Second Sunday of Advent by Fr Jack

Isaiah 11.1-10
St Paul to the Romans 15.4-13
St Matthew 3.1-12

Palestrina’s ethereal, enchanting setting of the Matin Responsory prepared us to hear the Gospel reading just now. It is a medieval piece of liturgy, given for the dawn service in Advent. It weaves together various snippets of the Bible into this thematic torrent of expectation, doubt, seeking. Tell us! Hear us! Calling out to God… Go out to meet him and say! We approach the coming of Christ with all haste and expectation.

The perfect preparation for St John the Baptist today, for lots of reasons.

One is that The Baptist (like the Matin Responsory) is a whole mix of things too: layers and ideas.

Two, St John is (like the Responsory) seeking, hoping, in darkness, running towards the light. Let me explain.

First the mixed bag of St John the Baptist. St Luke tells us he’s Jesus’ cousin. He is the first to worship Jesus, leaping in his mother Elizabeth’s womb, as Jesus approaches, carried in Mary’s womb. There are beautiful medieval images of cut-aways that show Jesus blessing from inside Mary’s womb, and St John bowing and worshipping from inside Elizabeth’s womb.

St John the Baptist is the last of the Old Testament prophets, and the first of the New Testament. He is the hinge between the two Testaments. The Eastern part of the Church, the Orthodox Churches have never forgotten John, the Forerunner. He figures third after Jesus and Mary in every liturgy, in icons and where they are placed in Church. We in the West have stupidly overlooked the Baptist, but he remains the only person who gets a celebration of their nativity, their birthday, after Jesus on Christmas Day, and Blessed Mary, on September 8th. We celebrate the Nativity of the Baptist each year on 24th June

I wonder if one of the reasons we have overlooked St John the Baptist is that he is not pleasant company. He is a weird, smelly, wild man, who belongs out there in the wilderness on the fringes of life. He doesn’t mince his words, he doesn’t go in for politeness, airs or graces. St John will lose his head for chastising Herod for marrying his own brother’s wife.

St John the Baptist is as magnetic and compelling as he is uncomfortable and awkward.

He is a very good witness to us in our tidiness and acceptability.

He is there first voice in the New Testament, and the first in a long time in the story of Scripture, going back through the Old Testament, to call us to account. That our religious faith is not just about observance of rite and custom, but also needs to radically affect how we live and what we do. St John leads the way on walking the talk.

He is also the first to do something that Jesus will certainly do. St John does not perpetuate the idea that being right with God is about having a nice life here and now. The Old Testament is full of the (inadequate) theology, that if you are good in this life then God will bless you with a nice life, and that’s the whole point. By this logic of course, if your life is not great it is because you or someone in your bloodline has done something wrong.

St John, like Jesus will do, debunks this and today stretches our horizon to the judgment. He makes this life about eternity, not a perfect, shiny life now. Jesus will continue this theme in the Beatitudes and plenty of other places too. This is the hope, not of now, but of the now and not yet Kingdom that Isaiah and St Paul lyricise for us today.

And that’s also where the fire comes in.

Whenever I hear of fire in the Bible (and as I said last week St Matthew who wrote today’s Gospel is the fondest of fiery talk), I think of hell fire. I hear that word and even before it reaches my ears it has collected cultural baggage in the form of brimstone preaching, Hell as eternal punishment, like a life sentence to Pentonville, but a prison full of nasties and pain and fire.

But, as we often say in the Wednesday lunchtime Bible Study in the Rectory, what is actually in the text? Not judgment as a pseudo law court. Not fire as prison and punishment. Certainly not fire with all the baggage I have attached to it in my cultural mind’s eye.

For St John Baptist and those who hear him, fire is lifesaving heat in cold desert nights, fire is cleansing, protection from wild animals, it is the ability to wash, warm and cook.

The fire that burns the chaff and stubble leaves the good wheat by which my family can eat and thrive, and it burns away destroying insects, and disease, and it aids the fertilisation of the soil.

Fire is not what we imagine.

So you see, St John the Baptist really is a whole mix of things, just as the Palestrina Mattins Responsary is.

This wild, radical, unpleasant, even, prophet. The last of the Old and the first of the New Covenants. The forerunner who does not spare our feelings, and is passionate about our lives living out our faith for the good of all. One who brings a fire, in his words and his theology, that is here to bring us to life.

And life is where it ends for The Baptist. I said that St John (like Palestrina’s Responsary) is seeking, hoping, in darkness, running towards the light. Next week we shall have our nativity instead of the sermon. I know we’re all looking forward to it. The Gospel we will hear, set for Gaudete Sunday, will be St John in prison, awaiting execution because the seedy Herod has lusted after his step daughter, and her mother has contrived to have Herod kill St John. It’s all completely tasteless and stomach-churning. And John is in the darkness of a prison cell, and we will hear that he sends word to Jesus: ‘Are you the one who is the to come, or are we to wait for another?’ You, the one I am dying for, are you the one I have been waiting for, living for, hoping for? We never hear if John’s followers manage to get the message that Jesus sends back as an answer. Perhaps St John dies asking that question, living, dying for the answer.

As we continue our pilgrimage through Advent, we would do well to ask the prayers, and find the friendship of St John Baptist. We would do well not to overlook him at any time of year, but like our Eastern brothers and sisters, look to the forerunner for a messy, radical, provoking, fiery, life-giving faith, living in the darkness of this season, in his company look to Jesus, in the unknowing-ness of life, and living towards the light. ‘Let us go out to meet him, and say…’