Enough Talking About it
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
One of the wonderful things about Christmas is putting out
the crèche. I love all the little
figures which replay the stories we have heard all our lives. These stories of the
stable, of shepherds and angels and wise men come from just two of the four gospels.
It was customary in the first century to develop great myths about the birth of
emperors and other important leaders. Matthew and Luke both follow the custom and
give us extensive birth narratives to emphasize how important Jesus is.
But Mark and John, the earliest and the latest gospels, don’t
bother. This morning we heard from John’s gospel. It tells us that there was a
man sent from God whose name was John. His job was to testify to the light. He
was a witness. This was a legal term – rather like a notary today – someone who
certifies that a person is who they say they are. So John was sent from God to
declare that Jesus really was the light coming into the world.
There are other people in this story who were also sent –
the Jewish leaders sent priests and Levites. They were sent to check John’s identity
and credentials. There was no-one to
testify to him. He had to be his own testifier and he responded to them in
words that they would know only too well from their scriptures “I am the voice of one crying out in the
wilderness, `Make straight the way of the Lord.'" But they had been
sent by the Pharisees who needed to know exactly what was right and what was
wrong and so they demanded to know with what authority John was baptizing.
After all, a voice in the wilderness is not a baptizer.
But in trying to pin him down, the Jewish leaders were
missing the opportunity to find the reign of God.
It’s a little like being invited to a reception at a very
fancy hotel with a doorman and instead of going in and enjoying the party you
stop outside to ask the doorman a lot of questions about himself and why he’s a
doorman and what the reception is about. If you stand on the street asking
questions you’re never going to enjoy the banquet. We often sing verse 8 of
Psalm 34 “Taste and see that the Lord is good” – if you go to a banquet and
spend all evening interrogating the doorman, or if you go in but have a whole
load of questions for the chef about the ingredients and the recipes and where
the food was sourced, you may end up knowing all about it but never eating any.
What use is that?
Food is to be eaten. The reign of God is to be lived.
At the time of Jesus, baptism was an initiation into the religious
life just as it is for us. Proselytes to Judaism had to be circumcised, baptized
and make a sacrifice. Baptism cleansed the
proselyte from the impurity of idolatry, and restored him to the purity of a
new-born man.
Unlike
Christian baptism, you could be baptized again and again. In fact baptism was
considered a part of holy living and was frequently repeated by those wanting
to live a sacred life. John the Baptizer may have been a member of the Essene
sect. The first century scholar Josephus said that his
instructor Banus, who was an Essene, ritually "bathed himself in cold
water frequently, both by night and by day" as did all the Essenes.
In
the Acts of the Apostles when the apostle Paul was travelling in Ephesus he
found Christians who had been baptized in the baptism of John for repentance
but not baptized in the name of Jesus so he went ahead and baptized them. Paul’s
understanding of baptism in the name of Jesus is that it is baptism into the
new life in Christ, and that in the waters of baptism we enter into the mystery
of Christ’s death and resurrection, effectively being joined to him. This is a
once and for all thing – we don’t have to be baptized again and again.
Meanwhile, back at the River Jordan…For
the Jews baptism could take place in any cold water bath but baptism in the
waters of the Jordan was very special. It was thought to
restore the unclean man to the original state of a new-born "little child."[1]
That reminds me of Jesus words “unless
you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of
heaven.” (Matt18:3)
John’s preaching and baptism for repentance
were preparing people for the coming of the Christ and the declaration of the
reign of God. It was like a great community drama. A communal purification so
that Jesus’ ministry could begin and he could speak to a people who had become
like little children, ready for his words and his demonstration of
God-in-human.
The first reading we heard from the prophet
Isaiah are the words that Jesus used to announce the beginning of his ministry.
Luke tells us that Jesus went to the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth.
