John 1: 6-8, 19-28
6 ¶ There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
7 The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.
8 He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.
19 ¶ And this is the record of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who art thou?
20 And he confessed, and denied not; but confessed, I am not the Christ.
21 And they asked him, What then? Art thou Elias? And he saith, I am not. Art thou that prophet? And he answered, No.
22 Then said they unto him, Who art thou? that we may give an answer to them that sent us. What sayest thou of thyself?
23 He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Esaias.
24 And they which were sent were of the Pharisees.
25 And they asked him, and said unto him, Why baptizest thou then, if thou be not that Christ, nor Elias, neither that prophet?
26 John answered them, saying, I baptize with water: but there standeth one among you, whom ye know not;
27 He it is, who coming after me is preferred before me, whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to unloose.
28 These things were done in Bethabara beyond Jordan, where John was baptizing.
The message of this Sunday’s Gospel is so clear and so perfect. John has come to prepare the way of the Lord. He is not the Lord; he is come to prepare his way, the way of Christ.
The opening of John’s Gospel may be heard this week as a beautiful restatement from a new point of view of the message of the coming of the Lord and the beginning of Christ’s ministry. We hear again that John is not himself the Messiah. We hear that he has such a great and wonderful following of people awaiting the Messiah. We know that these, the Jewish people, must have been so very anxious in their expectation of the Messiah. We hear additionally of those entrenched and conservative forces who will seek to destroy Christ, and so paradoxically play their part in bringing about our salvation. And John like Mark may indeed seem to be recounting the events of Christ’s life as it were as if seeing Christ’s whole ministry through the lens of his crucifixion and resurrection.
The perspectives of Mark and John are, though, quite different, and beautifully complementary. Perhaps it is fair to say that, while Mark races toward the crucifixion in a linear narrative time frame, with John Christ’s essential transcendence is presented to the listener as it were from the first word.
We are truly privileged to think of how we as Christians look to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with great confidence: that we know our Lord is with us; we know that we have this great light, the light of Christ, to carry with us through our lives. The Word has been given to us. The Word is with us. (Let us watch!)
And so much of this Gospel reading, and also especially of the reading from Isaiah, must resonate with us today. We are in the wilderness. We walk at times in such darkness. It is with such eager expectation that we look to our Lord.
As Advent continues, we look to make ourselves fitting to receive Jesus. We wish to clothe ourselves, metaphorically speaking, in a way that is fitting to receive our Lord, to become an appropriate bride for the bridegroom. In a sense, we imagine ourselves to be in the position of those people who once sought reconciliation through the baptism of John. So we acknowledge our sins and seek reconciliation. It is a most perfect time now to confess our human frailties to God and seek forgiveness. It is a most perfect time also to recall our baptism and once more to renew our baptismal promises.
John’s Gospel is a tremendous text. It is steeped both in the Jewish world and also in the philosophy of the Gentiles, of those Jesus came to heal who prior to his incarnation lived beyond the faith in God. Often employing the terminology and the philosophical traditions of the Greek people, it is a great reaching out to all people. Isaiah’s prophecies have been fulfilled in ways which perhaps Isaiah could have hardly imagined.
John’s Gospel is often seen as being quite abstract, but we have such wonderful specific details here to help us to know that this Gospel is truly a witness of Christ. Read or listened to closely, we hear again John’s message, especially when he is challenged by the Pharisees and the scribes, by Jewish orthodoxy, by the authorities associated with the Jerusalem Temple, that he is merely a vehicle preparing us all for the coming of God the Son.
John did not claim to be other than what he was. Let us now keep John’s message with us as we celebrate Advent. Let us remember our baptism, pray that the Holy Spirit may be with us, confess our sins and seek reconciliation and accept Christ’s forgiveness. We are only what we are also. We cannot really be other than what we are, but what we are, when we are true to ourselves, is wonderful. We may be confident that Christ will, for all our limitations, live with us all.
