The Forerunner
1988 (Year C), 18 December /
Advent 3
St Peter de Beauvoir Town
In all probability there will be two kinds of parties on offer this Christmas. The main one, of course is on Christmas Day, when we’ll sit down with our families and close friends. The significant people in our lives. We’re important for them and they for us. They’re the ones who give meaning and context to our lives. They’ve shaped and defined us. If you were to sit down at our table on Christmas Day and get those gathered there to talk about me, Oh what stories they could tell. They could begin before I was born and come right up to the present. Some stories would be flattering others would make my toes curl. By listening to them you’d get a pretty accurate picture of what I’m about.
And there are the other parties, where with a drink in your hand you move round a room disclosing a bit of yourself here and another bit there; just as the fancy takes you. Mostly of course it’s intended to impress by cleverness and wit. From the little bits and pieces you drop about your job, your interests and family, people could infer almost anything, but mostly that you’re brilliant. The fun part of course is on the way home as you compare notes, ‘Ooooh, is that what she said to you, she told me something quite different’. Two kinds of parties; at the first you’d get an accurate representation; at the other you’d only get what the speaker wanted you to hear.
Now the thing is that on the Sundays before Christmas the church has invited the community of believers to a series of parties in order to meet significant players in the Christmas drama. Today we’ve come to meet John the Baptist. The trouble is that the party isn’t that main Christmas meal, where you’d get the whole picture warts and all. It’s the drinks party. We’re only going to hear what they want to tell us.
On the face of it everything in the liturgy and the readings seems to fit, the trouble is that nothing does. Past and future become intertwined, although if you didn’t know it you’d be hard pushed to tell. Things are moulded – creative accounting, some would call it. For instance take the opening sentence, ‘When the Lord comes’ it said, ‘When the Lord comes ...’ Two weeks before Christmas the natural thing for us to do is to link it with the Nativity. Not a bit of it. It has all to do with the second coming of Jesus, nothing to do with his birth.
And that first reading. It’s just as misleading. On the face of it, it appears to be a prophesy about John the Baptist. It’s nothing to do with him at all. It was written 800 years before he was born and then seized on gleefully by New Testament writers. Another 2000 years later it’s been an absolute godsend for those who select our readings because it fits so well. And if you don’t believe me just look at it again. Compare the original in Isaiah with what the writer of John’s Gospel did to it. He changes the place of one full-stop and in so doing changes the meaning entirely. ‘Now that’s better’; it says what he wants it to say.
All this is just a touch disconcerting. It’s not what we expect. We’ve been led to believe that if something is written down, especially in the Bible, then it’s true. But the truth is that we know precious little about John. He stands, according to Christians anyway, at the meeting point of two great religious traditions. A Jew looking forward to a promised Messiah. More than that, he was the one who announced the Messiah’s coming. Tradition has it that he was related to Jesus; that he started his ministry in the desert living on locusts and wild honey, and finally and maybe a little hesitatingly, he baptised Jesus.
He was steeped in Jewish tradition and as such would’ve understood that the great strength of Judaism is the linking of the individual person to the history and destiny of the community. Our language, of personal fulfilment, so beloved by so many, would mean absolutely nothing to him. He knew differently. He knew that we belong to each other and that we create and redeem each other. He calls individuals to repentance so that the whole world can be saved.
‘The voice cries. In the wilderness prepare a way for the Lord.’ He would’ve known that too because the wilderness has special significance for the Jewish people. It was and remains a place of starkness and amazing clarity. A place of dryness and death. In our religious language we imagine it to be the one place where God isn’t present. But the Jews knew differently. It was a place where they walked on their journey from slavery, and when they lost hope, as anyone would’ve done in the wilderness, it was there they encountered God. He fed them the heavenly bread. The wilderness for them was a place to walk with God, to encounter God and it was a prelude to the joy of the Promised Land.
John’s voice still calls for repentance. Not simply as individuals but as a whole community. And it doesn’t stop there, for repentance leads on to joy. Our preparation for Christmas should include some time preparing for Joy. We as a Christian Community should be preparing for joy. Now that seems very strange, maybe impossible. It’s certainly not something we think we can ever prepare for. If Joy comes our way we imagine it will be as a gift, coming by accident not by design. It’s something which we might look back on and recognise thankfully but never something we should plan for.
I believe that to be false. And if we have any prayer today it ought to be that we ask God to make us joyful. ‘I want never gets’ is simply not true. The best way to get anything is to ask for it – even to God. We need courage so that we can dare to leave the land of slavery and walk boldly and joyfully through the barren wildernesses. Only then can we learn to laugh and sing joyfully with the angels at Jesus’ birth. AMEN