Joyful Offense
Third Sunday of Advent
‘The blind regain sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them. And blessed is the one who takes no offense in Me.’
Matthew 11:5–6
Rainbow activists filed into our conference and sat seriously, glumly, as we declared Jesus’ good news to heal the sexually broken. Our Father’s delight in sharing His Kingdom with us competed with the pall these ‘mourners’ hoped to cast over our proceedings.
And proceed we did, joyfully, with signs and wonders following our Gospel declaration. Men and women who had been wounded at the core of their sexual dignity entered into something deeper than pain and shame. I invited all: ‘Come into the River of His delights, exchange rags for the riches of Divine Mercy!’
And come they did. Sorrow became joy as Jesus Himself opened deaf ears and blind eyes, cleansed sin—breaking its grip—and raised us from the dead of false selves. He chose us, shattering accusation while fortifying us as His beloved children.
Protesters sat impassively. Unmoved. Offended.
Were we the offenders? Or was God Himself the villain? Perhaps Jesus was the stumbling block to their aspirations to rainbow justice. For our welcomed intruders, simple songs of love to Him became a dirge, witnesses of His wonders delusional.
This third Sunday in Advent, Jesus describes His messy, joyful Kingdom as an offense, a stumbling block to those who steel themselves from Divine Mercy. Those who refuse to own their poverty can’t become little children who sing and dance before Him. The word Jesus uses for ‘offense’ in today’s Gospel is ‘scandalon,’ meaning ‘stumbling block.’ In other words, ‘Happy are those who don’t trip over Me.’
St. Peter riffs on Jesus as the rejected stone ‘that has become the Cornerstone, a stone that makes men stumble, a rock that makes them fall’ (1 Pet. 2:7–8).
Jesus, in outrageous humility, implores us not to be stumbled by Him! He wants nothing to interfere with our happiness, the joy of becoming kids in His Kingdom. Perhaps that can help us understand why and how our common enemy works hard to make Jesus embarrassing, an inconvenient obstacle to how we see ‘reality.’
The first stumbling block is prideful pleasure. We don’t want to give up what makes us feel good. The other day, a young neighbor I’ve been sharing Jesus with admitted that he was a Christian. Wonderful! I asked him about the couple of women I had seen living there. He admitted that sleeping with them didn’t interfere with his faith. I told him it should. He looked shocked.
Another friend, ‘gay’-identified, told me that his rainbow experience was different from mine because ‘he wasn’t broken.’ He appears genuinely interested in Jesus until God’s claim of love upon him interferes with whatever he wants to do. I can ‘see’ in Spirit a shadow come over him when Jesus, as Lord, encounters him in our meetings.
A spiritual battle in truth for two good men; Jesus, a stumbling block to what both hold very dear!
The second and third stumbling blocks may not be as personal. Worldly people, not as smart as they think they are, start believing popularly circulated lies about efforts Christians of goodwill make to become authentically chaste. Mocking earnest and necessary efforts by poor Christians to become whole has become a specialty of the enemy.
Sophisticated Christians ask me all the time: ‘As long as what you do, Andy, isn’t “conversion therapy.”’ What they mean is the corrosive, coercive meaning that pro-LBGTQ+ influencers have ascribed to any efforts one makes to leave rainbow-land behind. Such slander scandalizes those pursuing solid help for integration.
And it mocks excellent thinkers and practitioners of reparative therapy like Dr. Joe Nicolosi Jr. (reintegrativetherapy.com), who represents his father well in highlighting early childhood wounds that contribute to some people’s same-sex attraction, while also modelling seasoned, professional praxis.
Believe me: no one I know in the therapeutic community has ever done any of the cartoonish abuses ascribed to ‘conversion therapy’ by activists. Our common enemy targets anyone who helps humble Christians seeking growth in chastity.
‘Well, Andy, as long as you are not “praying away the gay”’ is the third embarrassment I hear from colleagues. This mocks the real spiritual authority Jesus has given strugglers in His Church to overcome strongholds of thought, emotion, and addictive patterns that empower disordered desire. The only way we can respond to such mockery? Agree with it. ‘Yes, prayer is a major tool Jesus trains us in to help us grow in chastity.’ Christianity 101.
The Risen Lord—His wounds still visible—is in truth a stumbling block to worldly people, ‘Christian’ and otherwise, who distance themselves from Jesus when He interferes with their traditions. Ah well. He is a humble Lord who ever seeks out the humble who want to be happy. Blessed are we who are not scandalized by His life-transforming love. Rejoice in this third Sunday of Advent!
‘Holiness and happiness intrinsically belong together . . . the life of God, lived within us, within the deepest center of our being. We become truly ourselves when we realize that the highest and brightest Being dwells within us. Our partial vision is sufficient radiant happiness for anyone who knows and feels and believes. Yet this is just the beginning . . . the ever-greater and always-still-more of eternity is shimmering through all the cracks in creation and keeping life in a state of dynamic urgency.’
Fr. Alfred Delp, Advent of the Heart