From Our Archives

Debie Thomas, A Voice Crying (2021); Debie Thomas, From the Wilderness (2018); Sara Miles, Being Remembered (2015).

This Week's Essay

Luke 3:4, "Prepare the way of the Lord."

When our kids were little, our family celebrated the four Sundays of Advent by lighting candles on a wreath. In our very unofficial version, each successive week we lit one pink candle for the prophets, the angels, the wise men, and the shepherds. On Christmas Eve we then lit the purple candle for Jesus. The readings for this second Sunday in Advent feature two prophets who were central to the Christmas story.

The Biblical prophets did more "forth-telling" about the present than "fore-telling" about the future. Their specialty is prognosis more than prediction. Prophets discern with unusual clarity the significance of current events and the circumstances of God's people. Based upon their diagnosis, they speak a word from God to provoke his people to change. By speaking God's word to our world, prophets call us to radical transformation.

For about a thousand years, from Moses to Malachi, God spoke to Israel by sending them prophets. As Israel's first prophet, Moses outlined the criteria for true and false prophets (Deuteronomy 18:9–22), and was himself called a prophet without peer (Deuteronomy 34:10). God sent significant women prophets like Miriam (Exodus 15:20), Huldah (2 Kings 22:14), Deborah (Judges 4:4) and Noadiah (Nehemiah 6:14). Jeremiah summarized Israel's prophetic history after they had been exiled to Babylon: “From the time your forefathers left Egypt until now, day after day, again and again I sent you my servants the prophets” (Jeremiah 7:25).

Malachi for this week was Israel's last prophet. His book comes last in the Old Testament. He was also chronologically the last, writing about a hundred years after the exiles had returned to Jerusalem from Babylon (c. 450 BC). This makes him the prophet closest in time to the birth of Jesus. Malachi's message in this week's reading promises Israel that God will “send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me."

After Malachi there were 450 years of prophetic silence. After a thousand years from Moses to Malachi, then nothing. Why did God not speak? What was he doing? That dreadfully long silence was finally broken with the gospel for this week about the first prophet of the New Testament period, John the Baptist. Three distinct references to John the Baptist identify him as the “forerunner” who was prophesied in Malachi 3:1–4 to “prepare the way of the Lord” (Luke 1:17 = Malachi 4:6; Matthew 17:12–13 = Mark 9:11–13; and John 1:21).  

Luke pinpoints the time and place when "the word of God came to John son of Zechariah." The "fifteenth year of the reign of [the Roman emperor] Tiberius Caesar" dates his story to about the year 26 AD. Luke also identifies the political context; the word of God came to John the Baptist "when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene."

John the Baptist in the desert. A fresco from the church of Vlacherna near Mezapos in the Deep Mani Southern Peloponnese Greece.

After naming Rome's political powers, both great and small, Luke then identifies Jerusalem's religious establishment; the story takes place "during the high priesthood of Annas and [his successor] Caiaphas." John's father Zechariah was a priest in the Jerusalem temple.

These minor details highlight a major theme in the Advent story. The “word of the Lord" through John the Baptist came neither from imperial Rome nor from Israel's religious establishment in the temple. It did not come from someone dressed in fashionable clothes who lived in an expensive palace, said Jesus (Luke 7:25). Nor from a business board room, university laboratory, ski lodge or power lunch. 

No, God's word to all humanity came from a wild and wooly man who lived in the deep of the desert, on the fringes of society rather than in its corridors of power, at the periphery rather than at the epicenter. The divine messenger and his message originated in an unlikely place and from an improbable source. John the Baptist would have been easy to ignore if you expected or wanted something normal, safe, or traditional. But neither John nor his message was normal by any stretch of the imagination.

John might have been part of the apocalyptic Jewish sect of Essenes who opposed the temple in Jerusalem. At least this much is clear — he was a prophet of radical dissent; his detractors said that he had a demon (Luke 7:33). In the end, he paid the ultimate price for faithfulness to his prophetic calling. 

Whereas John's father Zechariah had been part of the religious establishment as a priest in the Jerusalem temple, John fled the comforts and corruptions of the city for the loneliness of the desert. There he dressed in animal skins, and ate insects and wild honey. Living on the margins of society, both literally and figuratively, he preached "a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins" (Mark 1:4).

The story of Jesus begins not with the celebration of his birth but with a public address announcement: “I baptize you with water for repentance.  But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with water and with fire” (Matthew 3:11). And to remember the obvious, Jesus submitted himself to the baptism of this subversive prophet. 

