled at the back of my thoughts.  I knew he was right.  His instruction had imbedded itself in my consciousness.  And after I was married with a family, I finally had my nose to the grindstone.

Does anyone know how many “A”s it takes to redeem a 1.2 GPA.  Yeah, I was a real academic screwup.  I knew my mind was much better than my back.

Isaiah proclaims similar words of wisdom and enlightenment in today’s Advent reading.

“In the days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains and shall be raised above the hills…Many peoples shall come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord…that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’   For out of Zion shall go forth instruction and the word of the lord from Jerusalem.”

Instruction and wisdom, indeed!  Torah Righteousness will find a new expression, a new embodiment.  And his name shall be Mighty Counselor, Prince of Peace, Emmanuel, God with us.”

Matthew alerts us, that that day which no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, may happen in a flash.  That day when the roll is called up yonder.  Scientists tell us that that day is certain.  Our sun will massively explode consuming all the neighboring planets.  The universe will slowly expand into lifeless nothingness.  All this apocalypse billions of years away.  Here is one doctrine supported by science.  Trust the science; but more, trust the Lord’s goodness to embrace us all in that end.

Yet in a sense, it is every day.  Opportunities to enter the kin-dom of God present themselves, are revealed through the agency of the Holy Spirit.  Let us each prepare a humble manger of our hearts that it might be born in us.  The Spirit of Christmas Promise never sleeps – 24/7 she’s on duty seeking to rummage through our dreams and imaginations, bearing anew the Christ Child.

And how gentle is often his instruction, his guidance.  Yes, sometimes he has to overturn the tables of our obstinacy and blindness.  All to our own good.  Don’t rush heedlessly into the traffic of evil this guidance compels.

Sometimes, it’s a word I resist.  I’ve been reading Fr. Greg Boyle’s new book, Cherished Belonging,[1] a work revealing the gentleness of Christ on the streets of Los Angeles.

When someone at a retreat of his order was praised as “THAT is a good Jesuit,”[2] inwardly he instinctively rebelled.  If there are “good” Jesuits then it is implied that there are “bad” Jesuits.  It was the Christ within him crying out in that inner moment of protest.  He states that he has never known a “bad” Jesuit.  “I’ve met many broken Jesuits: traumatized, despondent; on the spectrum; wounded; stuck in shame, mental illness and crippling inferiority.  I’ve known Jesuits who are strangers to themselves.  But I’ve never met a bad one.  Please don’t call me a good one.”[3]

The gift that Mary carries in her womb would instruct the world in such gentle, patient understanding.  It’s called Grace.  A sister of the Torah Righteousness that would instruct the life of her child to be born.

Now, I’m often so resistant to that gentle word of admonishment, that gentle word of Love.  Out of the damage of my childhood, I want to nourish my hate for one who has wronged me, wronged our nation.

Perhaps, maybe this president is not evil as I would like to judge, but he is a very damaged person.  And out of that damage he inflicts damage on the rest of us.  Damage that in itself is evil.

Just as Jesus did not see a “loose” woman at the well in Samaria that day, he saw a precious child of God who had become lost in the trauma she had endured as a girl.  Lost in the trauma of assault by similarly damaged men.  Self-absorbed men having no regard for anyone but themselves.

It is the gift of Grace that would await us this Advent season, the gift of allowing us to get beyond ourselves, the gift of self-transcendence that allows us to enter a glorious Kin-dom of God’s full creation.

The Christmas gift for which we prepare is a spiritual reality clothed in flesh and foliage, other people, and yes, Ellen, the animals. Crickets and bees.  Trees and lettuce, baobab trees and seaweed.  St. Francis being a branch of that revelation.

We await further instruction each day to the splendid gift of this wonderful world.  That is the Advent summons to our hearts and minds.

This instruction we would imbibe, would “read, learn, mark and inwardly digest.”  It is the open door to a new way of living that Mary’s child will reveal.

It’s not for sissies, for in our days evil deeds are done by very deranged people.  People whose actions we must resist with all the faith that is within us.  Yes, these times call for “Holy Resistance.”

The pure, unadulterated Grace that awaits to be born in our lives is liberation from all that separates us from our true selves, men and women fully alive in the Glory of God.  God has put a big, shiny bow on that in the work of Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Innocence Project. 

