John the Baptist
1994 (Year C), 11 December / Advent 3
St Peter de Beauvoir Town
‘Here is my herald, whom I send on ahead of you, and he will prepare your way before you’. A voice crying in the wilderness.
Much of what we read in the bible is lost on us. Mostly it’s the symbolism. It just passes us by. We don’t think like the people who wrote two thousand years ago. Our experiences are hugely different. Our expectations don’t match up. The voice crying in the wilderness is a case in point. The wilderness is a symbol for the absence of God. A place outside the reach of God. Hearing a voice crying in this place is of profound importance. It is an attempt by the gospel writers to convince us that there is nowhere. No place on earth beyond the reach of God.
But it’s not just the symbolism. We have little sense of urgency, and no notion at all of the immensity and enormity of what is to come. One Christmas, after all, is much the same as another. If there is any urgency it’s to get a free range turkey or the last Barbie Doll before they all run out.
With benefit of hindsight we’ve become complacent. We know Christmas will come. All we have to do is wait. The preparations are important, of course they are, but even if we don’t do anything – it will be alright in the end. Our religion coos to us, ‘All will be well and all manner of things will be well.’
With our 2000 years of history we can afford to relax and wait. Wait not just for Christmas when we rejoice that God is with us. Even more than that, we are encouraged, with some degree of certainty, to envisage a time when, ‘There will be no more tears, no more crying. For God will wipe all tears from their eyes.
There was a time when this was not so. The certainty of salvation just did not exist. John knew that. And to go with him now, if we dare to look, we might begin to realise with some horror just what happening.
In our relaxed state we envisage God as being safe. The carols we will sing tonight will reinforce this. ‘Away in a manger no crib for a bed, the little Lord Jesus lays down his sweet head’. The verse may hint at deprivation, but it’s a rather comfortable one. It’s part of our vision of God; often it’s the only one.
There is another and that vision in the final count, suggests that God just is not safe. God is dangerous. Out there is an enormous vacuum; a hideous caterwauling that is not measurable, or balanceable, or safe or anything. That is God… God doesn’t say be safe, be cosy, here’s a woolly blanket, a tidy cocoon, a place of safety… Love your life and you’ll lose it (he says). Risk it and – half blind, mangled, limbless, maimed – maybe, just, you just might totter into heaven; the place of both annihilation and total knowledge. The risk is absolute; you’ll get nothing out of it, not pleasure, not health, not affection, not comfort and certainly not safety. Just beauty.’
Jesus told John’s disciples, ‘Go and tell him what you see: the blind recover their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are made clean, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, the poor are hearing the good news.’
All these things are wonderful. A vision of the triumph of the creation over the destruction. It is supremely reassuring. The deaf hear. They will in the end hear the second movement of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. It will be probably be playing as they walk through the gates of heaven. But they will also hear stories of pain and hurt, of loss and separation. For they too are present in the heart of God. The blind recover their sight. A picture of perfection. They will see the glory of the sunset. There is no promise that they will be spared the hideousness visions of war. The poor will hear the good news. They might well, but they’re not promised an end to their deprivations. All these things will happen and yet all is still not perfect.
If we concentrate on what will be then the journey is lost. If we concentrate on the end then it is likely there will always be a sense of anti-climax, for the end will never be what we expect. We will always be saddened. It is no coincidence that Christmas far from being the happy time it’s supposed to be is nearly always a disappointment.
For now the journey, the preparing is all we have, so let’s concentrate on that. The truth is we have nothing but the journey. The promised fulfilment, always in the future and nobody knows what that will be. So what can we hope? What will encourage us? the honest answer is – I don’t know.
What I do know is that the place I am encouraging us to be is not a place of comfort, not a place of certainty. The wilderness, for that is where we are now is not an easy place to be. Maybe we need a little bit of encouragement just to stay there. If we do then here are two little bits of poetry.
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Peace is not an answer to seek. But a way of seeking. Peace is not a journey’s end but a way of journeying. May God go with us on our journey through our wilderness. AMEN