Marcus Borg describes John’s message as one of both “indictment and invitation.” Contrary to what we might have expected from such an ascetic man with an austere message, huge crowds flocked to John: “The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River” (Mark 1:5).  Even in far away Ephesus people submitted themselves to the baptism of John (Acts 19:3).

We need to repent, said John, because in Jesus “the kingdom of heaven is near.” This is the identical message that Jesus himself preached when he began his own public ministry: “From that time on Jesus began to preach, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near’” (Matthew 4:17).  It’s the exact same message that Jesus instructed his followers to proclaim: “As you go, preach this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven is near’” (Matthew 10:7). And it’s the message that we today need to hear and follow if we are to experience the story of Jesus: “Repent and believe the good news, that in Jesus God’s kingdom has arrived.”

John the Baptist in the desert. Mosaic by Marko Rupnik, Rome, Chapel in the Polish Institute.

The kingdom of God that Jesus announced and embodied is what life would be like on earth, here and now, if God were king and the rulers of this world were not (Borg, Crossan). The ancient Hebrews had a marvelous word for this, shalom, or human well-being.  But entrance into this kingdom likewise requires a counter-cultural choice.

John's terrible indictment to repent is also a tender invitation to be our best selves. Repentance doesn't mean to feel bad; it means to think differently. To repent doesn't mean to grovel in self-hatred, morbid introspection, or pious sorrow. It consists of both outward acts and an inward disposition. When you repent you turn around, change directions, choose a different path, and make a radical rupture. Repentance signals an abrupt end to life on auto-pilot or to business as usual.

Why such urgency and abandonment? Why not go home and talk it over with the family? Won't friends think we're crazy, impulsive, even irresponsible? Won't you regret such a categorical decision? Why not hedge your bet?  Jesus invited Peter, Andrew, James and John to reorient their lives by following him because in his own person "the kingdom of God has arrived." Jesus announced and embodied God's rule or reign on earth, right here and right now. There was an unmistakable element of cosmic fulfillment in his preaching, teaching, and healing: "The kairos has come. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the good news!"

Genuine repentance is a deeply personal and individually unique act before God and my neighbor. Repentance has its communal aspects, and if you are lucky, other people might help you, but no one can repent for another; you can only repent for yourself. In this sense repentance can be quite simple, as observed by the Syrian abbot John Climacus (c. 525–605) in his The Ladder of Divine Ascent : "Let your prayer be very simple. For the tax collector and the prodigal son just one word was enough to reconcile them to God."

John urged his listeners to prove their spiritual intentions by concrete deeds rather than by claims of religious or political affiliation. Some people took him at his word, but many in the political elite and religious establishment did not. These political and religious leaders who rejected John got one thing right — they understood that his message was not only deceptively simple; it was deeply subversive.

John the Baptist by Donatello (marble), c. 1450

About six months after John emerged from the desert like some scraggly lunatic and baptized Jesus, he was murdered at the whim of Herod the tetrarch. At a party one night, Herod capitulated to the sadistic demand of his girlfriend's daughter. John was a forerunner of Jesus, but he was also a forth-teller to Herod, having rebuked Herod for sleeping with his brother's wife (Matthew 14:1–12). But as with many perverse politicians, Herod had his way with him who had spoken truth to power.

As for the religious establishment, Jesus tells us that "the Pharisees and experts in the law" spurned John's call to baptismal repentance, and in so doing "rejected God's purpose for themselves" (Luke 7:30). The prophetic word of God from John the Baptist, then, did not originate with the state powers or the religious establishment, nor did it find a receptive audience with them. 

The claim of God’s kingdom upon my life, John preached, is ultimate. That means that the claims of the state and religious establishments, of race, gender, culture, and money are, at best, penultimate. The earliest and most radical Christian confession was simple: “Jesus is Lord.”  By direct implication, Caesar is not lord or god, and neither are all the other many false gods of money, sex, power, etc.

With his Advent announcement John urges us to spurn anything and everything that hinders ultimate allegiance to Jesus. He invites us to make our crooked ways straight, to flatten all hilly terrain, and to prepare space for the birth of the Messiah into our own lives.

Weekly Prayer

Advent Antiphons

From Mary's sweet silence,
   Come, Word mutely spoken!

Pledge of our real life,
   Come, Bread yet unbroken!

Seed of the Golden Wheat,
   In us be sown.

Fullness of true Light,
   Through us be known.

Secret held tenderly,
   Guarded with Love,

Cradled in purity,
   Child of the Dove,

COME!

Sr. M. Charlita, I.H.M. See here: https://snd1.org/death-notices/sister-mary-charlita/

Dan Clendenin: dan@journeywithjesus.net

Image credits: (1) InsideMani.gr; (2) Centroaletti.com; and (3) 1stmuse.com.