The Messenger and then the Word
The life of Gandhi was steeped in the process of change, in standing up for the rights of his people. He once observed that we must “become the change we want to see in the world”. It is easy to see what is wrong with our troubled world, but it is all too easy to miss seeing that changing the world must be part of our own personal agenda.
This however, is the kernel of the teaching of John the Baptist: Repent, change, be transformed, be converted—whatever you want to call it, it is the call of Advent. John is almost frightening in his single-mindedness — “the axe will be laid to any tree which does not produce good fruit” (Luke 3: 9). John the Baptist is the kind of person most of us would cross the street to avoid, and would not want our teenage children to associate with. Yet there is no denying that he is a key player in the involvement of God with the people of Israel, and the new Israel, the Church.
The picture we usually carry of John is that of a wild nomad, shouting messages from heaven while wearing camel skin, living on locusts and wild honey. And indeed John knows the wilderness - a favoured place of God's presence and activity. John knows himself: he is not the Messiah; and someone is coming who is more powerful than he. He knows his vocation: he is a messenger, an agent for God's mission. Like Isaiah, John is faithful to the mission given to him.
Saint Mark places John at the beginning of his Gospel, as one who calls the people to repentance, to conversion, and he promises the Holy Spirit. That is the same Spirit we have been given, the Spirit which can transform our lives if only we are alert to his knocking at our door. That Spirit calls us out of exile and into freedom, out of slavery and into sonship. The life of that Spirit is a life which lives in this world but which is not confined to the material or materialistic. It constantly calls us out of ourselves and into the deeper things of life and love. It seeks to restore us to the beautiful life and vocation that we had before sin and sorrow had their wicked way with us. And once John has called us to a baptism of repentance, then his mission is done, and someone else comes along to lead us on the paths of the Kingdom. This “Someone” is the one of whom John said: I am not fit to kneel and undo the strap of his sandal.
This someone is Jesus! Jesus, we think of, as being different from John, and rightly so! Jesus seems much more accepting of the human frailties of ordinary mortals! The Pharisees and Sadducees were even more demanding, laying heavier burdens. But Jesus has an ace card to play: He knows of what we are made. Jesus knows that people can start late, get lost, fall, fail. Jesus, in truth, did not baptise anyone with fire except the fire of the Holy Spirit of love. Instead, he let himself get burnt. He did not wield a winnowing fork to separate the grain from the weeds, instead he specifically said they should be allowed to grow together. He ate many dinners with seedy characters. We generally expect a powerful God, yet this God in Jesus let himself be manhandled. We generally expect a majestic God, yet he comes in the form an infant, and later, he rides on a donkey into Jerusalem. We generally expect an awesome God, yet his voice is not heard in the streets. His awesomeness is something else.
And so, we might just miss our Saviour, because we forget that a God we can control is no god at all! A God who meets our expectations is too small a god by far! And so, we need an annual Advent to prepare to meet and know this God whose name means God saves, who name is Jesus. We encounter this Jesus in a unique way whenever we Listen to the Word at Mass, and when we truly engage with it, and love the Word and honour the Word, and take the Word to heart. We anticipate at every Eucharist that which Jesus has promised—a new heaven and a new earth—and we are surely called to be a Church which co-operates in the plan of God to build that new world in our midst. What a wonderful vocation we share!
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