Address given at St Mary's Nenagh and Killodiernan Church on Sunday 8th December 2024, the 2nd of Advent Year C
As I dodge the
potholes on North Tipperary boreens, I often pray that the County Council would
take to heart the words of Isaiah we’ve just heard Luke quote in his Gospel:
"Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every
valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked
shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth;”
Joking
aside, today I want to focus on John the son of Zechariah, the subject of
today’s gospel reading (Luke 3:1-6). He is the person we familiarly call John the Baptist. But
Orthodox Christians call him John the Forerunner, which is quite as it should
be, because the gospel writers and the early church saw him as the forerunner
of the Messiah, foretold by Old Testament prophets including Isaiah.
There
are 3 questions I shall try to answer:
1.
Who was this John?
2.
What was his teaching? and
3.
How is it relevant for us today?
So, firstly, what do we know about John the son of Zechariah?
Quite a bit, in fact - and not just from the Gospels.
Josephus the 1st Cent Jewish historian is an independent source, who
says more about John than he does about Jesus. John was a real person, not just
an invented character in the gospel story. Notice how firmly Luke places John
in his historical context.
Within the gospels, Luke tells us the most. He weaves
the story of John’s birth in with that of Jesus. At the very beginning
of his gospel, he tells us about John’s parents, a priest called Zechariah and Elizabeth
his wife: both good, pious people, but getting on in years and childless. The
angel Gabriel appears to Zechariah to tell him that Elizabeth will bear a son
to be named John, who will be a great spiritual leader. Zechariah doesn’t
believe Gabriel and is struck dumb, but Elizabeth does indeed conceive.
Now,
Elizabeth is a relative of Mary the mother of Jesus. Six months later, after
Gabriel appears to Mary to tell her she will give birth to Jesus, Mary rushes
off to visit Elizabeth. When Elizabeth hears Mary’s voice, the baby John leaps
for joy in her womb, and Mary responds in the words of the canticle we know as
the Magnificat.
In
due course, Elizabeth bears her son, whom Elizabeth and Zechariah duly name
John. Zechariah’s speech returns, and he gives thanks in the beautiful canticle
we know as the Benedictus, which we used as our psalm today. It echoes the OT
prophesies:
And thou, child, shalt be called the Prophet of the Highest,
for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his
ways,
to give knowledge of salvation unto his people,
for the remission of their sins.
All 4 of the gospel writers tell us how John, now
grown up, goes out into the barren desert country by the Jordan. There he called
on the crowds who followed him to repent, to change their ways, and baptised
them as a sign of their repentance. The background to all this was a great
popular religious revival: many people were convinced that the Messiah of
prophesy was about to appear, and they were urgently looking for signs that
this was so. As we all know, Jesus himself went to John to be baptised, and
John recognised him - not surprisingly since they were cousins.
John was just as blunt and bold a preacher as any of the Old
Testament prophets before him, always ready to speak truth to power. He was bound to run into trouble with the authorities.
And he did: he upset Herod Antipas, the Tetrarch or King of Galilee, who
ordered him to be arrested, and later beheaded. Josephus says Herod had John
killed ‘to prevent any mischief he might cause’.
Let’s now turn to examine John the Baptist’s teaching.
In today’s gospel passage, Luke (3:1-6) says that John
‘proclaimed a baptism of
repentance for the forgiveness of sins’. He goes on to
outline John’s teaching. Three points stand out in it for me:
1st, all the gospel writers
are clear that John never claims to be the Messiah, but believes himself to be the
forerunner. Luke puts these words in his mouth: ‘I baptise you with water; but one who is
more powerful than I is coming: I am not worthy to untie the thong of his
sandals. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire’.
2nd,
John is what we call a hellfire preacher. Luke quotes him saying: ‘You brood of
vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of
repentance. () Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree
therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire’.
John seeks to shock the crowds into repentance by terrifying them with the
consequences if they don’t. Then John seals their repentance by immersing them
in water to symbolise that they are washed clean of sin. His preaching must
have been very effective, judging by the crowds he gathered.
3rd,
John’s message is about much more than just hell fire. He calls for social
justice. Quoting Luke again, he says: ‘Whoever has two coats must share with anyone
who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise’. And he calls everybody,
even tax collectors and soldiers, to do whatever work they do fairly, and not to
extort more than their due. No price gouging!
So what relevance does John the Baptist and his teaching have for us
today?
Luke saw John the Baptist as the hinge on which salvation
history turns, the forerunner promised by the prophets, making straight the way
for Jesus the Messiah.
It is difficult for us to see the world as Luke and his
contemporaries did, through the prism of scriptural prophecy. And I for one deeply
distrust fundamentalists who see it that way today. But that world view
empowered the early church to respond to Jesus’s message, no matter what the
cost. Without it, the church would probably not have survived, and we would not
be Christians today. The mysterious working of the Holy Spirit through prophecy
is something we should celebrate, I suggest.
Few Christian preachers nowadays stir up hellfire in
their sermons, as they once did - and not so very long ago. We have become
uncomfortable with the idea of the wrath of God. Instead it is ecologists and
scientists who have been leading denunciations of our foolish and wicked
trashing of this beautiful, God-given planet from secular pulpits.
Now more and more people are hearing the call to
protect our planet, and starting to act upon it. Christians are to the
forefront. Our Anglican Communion has adopted as the 5th mark of
mission, ‘to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and
renew the life of the earth’. Pope Francis has given us a clarion call in his
encyclical Laudato ‘Si. Among the Eastern Orthodox, Ecumenical Patriarch
Bartholomew has been leading from the front to promote ecology and
environmental protection. Here in Ireland, Eco Congregation Ireland is
spearheading the movement.
I am not a prophet – certainly not in my own country
and parish! But I prophesy this: we will hear more and more John-like hellfire preaching
from our Christian pulpits, as the twin ecological catastrophes of climate
change and bio-diversity loss intensify. Why? Because we should be terrified of the wrath to come predicted by the
scientists. That should bring
us to repentance. And we should
seal that repentance by mending our ways!
And as we mend our ways, we must also try to live out John’s
social gospel, to share the good things we have received with our neighbours of
every faith and race, at home and abroad. Mé
féin is a road to perdition in our shrinking, globalised world. We must do
so because this is not only the gospel of John, but the Gospel of Jesus, who empowers
us by baptism not with water, but with the Holy Spirit and with fire!
I shall finish in prayer with the Collect of the Word for today
Almighty God,
who sent your servant John the Baptist
to prepare your people to welcome the Messiah,
inspire us, the ministers and stewards of your truth,
to turn our disobedient hearts to you,
that when the Christ shall come again to be our judge,
we may stand with confidence before his glory;
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen
