Second Sunday of Advent, 5 December 2021, Eldroth, Clapham
What makes someone a prophet? Is it that they speak the words of the Lord, proclaiming the messages of God to the people?
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius you would expect that the one who received the Word of the Lord would have been the emperor himself, as God’s representative on earth as far as he was concerned. Or maybe God would speak through those those high and mighty ones Pontius Pilate, governor of Judea, or Herod, ruler of Galilee, or channel his divine message through those other rulers Philip or Lysanias. Or you might expect to hear God’s message spoken authoritatively in the Temple through the great high priests Annas and Caiaphas.
Well, perhaps surprisingly, there was not a prophetic word from any of these, for Luke’s gospel tells us from the very start that the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. Now John wasn’t born among kings, he was far from high and mighty; he was devout for sure but not in the same way as his father, who was an ordinary priest serving in the Jerusalem Temple. John was likely one of the Essenes, a sect who took to the desert to practice a communal ascetic life, daily ritually immersing in water, eating and praying together, doing charitable acts; and John wandered the byways of Judea urging anyone who would listen to take to the waters of baptism in repentance to be saved, to ‘Prepare the way of the Lord’, as he ominously put it, announcing that One was coming along after him who John was sure would straighten out the world once and for all. [1]
It would seem then, that if we’re looking for a prophet, someone whose words will reveal to us God’s own perspective on things, then we have to search outside the usual places where we tend to learn our values, and to ready ourselves for encounters with outsiders. It’s a vital aspect of our faith that ‘God acts among outsiders,’ Rowan Williams says. The scriptures show us that ‘Those who have no assurance of their right to a welcome or a hearing are those who turn out to be most welcome. The person who ‘does not fit’, is the person who reminds me of my own limits, and spoils the satisfying outline of my life.’ [2]
When an oddball like John gives us the Word of the Lord it can make us uncomfortable, the same way we may feel whenever we find ourselves listening for once to an outsider, someone quite unlike us, whose ‘otherness’ ‘questions our treating our perspective as if it were God’s’. Like the poet whose words spark fresh ways of seeing life, like the musician whose sounds provoke new sensations in us, like the lover who makes demands on us we never knew we could meet, the outsider may reveal to us ‘that we do not live in the world we think we live in’. [3]
That we do not live in the world we think we live in, is at the heart of any prophet’s message. In scripture we often find prophets saying that the world is far worse than we think. According to one learned rabbi, the prophet Malachi ‘describes a priesthood that is forgetful of its duties, a Temple that is underfunded because the people have lost interest in it, and a society in which Jewish men divorce their Jewish wives to marry out of the faith’. [5] It sounds uncomfortably like a Daily Telegraph editorial on the state of the Church of England in multicultural Britain.
But it’s important to consider that the likes of Jeremiah, John and Malachi were by no means entirely prophets of doom. Sure, they took a very dim view of the state of things as they were, and uncompromisingly challenged the people to change their ways. But having done so, their mission was then to open people’s eyes to a better, more hopeful world already coming into being, with God at its heart. Look at how today’s extract from Malachi ends: with ‘the offering(s) of Judah and Jerusalem being pleasing to the Lord’ once again.
It’s notable that Jesus was an outsider from a small Galilean town, who resisted every effort to exalt him as a king; as God generally chooses not to speak through rulers of state. Jesus was a prophet who spoke for the Father, addressing the situation in his time and place. That was the worsening conflict between the Jewish people and their Roman oppressors. He prophesied about the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple, which did take place in AD70. His message was that although the Temple falls, he is the new Temple - in other words, he is the new way to God. [5]
When the Temple goes, God can no longer be found in just one place, through the mediation of priests; but here and now, through Jesus, God will come into our lives whenever we turn to him. Although the ‘temples’ of our day are falling, and will fall, in Christ we will find new ways to live.
Our faith demands that we see that we do not live in the world we think we live in; that the time is up for oil; that democracy is broken; that the god of endless growth is an emperor without clothes. And that we accept the plainly obvious: that the established church like so many other institutions of state, plays diminishingly less part in people’s lives, is shrinking fast and must adapt, re-form, re-shape for the future. Which it can, for we live in the light of the prophetic revelation that Jesus comes into our world each and every moment we open our hearts to him. And that he will help us find our ways towards creating a better, more hopeful world.
We can look to the many outsiders of our faith to find inspiration to shape a sustainable, hopeful future. Those who today live in peaceable devout communities close to the earth like the Amish and the Bruderhof; those prophetic movements for unity, like Taizé, birthed in the heart of Europe during the Second World War. We look back to the radicals like the first-century Essenes and the seventeenth-century Diggers who, inspired by the egalitarianism they found throughout scripture, rejected property and lived close to the land for a season; and we can look to the present day experiments of parish churches opening up their land for community allotments, some providing food for foodbanks and schools, or revisiting their ancient churchyards as places to bring together people interested in local history and wildlife; for the Forest Church movement; and for places like Touchstone, a house in central Bradford where Christian hospitality is practiced towards all-comers, where people who are radically different listen to each other and creatively share life and faith together. Each of these creating new communities exploring a spirituality for our times. [6]
We do not live in the world we think we live in: but we can shape a new and better world according to the inspiration God gives us. Like every outsider-prophet Jesus calls us to listen: for he speaks; to watch: for he acts in our current situation, in our time and place. Who knows what joys he will lead us into when we do?
The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; let us put on the Lord Jesus Christ. [7]
Notes
[1] Wikipedia: John the Baptist, Zechariah (New Testament figure), Essenes.
[2] Rowan Williams, Christ On Trial - How the Gospel Unsettles Our Judgement, paraphrased by Robert Gallagher and again by me here.
[3] Rowan Williams, Christ On Trial - How the Gospel Unsettles Our Judgement, op. cit.
[4] Rabbi W Gunther Plaut, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi: Back in the Land.
[5] See my sermon for Advent Sunday, Listen: for he speaks; watch: for he acts in our time and place, and Paul Nuechterlein, My Core Convictions, Part 3 on his Girardian Lectionary website, outlining N. T. Wright’s ‘groundbreaking work on Jesus as a Jewish apocalyptic prophet. Luke 21, as a parallel to Mark 13, is a key passage for Wright’s thesis. For almost a century, New Testament scholars have assumed along with Albert Schweitzer and Rudolf Bultmann that either Jesus or the evangelists or both were wrong about the end times - namely, that they expected them to arrive within a generation. Wright challenges this entire line of thinking, hypothesising instead that Jesus was predicting the cataclysmic events of the Roman defeat and destruction of Judea, which did happen within that generation.’
[6] Wikipedia: Amish, Bruderhof Communities, Taizé Community, Diggers. There are many examples of parish churches creating community allotments, including my previous parish St Barnabas Queen Camel, Somerset. The National Churches Trust encourage churches to share their churchyards to bring together people interested in local history and wildlife; Forest Church; Touchstone.
[7] Romans 13.8-14, Epistle for the First Sunday of Advent, The Book of Common Prayer. Adapted.
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