Year: 2013

“And thou, child, shalt be called the Prophet of the Highest:
For thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways”

The Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist falls immediately after the Summer Solstice, the longest day and the shortest night of nature’s year, and points us to the Winter Solstice, the shortest day and the longest night of nature’s year, that falls just before the Nativity of Christ at Christmas. The interplay of natural and spiritual themes is an intriguing feature of the Christian religion and speaks to a number of other interactions as well, not least between prophecy and fulfillment. The whole significance of John the Baptist lies in his mission. He is sent to prepare the way of the Lord, the way of God’s being with us in the intimacy of the humanity of Jesus Christ.

We are, I suspect, at once very leery and all too gullible about signs and portents; quick to jump to conclusions about the coincidence of events in our own lives, claiming some special blessing from God, but much more reluctant to acknowledge the same reality in the experience of others. It is, I suppose, a feature of our age: insecure in our narcissism, and skeptical, if not altogether suspicious, about others. Yet the story of John the Baptist is a major part of the New Testament witness. The child of an older woman, Elizabeth, thought to be long past the age of child-bearing, and of an old priest, Zechariah, who is rendered dumb for challenging the very idea of the birth of a child in their dotage, John the Baptist’s birth itself is a kind of preparation and foretelling of the birth and ministry of Christ. In a way, that is the whole point. Summer points to winter only to open us out to the eternity of God’s good will and purpose for our humanity and for our world in the Christ who comes into our world.

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“Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father is also merciful.”

Known as the Mercy Gospel, this gospel passage has been read for centuries on this day. Paradoxically, it seems to me, the mercy lies in the realization that we are all hypocrites! The parable Jesus tells is precisely about that. And yet, this is the good news!

The text about the blind leading the blind has become a commonplace in our world; we are quick to use it in relation to political and institutional leadership, but we forget that we are included in its range. The blind who are the leaders lead the blind who are the followers. In other words, this parable forecloses on our tendencies to judge and condemn one another as if we stood upon some superior platform. Quite the opposite, the parable goes on to suggest.

“Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother’s eye.” This is a devastating reality check. We are utterly blind about ourselves. I love the language of beam and mote; more modern translations of log and speck just don’t have the same resonance. Think of the massive oak beams of this Church and, then, think of the tiny dust motes dancing in the morning light and you begin to get a sense of the contrast and the problem. And so, what is to be done?

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“Rejoice with me”

Humility is the condition of our rejoicing, the condition of our redemption in Christ. Luke presents us with a very powerful message about the nature of humility as the counter to human pride and about the divine redemption of our humanity. The context is animosity and hostility. Tax Collectors and sinners, the despised and the outcast of the world, draw near to Jesus; Pharisees and Scribes, religious leaders, murmur in contempt because of the company which he keeps. They are scandalised. Doesn’t he know with whom he is associating? How can he be a true religious teacher? Jesus response is revelatory and transforming. He tells two parables; actually, three. We have in today’s reading two of the three, the parable of the lost sheep and the parable of the lost coin. The third parable is the tremendous parable of the prodigal son.

The fifteenth chapter of the Gospel of St. Luke comprises these three parables, each told in sequence. It is a most powerful illustration of the message about redemption and humility. Humility is the counter to our pride which pretends to our self-sufficiency, on the one hand, and our self-centredness, on the other hand. Either we have it all and need nothing outside ourselves or we presume to think that we deserve what we presently don’t have but desire. The gospel of humility is the counter to our pride.

The lost sheep, the lost coin. What do they teach us? Simply this. They teach us the humility of God which is given to shape our souls in the love of Christ. The lost sheep is precious; the lost coin is precious. The shepherd and the woman seek diligently – lovingly – for the one that is lost. Without them the community is incomplete; our humanity less than itself. God seeks the lost. In him we are found.

The third parable captures most fully the dynamic of grace at work in bringing us home to ourselves. We cannot read these two parables without being aware of the third – or at least we shouldn’t. It is the parable of the lost son or the prodigal son.

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