Ord Om ordet
2 Sunday of Advent A
Homily given to conclude an Advent recollection at the Venerable English College.
Isaiah 11.1-10: The fear of the Lord is his breath.
Romans 15.4-9: Everything written teaches us about hope.
Matthew 3-12: Brood of vipers!
If there were courses in pastoral theology in the Baptist’s day, he seems not to have paid attention; or perhaps the manuals were different back them. His words are harsh, his warnings dire, his appearance fierce. Yet people flock to him. Why?
It’s curious: in history we find that times of decadence (and that of Herodian rule played out against the backdrop of Roman occupation must qualify as such) can produce a new search for probity. Historical analogies are suspect, for history does not ever, thank God, exactly repeat itself; yet we might, by way of illustration, think of the founding of Moral Rearmament, staking out a course based on ‘absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute unselfishness, and absolute love’ in 1938, when much of the world was flirting with Hitlerism while the German capital, like that of many other nations, was wallowing in the kind of excess Christopher Isherwood described in his 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin.
The Forerunner was of character quite unlike that of Dr Frank Buchanan, the preacher of the Four Absolutes; but he would have approved them. There is no compromise in John’s proclamation. It is ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no’. The human heart needs such orientation when much of the world is content with ‘Maybe’ or, ‘Who cares?’ or even, ‘To hell with it all!’.
Do we not see a similar kind of rising alertness in our own day?
Such times are times of opportunity and risk. When lots of people at the same time seek firm direction, demagogues are in their element. Masses are easily seduced by rhetoric, by the satisfaction of moving, at marching pace, in the same direction as a cheering, unhesitating crowd. Even our noblest aspirations are easily perverted — that is, attracted off course.
Three aspects of John inspire confidence. First, he is an ascetic uninterested in advancement, wealth, or status for himself — he, the locust-eater! Secondly, he is a man of few words. He does not seduce people with discourses or attach them to himself. He reminds them of their responsibility for personal choices. It’s no good to say, ‘Oh, I voted like this or acted like that because all around me were doing the same’. No, each person, according to vocation and state, must produce ‘appropriate fruit’ and shun subterfuge. Thirdly, John’s message springs from tradition. In him the law and prophets culminate (cf. Lk 16.16). John does not put forward any private ideology; he is a contemporary herald of an ancient standard asking the people to consider afresh where it comes from and where it is going, what constitutes its identity, specificity, and mission. He reminds it that it will be held to account: ‘any tree which fails to produce good fruit will be cut down’.
As Christians in Advent, crying out with the voice of the Church, ‘Come, Lord, do not delay!’, we know ourselves bound by the Baptist’s preaching. It summons us to self-scrutiny. The Pharisees and Sadducees, a caste of clerics and theologians entrusted with the faithful exposition of God’s Word, are castigated: ‘Brood of vipers!’ Those of us ordained to sacred ministry must ask ourselves honestly: Am I, in every sense of the word, faithful?
John’s torchlight does not merely shine on the clergy, though. When tax collectors ask him, ‘What shall we do?’, he tells them: ‘Collect no more than is appointed’. When soldiers ask the same, he says: ‘Rob no one by violence or false accusation’. As for the multitude, hoi polloi, he exhorts everyone present: ‘He who has two coats, let him share with him who has none; he who has food, let him do likewise’ (cf. Luke 3.10-14).
There is plenty of matter, here, for all of us to pursue an examination of conscience.
Advent is a season of sweet consolation. It rings with the lovely cadences of: ‘Comfort, comfort ye!’ We brew, bake, and decorate; we write cards and buy gifts for those we love, and for some from whom we are estranged. It is good that we should.
Let us just beware of reducing Christian hope to pleasant sentiment. John, greatest among men, reminds us that the only comfort worth having, the only one that will last, is comfort based on justice — and to coherent justice the Biblical believer is obliged.
Isaiah in our first reading says the same. The wolf lying down with the lamb, the little boy leading the lion, the unlikely friendship of cow and bear: these aren’t features out of a Disney movie conjured up from fantasy; they ensue from the spreading abroad of the spirit of counsel and power, of judgement not by appearance but made with integrity.
The advent of divine consolation would provoke in us the advent of the fear of the Lord — a ‘fear’ that in Biblical language does not spell anxiety but reverence and a keen sense of our obligation, as beloved creatures, to our Creator. May such fear be our breath, poured forth in songs of praise and just deeds, renewing the face of the earth.
Mario Socrate as an uncompromising, somewhat wild John the Baptist in Pasolini’s immortal The Gospel According to St Matthew.