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
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
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