Guilsborough Evensong :   4[th] December 2010.   2[nd] Advent
O God, take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them. Take our hearts and set them on fire.

When we were in Oxford a couple of weeks ago  a friend, I walked down the busy, pedestrianised, Cornmarket Street on our way to an event in the Examination Schools, a venue  with mixed memories that we had not visited since, with apprehension,  we took our finals in 1961.  In the middle of the Cornmarket merchants of religion were plying their trade: a Christian, of African descent, was shouting something,  largely unintelligible above the hubbub,  about Jesus, and on the other side a man,  in what appeared to be clerical garb,  was handing out pamphlets inviting us to study  the Muslim religion.   
We steered a careful path between them, taking care not to catch their eyes.  We had other things on our minds , such as where to have a quick lunch before the event.  We were not in the mood for things spiritual.  
Yet afterwards I had a twang of conscience: perhaps I ought to have engaged the Christian in conversation,  said that I was a believer and encouraged him.   After all, he was giving up his Saturday to preach a message ( or so I presumed)  about  repentance, forgiveness and eternal life.  And it takes a bit of a nerve to stand up and shout about that to a throng of shoppers intent on  their own business, most of whom will regard you as a bit of an embarrassing  nuisance. 
As our lesson this evening describes,  John the Baptist, however, got a more attentive audience than the men in the Cornmarket.   But the Jews were puzzled at what he was up to.   He was a maverick  even in a land where itinerant preachers were not  I'm told uncommon,  a land with its traditions of old Testament prophets living in the desert .   We know what he looked like from St. Matthew's  description of John  as wearing  clothing of camel's hair with a leather belt, eating locusts and wild honey.   And we know from this evening's reading who John  thought that he was not.   He answers his interlocutors'  direct questions  very clearly in the negative  Are you Elijah? : no.  Are you another prophet?  : no.  Are you the Christ ? : no. 
He parries  the priests and Levites,  who come down from Jerusalem to question him,  by  referring  somewhat enigmatically to a saying of Isaiah,  describing himself as a voice crying in the wilderness for repentance of sin.   Interestingly, in  our own century that   " voice in the wilderness "  expression has the connotation  of someone advocating a righteous cause that few espouse  -  though  I confess that Voice in the Wilderness first swum into my consciousness  as a hit song by Cliff Richard in a film called Expresso Bongo about 50 years ago.  
We don't know ,of course, how many of John's audience hauled in his simple message and changed their lives.   In St. Luke's gospel he is asked what had to be done to find the kingdom of God.  And he answers  " He that hath two coats let him impart  to him who has none, and he that hath food let him do likewise."   Soldiers were told to do violence to no man, neither exact anything wrongfully and be content with your wages.  Similarly,  tax collectors were told to stop exploitation.   
Criticism of people's behaviour and  pouring on the gloom and doom was something of a Jewish tradition.   One thinks of Jeremiah, Isaiah, Amos  with their message that people must be purified by spiritual renewal,  and of poor Jonah who couldn't face passing on the repentance message to the Assyrians and ended up inside a whale.    
But clearly John the Baptist was  a different charismatic character with a message that appealed to a people under the shadow of Roman occupation.   He  sets out his stall very clearly:  first saying what he was not. And  then asserting what he wanted: repentance because the Kingdom Heaven was at hand and a Messiah was about to appear. 
Besides the question of how John saw himself and how others saw him, there is the issue of his relationship with Jesus.   During his own Ministry Jesus, you'll remember,  refers  several times to John the Baptist.  When asked by the Chief Priests by what authority  he  behaves, Jesus asks them in reply whether John's baptism was of heavenly or of earthly origin.  And they have to say that they didn't know.   
St. Luke suggests that John and Jesus were cousins and, if they were, it might explain why Jesus came down to attach himself to John's entourage in the desert and be baptised and later , bearing in mind John's own life in the desert,  go there himself for his 40 days of Temptation .    
The other interesting question is whether John accepted at the time of Jesus' baptism that he was indeed the Messiah.   It seems somewhat unlikely because you will remember that later when John was in prison awaiting death at the hand of Herod, he sent messengers to ask Jesus "Are you the Messiah or aren't you", perhaps  he was expecting a reply about  the establishment of a righteous kingdom.   But  Jesus' in response says  in effect if that there are  other ways of showing God's purpose  on earth, for example,  by a healing ministry and preaching to the poor.  And he advises that John should draw his own conclusions from that phenomenon. 
I  was interested to read, with John in mind, what T E Lawrence  -  Lawrence of Arabia  - had to say about desert Arab people almost 1900 years after the death of John the Baptist: " They were a people of primary colours, or rather of black and white....a dogmatic people despising doubt , our modern crown of thorns. The common base of all the Semitic creeds was the ever present idea of world worthlessness.  Their profound reaction from matter led them to preach barrenness, renunciation and poverty".   Judaism, Christianity and the Muslim religion were all, significantly,  born  out of the harshness of that desert landscape,  founded on austerity in places where the wilderness meets the inhabited cultivated  land. 
But the principal reason, as I see it,  why the story of John the Baptist's ministry is included in our Advent readings  is that John  is foreshadowing  the arrival of the Messiah, not as a baby in a manger  nor as child in the temple,  but as an adult about to begin his ministry that changed the world.    The significance of John's baptism of Jesus Is  that by that act John sets him on his earthly  journey of two years or so ,  as God's son,  a path that leads to Calvary.  
Christmas in 3 weeks time is then something of  a  diversion in our Christian year, a winding  back for 12 days  to the events of some 30 years earlier  to that night in the manger Bethlehem.  Christmas  is not part of the message of John nor of  the meaning of  Advent,   despite the fact that we open the doors of the Advent calendar that leads us to Christmas.  It is the season that invites us ot look ahead a  Jesus Christ's coming  ministry.
So what is John's message for us to day in our highly developed, materialistic  world?  No deserts here for contemplation.   Preaching repentance ?  Most of us think about that when we break the 11[th] commandment : Thou shalt not be found out.   True, the recession has cast a shadow of austerity, according to the media: but I bet you wouldn't think so if you go shopping in Northampton next week.  
So I would argue that we need to take away with us today that simple message  of repentance attributed to John by St. Luke.  Give up your evil ways, be good,  be generous - something that lies at the heart of all the law and the prophets of the Jewish scripture.  Central to John's preaching also was that message from the Book of Leviticus: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" , which Jesus also emphasises. 
So before we set off on a Christmas buying spree, why not go through the house for any redundant clothes or other items  -  perhaps including your own coat of camel hair and the belt that goes with it  -  and  give them to  a charity that can use them.   John the Baptist  would surely approve of that  -making the Advent season truly the season of giving.   
Teach us good Lord to serve thee as thou deserves: to give and not to count the cots; to fight and not to heed the would, to toil and to ask for no reward save that of knowing that we do thy will. 

  



