Sermon for the Third Sunday in Advent
Art thou he that should come or do we look for another?
John the Baptist and Mary the Blessed Virgin are essential figures in the spiritual landscape of Advent. They meet together, as it were, on the Third Sunday in Advent and illumine the nature of what it means to be “the ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.” They do so through the conjunction of repentance and rejoicing.
What is the ministry of John the Baptist? It is the ministry of “preaching a gospel of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,” as Mark and Luke tell us and to which Matthew also alludes. What does that mean? It means a form of self-awareness, an awareness of our faults and failings which is predicated upon the desire for wholeness or righteousness in us; in short, for truth. It complements Mary’s fiat mihi which is about being defined by the Word of God’s truth coming to her and through her to us. Repentance leads to joy, to the note of rejoicing signaled on this Sunday which is also known as “Gaudete” Sunday from the Introit taken from Philippians (and which also is the Epistle for next Sunday) and symbolised with the rose candle on the Advent wreath. “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, Rejoice.” And why? Because “the Lord is at hand.”
But why is John in prison? Matthew only tells us several chapters later. He dared to speak truth to power. There is a confusion of Herods in the New Testament, all part of the Herodian dynasty, all related to Herod the Great of the Christmas story. Herodias was first the wife of Philip, also a Herod, but divorced him to marry his more powerful brother, Herod Antipas, who in turn divorced his wife to marry her. Herodias’ name is itself a feminine form of Herod. She was a Jewish princess with great ambitions but marrying Herod Antipas, whom Matthew calls, somewhat confusingly, Herod the Tetrarch, caused an outrage since it was a violation of Jewish law for a man to marry his brother’s divorced wife. As Matthew tells us, it was John the Baptist who said to him “It is not lawful for you to have her,” and so he was put in prison.
This leads to the famous story of the beheading of John the Baptist through the connivance of Herodias and her daughter Salome. Salome dances so pleasingly before Herod Antipas that he promised to give her whatever she wanted. Herodias prompts her to say, “the head of John the Baptist on a platter.” The story has captured the imagination of many artists such as Caravaggio, Titian, and Artemisia Gentileschi, to name but a few. The phrase “one’s head on a platter” has become an idiomatic and hyperbolic expression for a very harsh punishment. Indeed. Obviously there is nothing new about our contemporary questions about “constitutional legitimacy” (quoting Habermas) or about ethical corruption in what Maclean’s calls our disordered world.
