Sunday, December 8, 2024
/Advent 2 (Year C)
Baruch 5:1-9; Canticle 16 The Song of Zechariah; Philippians 1:3-11; Luke 3:1-6
The Rev. Clint Brown
[John the Baptist] was a good man and had exhorted the Jews to lead righteous lives, to practice justice toward their fellows and piety toward God, and so doing join in baptism.
So says Josephus, the first century Jewish historian, who was a contemporary of Jesus, Paul, and the early Christian movement, and who often serves as an important nonbiblical witness to many of the things reported in the Gospels, including Jesus. But this terse sketch is misleading and doesn’t do justice at all to the outsized personality with which we have to deal today. Josephus may serve to corroborate the Biblical account, and we are glad of that, but what he leaves out, of course, are all the juicy interesting bits: the manner and circumstances of John’s birth and that he ate bugs and wore camel’s hair and that he was, to put it mildly, a pretty eccentric fellow. John the Baptist cuts a very strange figure, indeed, as he crosses the stage at this time of year, and we have need to reckon with this odd, unsettling companion to tidings of comfort and joy and cozy nativity scenes.
For all the reverence we pay him, we might start out by realizing that John the Baptist is not the type of person you would want to invite to your Christmas party. To begin with, he was an ascetic who imposed on himself a severe self-discipline, so you’d be hard-pressed to expect him to bring much (if anything) to your party. And whatever he did bring, you would probably not want to eat it. And he likely wouldn’t show up, anyway, because he clearly was not a fan of big urban areas and places with a lot of people, preferring to keep to the countryside and, particularly, the wild desert region around the Jordan. And, in terms of personality, it is fair to say that he was prickly and provocative. As a preacher, we know that he drew enormous crowds because of his unique brand of “fire and brimstone,” but whether that was because they agreed with his message or were just there for the show is an open question. (It’s likely to have been a mixture of both.) But one thing is for sure. John the Baptist was (and is) an interesting and irresistible character and there are important reasons for us to pay attention to him.
On the scant evidence available, scholars hypothesize that John was probably a priest, descended from a family of radicalized rural priests who had been pushed out of the power center at Jerusalem. As such, they were highly critical of the Jerusalem priesthood who, as far as they were concerned, were sell-outs and more preoccupied with the forms of ritual than its spirit. They would have nursed a grave concern to see Israel purified and returned to its roots. And as an outsider, reared by outsiders in this atmosphere of suspicion and grievance, it is natural for us to suppose that the young John would have grown into manhood with something of a chip on his shoulder, and this may account for his abrasiveness and zeal for reform. But be that as it may, what is most important for our story is that John is an outsider with an outsider’s way of looking at things. What his contemporaries were blind to, either because of their comfort or because of their distractedness, John was able to see clearly. And what John wanted most was to break through his contemporaries’ apathy and indifference with the shattering news that the God of Israel was not done working. The time of God’s visitation was at hand. And while everyone was busy looking one way, salvation was coming from the other, and John understood perfectly that his role was to point to that very special something that was just over the horizon.
Once we get past our initial shock about him, we can appreciate that John’s role is vital – no one else can do it – because he helps us to do two things at once: to look back and to look forward. Looking back, John reminds us, as he did his contemporaries, of the great prophetic heritage of Israel and that we, like them, are situated in the midst of a much larger story. The coming of the Christ is not a surprise, it is something announced and foretold. It is something expected and part of a grand plan. We are to recognize in the mighty acts that will soon unfold that God has a plan for history, indeed is the Lord of History, and, for those who are seeing in front of them something less than ideal – like the occupation of their homeland by Rome’s legions, say, or, for us, the continuing specter of injustice – this is an intervention worth celebrating.
And in terms of looking ahead, what John is saying is that the knowledge of God’s imminent intervention requires a response. How ought we to meet Christ as our king? And for this John gives us one word: “repent.” Admit that you are in need of rescue. Own the fact that you can’t save yourself. Give in and let go. The coming of Jesus should matter to you, and John wants to make sure you know why. I’m reminded of an observation made by C. S. Lewis. To achieve progress does not always mean moving forward. Sometimes, he said, what “progress” looks like is turning around once you’ve realized your mistake and backtracking to the crossroads where you made the wrong turn. Only then can you truly say you are moving in the right direction. That is where we are on the Second Sunday of Advent. We have a choice to make. Either we choose to barrel on as if there’s absolutely nothing happening that ought to concern us, or we stop and consider that what is coming into the world is going to change it and us forever and we have some serious preparation to do. Clearly to continue, obstinately, in the former way would amount to nothing less than pride and a kind of foolishness and, ultimately, insanity. So it turns out that the crazy guy wasn’t so crazy after all. Only a crazy person would knowingly continue walking on a road that they knew would lead them off a cliff, which means you’d be crazy not to listen to John the Baptist.