Happy Advent! During this Advent season our parish is focusing on the kerygma (proclamation) of the Gospel. Each week in the homily a different component of the kerygma is presented. I was privileged to write a brief article each week for the parish bulletin. I share the second installment here with you.
Blackmail! It’s a horrible and scary word. Typically the person is the victim of blackmail has been “captured” in a compromising situation, doing or saying something they shouldn’t have been doing. The person who possesses the incriminating photo or recording has power over the person who has been “captured” and seeks to extract an exorbitant payout to make the matter go away.
Adobe Stock
While it’s unlikely that we have lived this kind of drama in real life, we all do have an unsettled account hanging over us as human beings. We are “captured” by the “original sin” or our first parents (see Genesis 3) and by our own contribution to disobedience (see Romans 3:23). We have all sinned and fallen short of God’s perfect glory that he possesses and that he intended for us when he created us.
In this fallen condition we find ourselves separated from God. There is nothing that we can do in our own power to make it right and there are consequences to this separation. We experience guilt, emptiness, estrangement from God, but the worst part of being “captured” by sin is that without remedy we suffer eternal separation from God.
The enemy of God and our enemy, in his role as tempter, deceiver and destroyer, seeks to keep us in this state of captivity, trying to convince us that we are without hope, that we cannot escape. Some have given in to this desperation with all forms of destructive behavior. Yet, God does not leave us without hope. Just as we saw last week, his love for us is eternal, even before we were born, he loved us and seeks us.
Listen to these words from Romans, “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (5:8). And again, “For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ” (5:17).
Our sin does not have to be the final word in our “captured” situation. The One who created us in love, entered into our captivity and again in love has made possible our restoration.