The call of John the Baptist to prepare a way can so easily fall on deaf ears.

Posted on December 4th 2011 in Weekly messages

The relentlessly depressing news over the economy and the ramifications of crisis over the single currency looks to have blunted many peoples’ celebrations this Christmas. It is hard to discern that Christmas Day is only three weeks away. Perhaps these dismal circumstances might be turned to a spiritual advantage, and that the consolation offered through the Prophet Isaiah and the Good News announced in St Mark’s Gospel are the work of God alone. This is not to celebrate economic malaise, or shrinking incomes as a positive good, but the Christian faith can only be lived in the circumstances within which one finds oneself, and not in a land of wishful thinking.

The Prophet Isaiah wrote in times of political turmoil. The Babylonian exile had unexpectedly ended with the destruction of that kingdom by the Persians in 536 BC. The tribes of the former Southern Kingdom, Judah, were free to return to Jerusalem and the Promised Land, but many who had accommodated themselves to life on the Euphrates declined to return. Those who decided to return needed to prepare for this new Exodus to the Promised Land. Their preparation must have taken a practical turn, but the spiritual insight required is the subject of Isaiah’s prophecies. These spiritual insights become for the Christian the insights necessary to prepare for entry to the new Promised Land, not this time a geographical entity, but the universal entity, the kingdom of God. This is at heart a spiritual entity, but one always made visible and tangible through the Church and the life of its members.

The anonymous voice crying in the wilderness, pleading to the Israelites to make the necessary preparations for their return to Jerusalem, is embodied for the Christian in the person of St John the Baptist. He takes on the mantle of this voice, and his message of repentance is preached to the descendants of those who heard the Prophet Isaiah say the same words, ‘Prepare a way for the Lord’.  Along with this message comes a nuanced understanding of God, who uses His power as a shepherd gathering lambs in His arms (Is 40:11). This mysterious combination of regal power and utter tenderness will be made visible in Jesus Christ.

The prophet Isaiah must have touched the spiritual nerves of the Israelites, who recognised they were indeed living in Exile, even three generations after the Deportation to Babylon. Their consciences must have been pricked by the Prophet’s words. Likewise for ourselves, the mission of John the Baptist only ‘works’ for us if we allow our own consciences to be pricked, and so recognise how far we might have drifted away from the vision established by Jesus Christ. How this happens and in what circumstances remains unique to each person. This is our own personal drama of faith. The season of Advent is the chance to write another chapter in our spiritual biography, and once more to identify the reasons why one must listen again to the preaching of John the Baptist about ourselves in relation to the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ at Christmas.

The Passion: Part 1: The Arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane c18:1-12

Posted on November 27th 2011 in St. John's Gospel

The Passion Narrative in St John’s Gospel is very similar in its main outline to those of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke). The basic outline was well known through the earliest professions of faith that Jesus had died on the Cross according to the Scriptures, had been buried, rose on the third day according to the Scriptures, and had been seen by the Apostles. This creedal statement found in St Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians quickly took on narrative form and, in the earliest years of the Church, when the Gospels were first written, this section was probably completed first.

The departure of Jesus to the well frequented spot of Gethsemane gave the opportunity for Judas to arrange for Jesus to be arrested in private. The group that came to arrest him, an amalgam of Romans soldiers and Jewish militia, reflect the forces of the world arraigned against Jesus. The Church Fathers contrasted the artificial lights brought by the soldiers with Jesus being the light of the world. Throughout the Passion, though it might seem as if the powerful have the upper hand, Jesus is in command. Hence He replies ‘I am He’, recording all those times he had spoken of completing the Jewish rites with phrases such as ‘I am the good shepherd’ and ‘I am the bread of Life’. Since Jesus took command of the situation He asks that the others, the apostles, might go free, thus fulfilling a line of His prayer to the Father, ‘I have watched over them and not one is lost’ (17:12). Throughout the Passion Jesus’ shows His love for the Apostles and their future mission. ‘He loved them to the end’ (13:1).