That Christ living in his work is a direct spiritual inheritance, root and branch, from his mother who lived it daily.  The Advent gift we expectantly await in these divided, traumatized times.

Bryan Stevenson’s mother lived the beatitude of reconciliation.  She was an Advent Beatitude, blessed to the core.

Blessedness restores broken relationships and enables life to go on.  Bryan Stevenson tells of a lesson in saying you’re sorry his mother taught him that has stuck with him over the years.  Sometimes the most embarrassing lessons are the ones that stick.

Blessed are those who say they’re sorry.  Blessed are those who go the extra mile, those who seek to understand with the heart. 

Bryan Stevenson’s mother is one tough lady, the sort of disciple Jesus will call. The sort he needs.  You have to be tough sometimes to be a parent these days.  She, and any parent on God’s green earth, knows, parenting is tough stuff – not at all for sissies or the unformed.  There’s a reason sixteen-year-olds shouldn’t be having children.

For those who don’t know Bryan Stevenson, he is the Black lawyer who works on death penalty cases for indigent inmates awaiting execution in Montgomery, Alabama.  As he listened to one inmate about to be led into the execution chamber who was having great difficulty in talking with Brian due to a severe stutter, Bryan had a flashback to an old memory from his childhood. 

Bryan and some of his friends had been making fun of another boy with a speech impediment.  As Bryan and his friends were laughing at this boy, he saw his mother looking at him with an expression he’d never seen before.  Bryan continues his story in his book, Just Mercy:

It was a mix of horror, anger, and shame, all focused on me.  I stopped my laughing instantly.  I’d always felt adored by my mom, so I was unnerved when she called me over.

When I got to her, she was very angry with me.  “What are you doing?”

What? I didn’t do…

Don’t you ever laugh at someone because they can’t get their words out right.  Don’t you ever do that!”

“I’m sorry.”  I was devastated to be reprimanded by my mom so harshly.  “Mom, I didn’t mean to do anything wrong.”

“You should know better, Bryan.”

“I’m sorry. I thought…”

“I don’t want to hear it, Bryan.  There is no excuse, and I’m very disappointed in you.  Now, I want you to go back over there and tell that little boy that you’re sorry.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Then I want you to give that little boy a hug.”

“Huh?”

“Then I want you to tell him that you love him.”  I looked up at her and, to my horror, saw that she was dead serious.  I had reacted as apologetically as I possibly could, but this was way too much.

“Mom, I can’t go over and tell that boy I love him.  People will—”

She gave me that look again.  I somberly turned around and returned to my group of friends.  They had obviously seen my mother’s scolding; I could tell because they were all staring at me.  I went up to the little boy who had struggled to speak.

“Look, man, I’m sorry.”

I was genuinely apologetic for laughing and even more deeply regretful of the situation I had put myself in.  I looked over at my mother who was still staring at me.  I lunged at the boy to give him a very awkward hug.  I think I startled him by grabbing him like that, but when he realized that I was trying to hug him, his body relaxed and he hugged me back.

My friends looked at me oddly as I spoke.

“Uh…also, uh…I love you!”  I tried to say it as insincerely as I could get away with and half-smiled as I spoke.  I was still hugging the boy, so he couldn’t see the disingenuous look on my youthful face.

It made me feel less weird to smile like it was a joke.  But then the boy hugged me tighter and whispered in my ear.  He spoke flawlessly, without a stutter and without hesitation.

“I love you, too.”  There was such tenderness and earnestness in his voice, and just like that, I thought I would start crying.[4]

That day Bryan learned compassion.  Now, that’s a BLESSED moment!

That is the glorious, new way of living that awaits us each under the Christmas tree, or my friend Bob’s Hannukah bush.

“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” and ransom us from a world gone awry, from ourselves gone awry.  Reveal a greater Glory that awaits.  With expectant hearts we stand by.  This Advent we await with eagerness to be instructed in such Love.  Amen.

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[1] Gregory Boyle, Cherished Belonging: The Healing Power of Love in Divided Times (New York: Avid Reader Press, 2024).

[2] Op. cit., 42.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, (New York, NY, Random House, 2000), p. 286,287.

November 30, 2025

First Sunday in Advent

Isaiah 2:1-5; Psalm 122;
2^nd Reading: Romans 13:11-14; Gospel: Matthew 24:36-44

“Instruction Shall Go Forth”