2ND SUNDAY OF ADVENT HOMILY – YEAR B 2024
PREPARE THE WAY OF THE LORD
Lk 3.1-6 Baruch 5.1-9 Phil 1.4-6,8-11
Here we are again, with John the Baptist popping up, wild and woolly, with his evocative and memorable call from ‘Godspell’, where he emerges from the darkness blowing his loud horn and singing “Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord”, which are the complete lyrics of the song! But it was not Godspell that invented the words, as we hear them from Luke’s Gospel today.
What is most significant is that John, in all humility, highlights himself in a secondary role, ‘down by the riverside’, as he makes his offer of a refreshing bucket of water over the head, along with a dip in the river Jordan, as a sign of repentance and willingness for a new approach to faith and life, and so a renewed relationship with a God of life and love.
Also to note is John’s emphasis on a call to all, and not just a select group of a particular background and tradition; he prefigures Jesus’ call to all to hear his word and respond in faith and action. Universality is at the centre of Luke’s Gospel, as he is the evangelist of Greek origin, said to have been a medical doctor by training. All are welcome, who are open to his message.
And so, here he is, with John the Baptist offering a spiritual form of healing, for those open to his message of repentance and openness to a better way of living one’s faith, beyond ritual observances and rules and regulations, on which the religious leaders of the time based so much emphasis, to the point where many of them had lost sight of the primary purpose of ritual and law, as Jesus also later points out, to their chagrin.
Given his own background, with his father Zachary literally as a Temple priest, one could imagine Dad not being too enthusiastic about his son going into the wilderness and then coming out of left field with a simple, but new fangled religious formula and ritual for his baptism.
In the normal scheme of things, it might have been expected that John would follow in his father’s footsteps, but there’s no evidence of that happening at any stage. He was his own man, and was going to do things the way he believed he was called by God to do, in some mysterious way. Remember, it took a long time for Elizabeth and Zach to have their son John, and look at how he has turned out. Some might have said: ‘What a disappointment’!
Some scholars suggest that he had earlier joined an isolated ascetic group called the Essenes, who lived a simple, but tough communal life out in the desert. It might be thought John had taken some time preparing for his own challenging ministry, but nothing is certain, expect that he ended up down by the riverside calling all passers by to hear his message and undergo his new baptism ritual, with a determination for a change of heart in those who responded to his call.
Now, at this point, I like to introduce a contemporary touch, with my take on George Harrison’s “Here Comes the Sun”, as reflective of preparing the way for Jesus, as ‘the Son’ who is to come, as John calls for a new way of seeing and doing things, from a faith perspective, emerging from a cold and lonely winter into the warmth of the sun, with the reassurance: “It’s alright”! The future will be brighter, and we keep hoping!!
Spanish scholar and priest, Jose Pagola, puts the somewhat dark scenario John was facing and challenging thus: “Evil was corrupting everything… The whole people was contaminated, not only its individual members; all Israel must confess its sin and be radically converted to God, or it would be irremediably lost. The temple itself was corrupt; it was no longer a holy place; it could no longer eradicate the evil from the people; the atonement sacrifices celebrated there were useless; they needed a new rite of radical purification, not linked to the temple cult… They must go out to the desert, away from the promised land, in order to come back as a people converted and forgiven by God… One thing was decisive and urgent: to be converted to God and embrace God’s forgiveness”, for which John was only the prophetic agent.
Then there is the natural wonder of good old H2O, water, a remarkable molecule, in all of its forms, solid (ice, snow, hailstones), liquid (water) and gas (as steam), without which life as we know it, would not be possible. It is more than appropriate, therefore, as a religious or spiritual symbol, where, from the time of John the Baptist, it has been used for baptism, as a sign of belonging, as well as initiation into the Christian life. It is cleansing, refreshing and life-giving. One interesting point, though, is that Jesus himself never baptized with water. It was sufficient for him to identify faith and genuine repentance, leading into ongoing discipleship. At the same time, we hear his words at the end of Matthew’s Gospel to “Go out to all the world, baptizing in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”, so that’s what we’ve been doing ever after!
As Brendan Byrne SJ puts it well once again: “Believers are not handed a perfect blueprint for salvation. In the ever-changing circumstances of human life, we are summoned to a life of constant discernment to ask what leads us to God, what leads us away; what gives us joy, what leaves us in sadness. Advent is a time of sharpening our sensitivity to the summons and calls of the Spirit.”
And my old mate Claude Mostwik MSC has a worthwhile insight too: “God has strange ways a God’s word bypasses state power and the influence of established religion to trek into the wilderness and seize a strange and prophetic figure like John. If we think about it, it has always been this way, as God searches for ‘the other’ – the alienated, the disenfranchised and dispossessed. God seeks out the one the world bypasses. God bypasses the game of thrones and disrupts trickle-down religion through a wild man in the middle of nowhere”!!
Meanwhile, we prepare the way of the Lord, each in our own way, as we get ready for the rush into Christmas, with all that entails!
john hannon 8th December 2024