Collect for Advent III
O LORD Jesus Christ, who at thy first coming didst send thy messenger to prepare thy way before thee:
grant that the ministers and stewards of thy mysteries may likewise so prepare and make ready thy way
by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just,
that at thy second coming to judge the world we may be found an acceptable people in thy sight;
who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
PROPERS:
Old Testament lesson:
Isaiah 35, Vv 1-10
Epistle:
James 5 Vv 7-10
Holy Gospel:
St Matthew 11, Vv 2-11
As has been declared many times from this pulpit and many others, the season of Advent is a time of preparation, a penitential time when we anticipate the coming of the Christ child; when we look for God’s presence in our every-day world, especially within the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar; and we await the Second Coming, the Parousia, the end of all things. One important Biblical character stands astride our Advent thinking like a Colossus – that man is John the Baptist.
In one of my Bibles the 35th chapter of Isaiah, from which came our Old Testament lesson, is headed, ‘Joy of the Redeemed’. It talks, as we have heard, about gladness being found in the deserts and parched lands, of the wilderness rejoicing in blossom. All this burgeoning was to be part of the glory of the Lord and the splendour of God. But for whom? For God’s chosen people, the Jews. Isaiah’s principal prophecy is about the coming of a Messiah. It is generally thought by scholars that the Prophecy of Isaiah is a compilation from three different authors, written at three different times. The first thirty-nine chapters were written to the peoples of the Kingdom of Judah from the middle of the eighth century BC. The parallel Kingdom of Israel had almost ceased to exist when Samaria fell to the Assyrians in the same century. Our passage in chapter thirty-five is one of the most poignant, in its description of the attributes of this Saviour that God would send to his people. This expected Messiah would open the eyes of the blind; he would unstop the ears of the deaf; the mute tongue would shout for joy and the lame would leap like deer. The first Isaiah painted a wonderful picture of the desert gushing forth streams of water and of burning sand becoming a pool for the thirsty. He concluded by saying, ‘but only the redeemed will walk there.’ It was in such a wilderness as this that John the Baptist preached repentance and waited for the arrival of one, of whom he said, ‘his shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to unloose.’ John the Baptist was to be the last of a long line of Prophets who foretold the coming of the Messiah.
Our Epistle came from what is called the Epistle General of Saint James. It is the first of a group of seven letters, placed towards the end of the New Testament, and called General because they were addressed, not to any particular church, but to groups of Christians in different parts of the Greco-Roman world. This letter is thought by many to be written by James, a close relative and perhaps a cousin, of Jesus. James is believed to have become a Christian after the Resurrection and went on to be the first leader of the Jerusalem church. In our reading he too reminds us to be patient: patient as, for example, a farmer waiting for the autumn for his crops to ripen. ‘Take courage,’ he says, ‘for the coming of the Lord is near.’ James, like Jesus and like Paul, though the Parousia, was imminent. James then reminds us to look to the Lord’s Prophets for patience in suffering. Again there is a strong suggestion that James, if indeed he was a relative of Jesus, had another close relative, John the Baptist, in mind when he wrote these words.
So to our Gospel. Saint Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew or possible Aramaic and he wrote it for Jewish converts to Christianity. His emphasis was always on the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy. You will notice when you read his Gospel that he makes many incursions such as: ‘that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet,’ and, ‘then was fulfilled that which was spoken by the prophet.’ Matthew tells us in chapter eleven that John the Baptist was in prison. He had been imprisoned by Herod Antipas because he had accused him of marrying his half-brother’s wife Herodias, in direct contravention of the Law of Moses, of which we can read in the twentieth chapter of the Book called Leviticus. It was from this prison that John instituted his enquiries about Jesus that we heard of in our Gospel proclamation.
The relationships between John and Jesus are very complex. John quite clearly declared himself the forerunner of Jesus, especially, as I mentioned earlier, in the comment about untying the laces of his sandals. John also spoke with certainty about the identity of Jesus when he proclaimed, according to Saint John, ‘Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.’ These words have, as we know, come down to us in the Agnus Dei, that section of the Mass that comes immediately before the Administration of the Communion to the Faithful. Yet, here in our reading, John seems unsure about the identity of Jesus. He said, ‘Are you the one we are waiting for, or should we go on looking?’ Maybe progress towards the establishment of a Kingdom of God on earth had not developed quickly enough for John, or in the direction that he perceived it sould go, who knows? Perhaps even more telling, John still had disciples of his own. Matthew tells us that, ‘he sent his disciples to ask Jesus…’ Clearly John’s ministry continued on its independent way, in parallel with that begun by Jesus. Jesus sent the messengers back to John to tell him what they had seen, and he reminded them, ‘the blind are able to see; the lame can walk; lepers are healed; the deaf can hear and the dead are raised to life.’ A very impressive list that almost exactly parallels the words of Isaiah we heard earlier. Jesus then said that God would bless all who didn’t reject John for what he did. With these words John’s disciples set out to return to him. But Jesus had more to say about John. He asked the crowds about the man that they expected to see when they went into the wilderness. Would he have fine clothing and live in a king’s palace? Here we have the second reference back to Isaiah. Jesus paints a picture of John as a prophet in the wilderness. He almost echoes Isaiah’s words about, ‘gladness being found in the deserts and parched lands, of the wilderness rejoicing in blossom. Only the redeemed,’ Isaiah had said, ‘will walk there!’ None was more worthy than John of that description.
Jesus then spoke very highly of John. He said, ‘I tell you that no one ever born on this earth is greater then John the Baptist.’ What a wonderful accolade! Then he appeared to add a note of disparagement. He said, ‘But, whoever is least in the Kingdom of God is greater than John.’ By this Jesus meant that a whole new period of history had begun with him, Jesus: John was still part of the earlier times; an important part and, as we have seen, and the conclusion of that period, but not part of the Kingdom of God. This establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth was fundamental to Jesus’ ministry. Everything he said and did was entirely dedicated to this dominant objective.
John’s disciples continued to revere him even after his death; apparently they did not immediately join the followers of Jesus. In the book of Acts we read of Apollos, an early Christian Jew from Alexandria. He visited Ephesus and spoke learnedly about things concerning Jesus yet he had only received the Baptism of John. The criticism that the author Luke made in this reference was that such persons had to have their thinking brought into line with what was becoming mainstream Christianity. It also seems that there may have been some rivalry between adherents of John and Jesus long after the Resurrection. In attempts to take the heat out of this competition Matthew makes it clear that John did not see himself as superior to Jesus although he baptised him. Equally Luke emphasises John’s subordination to Jesus, even when still in his mother’s womb and Saint John reports that the Baptist vehemently denied that he was the Christ. At the time when the Gospels were written, and this was almost certainly over 30 years after the events they record, there was probably still some competition between the respective followers of John and Jesus. The evangelists were severally trying to set the record straight.
So we have in John the last in a long line of messengers and prophets that God sent in attempts to bring his covenant people back to a loving relationship with him. In Advent when we prepare ourselves for the coming of God’s only and dearly beloved Son, we must thank our heavenly Father for John’s personal witness and his devotion to Jesus. Let us pray that we may use his life, totally committed as it was to Our Blessed Lord, as an example during our own preparations for this most wonderful Nativity event.