“And
the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. And he opened the book and
found the place where it was written, "The Spirit of the Lord is on
me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent
me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
Then he sat down, as was the custom, to
teach and began by saying "Today
this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
So this, we could say, is Jesus’
mission statement, “to proclaim good news to the poor, freedom for the
prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind; to set the oppressed free; and to
proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
As his followers, it is also our
mission statement.
This is the reign of God. This is
practical stuff. For a poor person good news is that there’s the money to pay
the rent; good news is that you won’t get evicted; good news is being able to
pay the utility bill; good news is getting a job or a raise.
So these readings today combine
mysticism and mission. We have John calling for us to become pure and open to
God like little children – not just individually – but as a community – and we
have Jesus’ mission statement proclaimed by the prophet Isaiah. It is a call for
the healing of the nation.
We live in a nation which is in great
need of healing, in a world which is in great need of healing. We are aware
perhaps more than ever before of the incipient racism which creates a society
in which more black than white people are incarcerated and black people are
treated more roughly by police than white. We see the horrors of civil war in
many nations and the use of religion as ideology to support violence. Closer to
home we see house prices forcing people onto the streets and jobs paying so
little that having a job doesn’t guarantee being able to pay rent.
Holistic spirituality transforms our
souls and enlivens our spirits but also expands our level of awareness and
compassion. As we grow in the knowledge of the reign of God we come to see that
we are all kin – that the well-being of others and ourselves is one dynamic
reality. We are called to repent of our
individualism; of the idea that it’s all about us. Yes we need to repent and make
a change in our lives so that we can be reconciled with God. Yes we want to be
one with the Spirit, but that is not something that comes as an individualistic
high – it comes along with the knowing that we are all deeply interconnected.
In the intricate web of relatedness we cannot distinguish between the authentic
wellbeing of ourselves and others.
This is the reign of God – where the
two great commandments– to love God with all of ourselves and to love our
neighbor as if she or he were ourselves - are fully lived. No we do not wait
until we love ourselves before we love others because there is no separation.
These two go hand in hand.
We can spend a lot of time debating the
reign of God – is it like this or is it like that? We can come up with all
kinds of issues about how we do things religiously or spiritually. Like the
Pharisees we can try to make sure that everything is religious correct or
politically correct before we commit ourselves. But that isn’t the reign of
God.
“Taste and see that God is good.” In
order to taste you have to commit yourself, even just a teensy weensy bit to
the food. Those of us who have been baptized have made a commitment not just to
tasting but to eating. And we have made a commitment to engage in the mission of
Christ “to proclaim good news to the poor, freedom for the prisoners and recovery
of sight for the blind; to set the oppressed free; and to proclaim the year of
the Lord's favor."
Yet I am pretty sure that most of us
have some reservations about jumping in. We have some reservations about the
reign of God, because it means giving up our self-centeredness. And no-one wants
to do that. It takes a great leap of faith to commit ourselves to follow Jesus.
It’s not just getting a cold bath in the river. It’s living a life of
self-sacrifice just as he did. But in the amazing paradox which is the reign of
God, because we are all connected that self-sacrifice turns round and becomes the
greatest blessing. As we are able to give up our attachment to it all being
about us, and increasingly make it all about Christ our lives of compassion become
lives of deep fulfillment. Because that is how we were made to live.
We were made to be set on fire by the
Spirit, to be anointed “to proclaim good news to the poor, freedom for the
prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind; to set the oppressed free; and to
proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
There’s an old joke that upon arriving
at the pearly gates a pilgrim soul was puzzled to see two signs, one which
pointed to “Heaven” and one which pointed to “Discussions about Heaven”. St Peter
explained that that was for the Unitarians who love to talk about everything.
The urgency of Advent is that the time
to indulge in discussions about the reign of God is over. It is time for us to
pluck up our courage and jump with both feet into the River Jordan, and renew
our commitment to living the gospel. To renew our commitment to the
compassionate life. To renew our commitment to holistic spirituality.
posted by Caroline Hall at
7:21 AM
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