Tom
Brokow in his farewell newscast last week, observed that it is not the questions
that are raised that get us into trouble, it is the answers. Prophets do not so
much foretell the future as much as invite us to question the assumptions of our
time and to look beyond our comfort level and our own fear. Prophets are those
who lead us to the threshold of the doors that open onto a new age. That is precisely
why John the Baptist is the great prophet-saint of advent. Following in the long
line of Israel's prophets, John made everyone uncomfortable. He didn’t fit
into anyone’s camp.
According
to Luke, John and Jesus were distant cousins, and while John was born only a few
months before Jesus, John always seems much older. I would picture him with a
deep gravely voice, a big man weighing at least 250 pounds, weathered face, and
scraggly beard streaked with gray. His eyes would pierce right through all pretense
and shells of deception. He named things as he saw them and wasn’t the least
bit intimidated by Herod’s henchmen and spies. He was tough, austere, and
pure.
In a passage in Matthew
Jesus noted that when John came neither eating or drinking, people refused to
listen, and when he came eating and drinking, the same people continued to refuse
to listen. This probably referred to John’s strict dietary habits of purity;
he would not eat with tax collectors, noted sinners, gentiles, or any who were
considered to be ritually defiled. Jesus, on the other hand, would. Clearly John’s
mission was just a beginning. It was focused on his own people.
"Bear fruit worthy of repentance," he thundered. "Do not presume
to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor', for I tell you God is
able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham." He knew that repentance,
self-examination, and courage to change were basic prerequisites to acceptance
of new birth.
John lived in
a critically ailing society, a society characterized by flagrant abuse of power,
rampant pride, and great inequality of wealth. People by in large were in complete
denial of the deep spiritual hunger within them. John preached the urgent necessity
for repentance and turning in a radical different direction. No superficial panaceas
were going to work. John was straightforward, and named sin for what it was. That
is why he was both respected and feared, and eventually imprisoned and killed
by the ruling authority.
John
inaugurated Jesus’ ministry by baptizing Him in the Jordan River. Two of
John’s disciples became Jesus’ followers, including Andrew, Peter's
brother. Nevertheless, John was always an outsider, and like Moses who never entered
the promised land. John never crossed the threshold to which his ministry lead.
He was always a forerunner. He readily acknowledged that his ministry was incomplete
and someone yet to follow would enlarge and fulfill God's promises.
Advent is John's special season. We, too,
live in an ailing society, a society that likes to live on the surface and among
superficialities. Our culture likes to serve a blend of 'feel good talk' about
the wonderful and varied holiday traditions, as long as these traditions never
speak to the real significance of the holy day. We live in a society that denies
sin, or pushes it into a category with religious fanaticism or bigotry. We live
in a secular season that does not wish to acknowledge the profound sense of loss
this particular time brings.
John
is not a blender of comfortable superficialities. John names our hunger and acknowledges
our loss. He prepares us for the time ahead. For John raises the questions everyone
else is afraid to ask, and leads us forward in anticipation of radical change
and the fulfillment of God's good tidings for all humanity.
And
I offer this to you in the name of the Living God, Amen.
