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Living Lord, open our eyes to Your Presence, open our ears to Your Word, open our hearts to Your Love - that we may live now as citizens of the kingdom of heaven. Amen.
Today, we come to that point in Advent when the lectionary asks us to remember John the Baptist.
Even those of us who're used to singing Advent hymns like "On Jordan's bank the Baptist's cry announces that the Lord is nigh", can find it rather odd to have this strange figure popping up now. Just when we're getting nicely Christmassy, well into the party and present-giving season, we come to church and hear about this disturbing fellow, who's gone round in his rough camel-hair shirt proclaiming "Repent! Prepare the way for the Lord" - and is now imprisoned and expressing his agonised doubts about his cousin Jesus: "Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?"
Remember that John, as Matthew tells us elsewhere in his gospel, was in prison because King Herod had taken exception to the Baptist's fiery preaching, and particularly to his denunciation of Herod for his abusive lust for wealth, sex and power. This was all part of John's announcement of God's Kingdom, in preparation for the accession of the true King. Herod wasn't the real king; God would replace him. No wonder Herod put this scruffy, stroppy prophet into prison.
So now John was disappointed and disillusioned. Jesus was not behaving as people - including John - had expected. They imagined that when the Messiah stormed onto the world's stage, no one would be able to stand in His way.
He would kick out the occupying Roman army from Israel; He would bring in God's Kingdom with such amazing power and glory that no one could fail to see it. There would be no room for doubt; no mercy for disobedience. All wrong would be put right - and anyone whose worldly wealth or religious pride, moral scruples or immorality, made them object to what the Messiah was doing, would face instant eviction from God's realm.
But so far that had not happened.
The Romans were still ruling their empire;
Herod the puppet-king was still in his palace;
sinners were still enjoying their self-indulgent life-styles.
So what on earth was Jesus playing at?
Had the Messiah lost the script?
Had He forgotten His lines at the crucial moment?
Maybe, after all, John the Baptist's question strikes a chord within us too. Beyond the tinsel and trimmings, we look around at this world, 2000 years after the birth of Christ, and it's still in such a mess.
Cruel tyrants and evil regimes continue to dominate peoples and nations; bad men and women still flourish while good men and women and children suffer.
Wasn't Jesus supposed to put it all right, make decent folk prosper and get rid of wicked fools forever?
So maybe we find ourselves secretly echoing that anguished question: "Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?" Why doesn't God do something - bring peace, end suffering, work some divine retribution - if there is a God? Maybe the likes of Richard Dawkins and Philip Pullman are right after all, and belief in God is but an irrational and dangerous delusion?
Well, it depends what kind of god you believe in. Some folk do believe in a 'divine-dictator', who really wants to zap all his enemies but can't always manage it; who commands his worshippers to force everyone else to believe what they believe and to terrorize or obliterate those who won't.
I suspect that many people, if they use the word 'god' at all (other than as an expletive) basically imagine a 'god' like that - a fierce, bullying, domineering god. No wonder they reject that god - except at those moments (and we all have them) when it would be nice to have such a god 'on my side' so that I could call down 'fire from heaven' on my enemies.
In his desperation, perhaps that's the kind of god John the Baptist longed for; a god who would get him out of prison and give him a place of honour from which he could watch Herod being pulverised by divine wrath. Perhaps that's part of what's behind Jesus' comment about those who are least in the kingdom of heaven being greater than John.
For the citizens of His Kingdom know that the true God does not behave like that. Yes, certainly, there are parts of the Old Testament which seem to suggest that the God of the Bible is an angry, irascible kind of deity. But Christians should always interpret the Old Testament in the light of the New Covenant brought about through Jesus. And Jesus repeatedly draws on the teaching of the prophets, particularly Isaiah, who foresaw that God would deal with human sin by another route than the extermination of all sinners.
Isaiah chapter 35, for example, today's first reading, speaks of 'the glory of the Lord, the splendour of our God' being revealed. When we hear those words, our first reaction might be to envisage God coming in a blaze of blinding light, in a shiny chariot, surrounded by myriads of angelic warriors. But then we might remember those passages where Isaiah also writes of this God coming to comfort His people, wooing them gently and tenderly like a bridegroom with his bride. An apparition in a chariot of war is hardly the way to speak to the heart of one's beloved.
How then was God going to appear? The answer Isaiah gives, particularly in chapters 40 -55, is the strangest thing - something the prophet's first audience would never have imagined. Isaiah focussed increasingly on a figure whom he called the Servant of the Lord; the despised and rejected One, the man of sorrows who knows what it is to suffer and grieve. The One through whom God Himself would take up our infirmities, be pierced for our transgressions, bear the punishment that would bring sinners, not vindictive retribution, but forgiveness and peace; the One through whose wounds we might be healed.
"Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?" No wonder John the Baptist was confused, for it is the strangest thing to get your head around: that God should come to earth, not in a great blaze of force and might, but in the form of a servant, born in a cattle-shed;
a humble carpenter who becomes the preacher who befriends sinners and who judges only by the law of love; not a soldier but a saviour who is obedient unto death, even death on a cross.
It is almost unbelievable that this is what God looks like.
To a world besotted with the love of power, almighty God reveals Himself in the power of self-giving love.
The Advent challenge to us, as those who celebrate this strange and beautiful message, is to communicate it afresh in our generation. We who have glimpsed His glory, 'the glory of the One and Only who came from the Father, full of grace and truth' (John 1:14) - we are called to live in such a way that others are helped, rather than hindered, to discern the grace and truth of God for themselves.
G K Chesterton once remarked that "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried". While that's a bit of a sweeping generalisation, I think it is true to say that many of those who dismiss the Christian Gospel do so because it is difficult. It is hard to turn away from the obsessions of this world and follow in the way of Christ, the way of self-giving love. It is no easy option to believe; but it is the only sure path to life and joy and healing. That's the message that we, the church, are called to proclaim and to live.
Shall we use the rest of this Advent, and every opportunity we have as we celebrate with friends and family, to show Who is the Light and Soul of Christmas:
"Like a candle flame,
flick'ring small
in our darkness,
uncreated light
shines through infant eyes...
Stars and angels sing,
yet the earth sleeps in shadows;
can this tiny spark
set a world on fire?...
Yet His light shall shine
from our lives,
spirit blazing,
as we touch the flame
of His holy fire.
God is with us; come to save us, alleluia."
(Graham Kendrick © 1988 Make way Music)
Mary Barr
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