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Thought for the Week Sunday 6 December – Second
Sunday of Advent
Well
here we are already at the second Sunday of Advent. Undoubtedly the
excitement of the children grows as we quickly approach Christmas and all
that goes with it. I’m not sure whether parents are looking forward to it, to
after it, to when it’s all over or whether they just wish it wasn’t! All of
us are surely excited, even the adults, at the prospect of once again
celebrating the birth of our Lord. Birthdays are always an exciting time as
we are never quite sure of what is wrapped up for us, we know the birthday is
coming but what are we going to get? John
the Baptist was the voice in the wilderness looking forward to the birth of someone
he knew to be “he whose shoes he was not worthy to untie”, someone who would
eventually come to him for baptism but whom he felt unworthy to baptise. The
Jews had been without a real prophet for some 450 years and now here was someone
who gave the appearance of fitting just that role. Since
Malachi the Jews had suffered under various foreign powers. For some 200
years the Persians controlled Judah, then for the next 200 Greek culture was
forced upon them following Alexander the Great’s defeat of the Persian
armies. During this time the Old Testament was translated into the Greek in
about 250 BC, and became known as the Septuagint version. Then
came a time when the Jews suffered greatly, probably influencing their
questioning whether or not they had been abandoned by God. During this period,
known as the Hasmonean period, the Jewish scriptures were forbidden and
destroyed. The laws were enforced against the Jews with extreme cruelty. This
period lasted until the Romans took over in 63BC and they ruled through
procurators appointed by the emperors, such as Herod the Great who was ruler
of Palestine at Jesus’ birth. So,
by this time the Jews were a pretty fed up lot with a real sense of having
been abandoned so when John the Baptist entered on the scene, with all the
appearance of a prophet sent from God, particularly with his message of
repentance, the people flocked to him. The general feeling was that they had
not been abandoned after all and he should be listened to. And
what was his message? Repent and be baptised! What
was it that this baptism of repentance meant to those hearing his message? Faithful
Jews had been conscious of the gap that had grown up between God and the
Jewish race. Our reading this morning from Malachi reminds me of what is
found in chapter two in this context, “ ‘I hate divorce’ says the Lord God of
Israel.”. --- The Israelites had drifted away from their one true God and had
embraced others as well as intermarrying with pagans; this was seen by God as
divorce, an abandonment by the Israelites of their side of the covenant, and,
through Malachi, tells the Israelites so. Not for the first time had God
through his prophets warned the Israelites of their behaviour for we find in
Chapter 50 of Isaiah very similar words, “Where is your mother’s certificate
of divorce with which I sent her away?”,
asks God through the prophet some 200 years earlier. And things didn’t
improve from the time of Malachi. So among the faithful Jews there was a
sense of failure on their part with an anticipation of the promised Messiah.
Something had got to happen to bring the nation back to God. It was in an atmosphere of the necessity of
something dramatic, something fundamental and something initiated of God,
that John then appeared on the scene. In
our Gospel reading we have had the words of Isaiah to be found in Chapter 40
at verse 3, in our first reading from Malachi very similar words are used
“See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then
suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple…….” So John’s
appearance created anticipation in people’s mind that something cataclysmic
was to happen …….. as indeed it did but was not recognised for what it was.
So John’s message was one of preparation to get the people back on track so
that they were ready to accept the expected Messiah. His baptism was baptism
of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. In other words John encouraged
Israel to examine itself admit its failures and in the baptism commit itself
to a new way of life and thinking. The
symbolism had a considerable impact, for if you think about it the step of
baptism was demanded of gentile converts to the Jewish faith ------ they were
turning their back on the past life and moving forward to a new spirituality
in Judaism. What’s more is that John baptised in the River Jordan something
that would stir deeply in the Jewish psyche. Think about it ----- the Exodus
from Egypt brought them through the waters of the Red Sea, they crossed, with
Joshua, the River Jordan into the Promised Land leading to a new life. Here
John was immersing them in the same River Jordan with the intention that the
old life be put behind them and they get ready for the new life Jesus was to
bring them. A symbolic exodus to get back on track. At
the same time a real challenge to the Jewish nation, especially those who
thought themselves beyond reproach, the Pharisees, Sadducees, lawyers and all
those leaders of the Jewish nation. Those who had, over the years, made God’s
law a teaching in the legalistic application of the law rather than applying
the law with the compassion, love and a lack of being judgmental found in
Jesus’ teaching. But more than that they had kept God to and for themselves,
which was not God’s intention for his chosen people. In fact the chosen
people were supposed to have led the way bringing all to a knowledge of
God. John’s
aim was to achieve that situation where “… all mankind will see God’s
salvation.” That is to say, will appreciate Jesus as being the Messiah for
whom they had been waiting. What
is important about the baptism by John is that he was looking for a complete
change of heart in those coming forward, in the Jewish nation ---- getting
back to God. Paul later called it a circumcision of the heart. As James wrote
in his letter to the twelve tribes faith without action is dead, so John was
determined to show that it was not possible any longer to simply rely upon
the fact of being Jewish to get right with God ------ something more was
needed; a determination to live a Godly life. He was particularly hard on
those who went through the action of baptism without any reflection of that
fact in their lifestyle. James wrote faith without action is dead ---- that
is to say no faith at all, John was to put it this way, “Produce fruit in
keeping with repentance.” For the Jews, for the Israelite nation, he was
preaching a complete turn about. A turning of their backs on their previous
life style, something that was not to go down very well with the powers that
be, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the lawyers. The very people that Jesus was
later to call, “You hypocrites!” and then went on to quote from Isaiah 20, “
These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.” John’s
baptism was the first step in the story of redemption through Jesus Christ,
it was God giving the Jews another opportunity to come back to him. It was,
as G.B.Caird puts it in his commentary, “the prophetic sign which carried
with it God’s forgiveness to the penitent and of their incorporation into the
new Israel”. The new Exodus, so that “all mankind will see God’s salvation”,
that is to say that Jesus Christ would be recognised for who he was. Well,
that was John the Baptist, a historical figure in the story of the
incarnation and the redemption and where does that leave us, you and me? For
us the issue remains the same as it did for those listening to the voice in
the wilderness. The message of John is exactly the same for us today as it
was to the Jews hearing his quest for a circumcision of the heart. I give you
two quotes to bring home the gospel message. The one is by T.S.Eliot , writer
of Murder in the Cathedral, “The greatest proof of Christianity for others is
not how far a man can logically analyse his reasons for believing, but how
far in practice he will stake his life on his belief.” An intellectual faith
verses the practical application of that faith. The
other quote is from someone not perhaps quite so well known Sadhu Sundar
Singh, the Indian Christian Missionary who wrote this, “ While sitting on the
bank of a river one day, I picked up a solid round stone from the water and
broke it open. It was perfectly dry in spite of the fact that it had been
immersed in water for centuries. The same is true of many people in the
Western world. For centuries they have been surrounded by Christianity: they
live immersed in the waters of its benefits. And yet it has not penetrated
their hearts; they do not love it. The fault is not in Christianity, but in
men’s hearts, which have been hardened by materialism and intellectualism.” As
we draw near to Christmas, in this time of Advent, the gift given to us by
Luke in this story of John the Baptist is a question. The
question for us is: where do we
stand? Mel
Fancy: Reader, Anglican Chaplaincy of Midi-Pyrénées & Aude To return to main Thought for the Week page, click X at top right to close this window. |