by CCW | 12 December 2021 08:00
Strange as it may seem our Advent text from the psalms is even more appropriate for the Third Sunday in Advent. The readings for this Sunday highlight two interrelated themes which challenge us in very direct and important ways. First, we are being called to account about our faithfulness, especially the faithfulness of the ministry. Have we been “ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God”? Secondly, we recall the ministry of John the Baptist as attested to by Jesus in a series of repeated questions which underscore his significance and place in the economy of salvation. The questions of Jesus about John the Baptist highlight the darkness of our world and the idea that Advent brings light to our darkness, not the least of which is the uncovering of the things which in human pride and perversity we would like to keep hidden, if not from one another, then from God. Yet the light of Advent is greater than the darkness of the world; a point which finds its fullest expression in the great Christmas Gospel. “The light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehended (or overcame) it not.”
The Gospel is very much about the witness of Christ to the witness of John. John points us to Jesus while Jesus points us to John. Can anything better be said and suggested than this interplay of the twin themes of repentance and rejoicing?
In our parish teaching programme this Advent, we are focusing on the Advent saints of Andrew and Thomas whose feast days formally complement and, to some extent, frame the Advent season. Without taking away from their symbolic and theological significance, the greater saints of Advent, to whom they would readily defer, are John the Baptist and the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Advent mantra, par excellence, is “repent ye for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” To be sure, but that reaches its highest expression in the Angel Gabriel’s salutation to Mary, “hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee”, remembered in the Advent Ember Days this week. And while Mary is “troubled at this saying, cast[ing] in her mind what manner of salutation this should be”, it signals the note of profound joy heard and felt in the ancient introit for this day which, in turn, is the Epistle for the Fourth Sunday in Advent. “Rejoice in the Lord alway, and again, I say, rejoice.” Hence this Sunday is sometimes known as “Gaudete Sunday,” meaning rejoice.
John the Baptist’s gospel of repentance seeks what belongs to Mary’s joy and ours which is why the Gospel for today highlights the deeper meaning of John’s preaching. It has to do with the reformation of our desires. Thus Jesus asks the multitudes three times, “what went ye out for to see?” We are in the wilderness, in the darkness but as those who seek the light of God. What are we looking for? is one of the great themes of Advent. It speaks to our hearts and minds and to the idea of a turning back to truth, metanoia, literally a kind of thinking after or upon the things of God coming to us. Here we see the questioning of John the Baptist about his own ministry and life.
John in prison sends two of his disciples to Jesus. His being in prison is another kind of wilderness and a greater darkness because it has to do with sin and presumption that results in the miscarriage of justice. John dared to challenge Herod about divorcing his wife and then marrying his brother’s wife, Herodias, incurring her wrath which leads to his being beheaded in the notorious story of her daughter dancing before Herod who grants her whatever she wishes. Prompted by her mother, she asks for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. It becomes the subject of a number of famous paintings where she is named as Salome; for instance, Caravaggio’s painting of “Salome with the head of John the Baptist”(1607), hauntingly gruesome with its chiaroscuro effects, and with just a hint of Salome’s sense of repugnance or revulsion which, perhaps, just perhaps, might mark the beginnings of repentance. But about that we cannot know. Yet we are meant to question ourselves about what we seek and about the meaning of the one who comes.
John the Baptist’s question is equally haunting. “Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?” This challenges the all too shallow complacencies and assertions of assurance with which we surround ourselves about ourselves. In fact, it is an honest assessment of the darkness of human knowing but in the tenor of an honest questioning, a questioning which truly seeks to know what is truly to be known. It leads to the great Advent statement which is beautifully incorporated into the Advent Bidding Prayer at the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols devised in 1918 at King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, just after the catastrophic darkness and devastations of the First World War. “Go and show John again those things which ye do hear and see,” Jesus says to John’s disciples. The statement is revelatory of what God seeks for our humanity, namely, our wholeness and salvation as found in him, expressed in wonderfully concrete images: “the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up,” and, perhaps, most profoundly, “the poor have the Gospel preached to them. And blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me.”
Only then does Jesus challenge us more directly about what we seek. The point is that we can only seek what God seeks for us. The ministry of John the Baptist in preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins is the vox clamantis in deserto, the voice crying in the wilderness, who prepares the way of the Lord within our hearts. Our repentance is our seeking God’s truth in our hearts and lives and that is equally the joy of our humanity as realised in Mary and in us. “The Lord is with thee.” And is that not one of the repeated salutations in our liturgy: “the Lord be with you”, with the response, “and with thy spirit”? Such is our life in the body of Christ. It is about penitential adoration; repentance and rejoicing go hand in hand. Once again, God’s Word is “a lantern unto our feet, and a light unto our path”. Such is the light of Christ, “who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts”. Then, and only then, “shall every one have praise of God.” Repent and Rejoice.
Fr. David Curry
Advent III, 2021
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