‘It was not enough for God to give us his Son merely to point out the way. He made the Son himself the way, so that you might journey with him as your guide, as he walks in his own way.’ St Augustine
Psalm 55 is a heartfelt and poignant prayer, a cry for divine help in a time of profound distress and betrayal. The psalmist beseeches God to listen to his supplication, expressing deep anguish caused by treachery of enemies and weight of oppression [ … ]
We process. Glass exhibition cases, old reliquaries. A forearm here; here a nun’s fingertip. In chapel, at a glance, there are the usual faces. But they all stand to attention. Jonathan breaks from the procession to – fire the organ with oomph and dignity: Ride on! ride on in majesty! The angel-squadrons of the sky look down with sad and wondering eyes to see the approaching sacrifice. When we’ve done the readings, the Arch holds that tree in his hands to deliver the homily. He rocks quietly on his feet, some few seconds, as if balance defeated it. A way you might affect as the Spirit moves… Copying. Then he says: ‘Our palm fronds may seem to us today rather dry. I mean this not in a literal sense, but by the standards of those who originally lined the roadways in order to welcome Jesus into Jerusalem, as they proclaimed Jesus to be the Messiah, who would be clambering up and ripping their palm branches fresh from off the trees. I think perhaps also our faith is somewhat distant from that of the people there on that highroad into Jerusalem, and something of our sense of the meaning has shifted in vividness from what it was then. And of course the expectation of all those many people is markedly different, but in many important respects the same. There are the same essential qualities to all our faith in God, which springs complete from our humanity, and that is one and the same in value for all of us, and time is consistent on this point. So then, let us renew the fullness of Catholic faith, and let us ask the Lord’s blessing as we embark upon our Holy Week. ‘Our Lord enters into Jerusalem in order to refresh us. He is to die in order that we may have life. There is a living reality here, both spiritual and as entangled in the joy of our daily living. We have Ladies’ Day where I grew up. They still have it, and they close the roads off, and little children parade, dressed-up like spring brides. When I was a boy, there was a May Day festival, and there was a May pole on the field, with the people dancing, like Morris dancers might be one way of visualizing this if you’ve never seen it, with their ribbons tied onto the top of the May pole, and they would weave around each other, dressing the pole, which is what we called it. It was like a dance with red and white and blue ribbons all hung off of the top of the May pole, which stood there all year, only like a telegraph pole, but it was concreted in, and then there was a slide, and swings – one baby-swing and two you could have a go at – terrible health and safety but that’s what it was in those days. ‘There was a round-a-bout – we used to run it round and round to try to get it off its central axis. It were rusty as anything and creaked like mad – on concrete. And climb up where it was all greased up at the top. Ruth, who was big as the next four of us, used to sit there sucking on the lollipops we nicked for her from Raddies, and she’d direct matters. We were trying to destroy it, and get it to dislodge from its central axis, and fly away – roll off into that farmer’s field, which he only ever kept for silage, but we never succeeded. There was a car someone had left there so we spent forever smashing that up, until someone who lived in one of the houses there took exception to our doing that, so he put thick grease under the door handles and gave us a right talking to. ‘It would only be a few stands, hot-dogs and things like that. The man selling the hot dogs would have his records on full blast. There’d be a couple of set-up stalls. Air-rifles – that sort of thing. But we all had them, and we all went shooting, of course, if not with twelve bores then with smaller gauge. Or pay a pound – I have no idea how much it was in actual fact then – it might have only been a few pennies – and we’d get all that time smashing up the crockery the man would put up for us to smash on the dressers. That was my particular favourite thing to do at these festivals, by the way, in case you were wondering. You got a little bucket of so many cricket balls. ‘I dread to think what went into those hot dogs. Probably EE rules would forbid it now. But it was a fair mix in those days. A lot of young people then were C of E. We’ve done a lot to hang onto our young people, which is a tremendous encouragement when you consider how things are, while in recent decades the Church of England hasn’t been so successful. People still want it on feast days and what are essentially now civic celebrations. It’s strange to see, though, how all the little stands there people have are run by the police and people like that along those lines. There’s no May pole. That was a sort of faith that ran and ran beneath all the theoreticals of it in the 1960s and the 1970s and into the 1980s. The May pole isn’t there now in the particular place I’m thinking of. Considering May poles were officially suppressed hundreds of years ago – as a part of the protestant reformation. One or two of you are probably thinking I’m remembering things from that time! ‘I should have liked to say that those processionals were so hardwired into us, that even after the last thirty years, when I became a bishop, they are still with us. They were […]
Psalm 141, through appeals for divine guidance, protection, and the maintenance of righteousness, expresses struggles and aspirations of the faithful in their journey toward spiritual integrity. Psalm 141 is personal lament and a communal prayer, reflecting universal human desire for divine closeness and support in the face of adversity. Through its vivid imagery, heartfelt pleas, and expressions of trust in God, Psalm 141 meditates themes of prayer, moral integrity, and divine justice [ … ]
