Overview:

Saturday of the Second Week of Advent

A Reflection for Saturday of the Second Week of Advent

“Elijah has already come,
and they did not recognize him but did to him whatever they pleased.
So also will the Son of Man suffer at their hands.”

Find today’s readings here.

Hindsight is 20/20. We know that Jesus’ story ends in his triumph over death, the ultimate proof that he is the Son of God. It’s tempting to assume that those who walked beside him should have recognized this truth instantly. Yet the Gospels are full of people who fail to grasp Jesus entirely.

I would like to believe that, had I stood face-to-face with Christ, I would not have been like those who did “whatever they pleased” with John the Baptist, failing to see Elijah in their midst until it was too late. But the Gospels insist otherwise.

Even those who witnessed miracles, who looked directly at Jesus, still misidentified him. And not only did they misidentify or miss God, many actively persecuted him and his followers.

How could this be? What blinds us from recognizing God now as it blinded them then?

Surprisingly, Kendrick Lamar has a very clear answer.

On his 2015 masterpiece “To Pimp a Butterfly,” Lamar has a track titled “How Much a Dollar Cost.” The song traces an encounter with a homeless man at a gas station who asks Lamar for a dollar. After Lamar repeatedly refuses—first out of irritation, then out of outright contempt—the beggar reveals that he is Christ.

The real drama here is not in the literal dollar request, but rather in what the request threatens. Lamar becomes increasingly angry because the beggar’s very existence shatters his worldview. By simply refusing to be invisible, the beggar challenges Lamar’s comfort and sense of self. He raps, “Guilt trippin’ and feelin’ resentment/ I never met a transient that demanded attention.” Giving the man a dollar is not the problem. The problem is recognizing his humanity. 

“I should distance myself, I should keep it relentless/ My selfishness is what got me here,” Lamar continues. He feels that if he gives the beggar the dollar, he will be betraying the path that resulted in his worldly greatness in the first place.

In short, we do not fail to recognize God; we refuse to. It is more convenient to protect our selfishness than accept that we might be wrong, that we might have to transform our way of life or subvert our sense of self to live as he wants.

As we prepare to recognize and welcome Christ this Advent, today’s responsorial psalm provides a powerful refrain: “Lord, make us turn to you; let us see your face and we shall be saved.”

However Christ might confront us this season, may we see him and not turn away—lest we find out “how much a dollar cost.”

Edward Desciak is an O'Hare Fellow at America Media.