Peter, however, does not understand this and attacks the High Priest’s servant, Malchus, in an attempt to protect Jesus. Peter as the central Apostle is a foil for every believer to understand their relationship with Jesus. His reluctance to have his feet washed initially, and now his violent attempts to save Jesus, demonstrates how deep the process of conversion needs to go. Pride and misunderstanding are never too far away. The way of violence and self-assertion will not achieve the ends to which Jesus serves, and this non-violent approach has forever been the hallmark of authentic martyrdom within the Church. 

Advent waiting is a purposeful activity combined with real dialogue

Posted on November 27th 2011 in Weekly messages

Last week a head teacher was pleased to explain that the school’s unannounced Ofsted inspection went well, and that the inspectors had found a happy but purposeful school been run diligently by the staff. The head teacher explained, to my surprise, that it was much better to have instant inspection than being given many months notice, since the intervening period just fostered an increasingly fevered environment where the teaching of children came a distant second to making sure the school was ready to be inspected. Advent is the season of waiting for the coming, not of some terrestrial inspector, but of the infant king, the Word made flesh. But what sort of waiting is being asked of us in the season of Advent? The answer is certainly more of the first sort identified above, but not without the second, since there is always need for spiritual and charitable ‘improvement’.

This Sunday’s Gospel describes the Christian life in terms of ‘waiting’, not in the sense of doing nothing but of being engaged in purposeful activity, of being attentive to one’s vocation as a follower of Christ, wherever this may be, at home, at work, in the community, or the country at large. Christian life is therefore never to be identified with frenetic activity. It is never to allow oneself to become submerged by the maelstrom of human business. Such a path quickly comes to an impasse when confronted with failure, frustration and confusion. The command to ‘stay awake’ implies that much of life can be described as the ‘dream world of sleep’ – a vivid, pleasant, well-padded, and active dream world certainly but still a dream world. The believer has answered the call from Jesus Christ and made the conscious step from sleep to wakefulness, from dream to reality, without in any way passing judgement on those who have not yet done so. The life of ‘wakefulness’ may be described as the life of the Holy Spirit, the spark of divine fire within, given to us out of love, a completely un-coerced gift from God.

The gift of the Holy Spirit brings to a provisional conclusion 1,500 years of religious history, the promises made to Abraham, to Moses, and through the prophets. The objects of the Old Testament promises of people and land have become real in the Kingdom of God, of which the Church is a visible anticipation and embodiment. Until the birth of Jesus Christ the hopes of the Israelites were disappointed, but are now being answered in a way only achievable by God. The prophet Isaiah gives a beautiful description: ‘we are the clay, you are the potter.’ God through Christ has come to remould us in His own image.

The question is how to accept this into our hearts. What form should the second type of waiting take? It is more a spiritual journey. It requires an intense dialogue with God. To say that faith is simply to say OK is not sufficient as such a response fails to develop any self knowledge. Last Sunday’s prophecy from Isaiah shows subtle psychological insight. The prophet knows that without God he and others have become withered leaves. He knows that God must be rightly angry. Yet his first response is to blame God, ‘You hid your face and gave us up’ (Isaiah 64:7). He is angry with God, a perfectly acceptable sentiment as part of a wider dialogue but not as the final conclusion of a relationship with God. The prophet passes through this anger to admit that God is Father, someone beyond humanly perceived right and wrong. An analogy may be seen in relation to one’s own parents. Any argument starts on the back foot, whatever the merits, since parents gave life to children, something that precedes the rights and wrongs of a particular case.

This is the utter mystery of God, but from this God has entered human life. The Word was made flesh, the mystery of God has taken human form, and embraced us through the gift of Himself in the Holy Spirit. The season of Advent then is a restoration of the quiet purposeful activity of life through a renewed and real dialogue with God that does not fail to embrace all our disappointed hopes and failures.