Political and religious forms of corrupt power? Who you gonna call? A wild man!
St Luke the Evangelist presents to us the figure of St John the Baptist who steps out of the wilderness and on to the stage of history. Unlike the scented courtiers and power-brokers that hover and plot around the corridors of power in Jerusalem, John is a wild Man! A man that lives out in the wilderness among scorpions, snakes and lions and who dresses in camel hair, eats honey and locusts and whose voice sounds like thunder as it booms across the river Jordan against the corruption and sin operating in the holy land!
But he is no Social Justice Warrior or keyboard fighter, nor a herald warning of climate change, rather he is a Prophet and one who is ready to lay down his life, unlike SJWs. He brings both the good news and the bad news. There is the goodnews that the messiah is coming and there is the bad news that the messiah is coming. For some this news is a dream come true, for others it is a nightmare to behold. Either way we all better get ready to change our ways because the axe is laid against the root of the tree that bears no fruit.
The figure of the Baptist is set against a background of both the Empire of Rome and the City of the Jews, Jerusalem. He comes into view after St Luke lists those corrupt political and religious leaders that held sway over the Jews and the city of Jerusalem and the effect of this wild man of God on both the hearer and reader of this Gospel would have been shock and awe. But, we may ask this question: why does John choose not to appear in the place of both political power and religious zeal that is the city of Jerusalem, but instead chooses to appear at an altogether desolate, unpopulated place, out near the wilderness, on the banks of the river Jordan?
To answer this question one has to also set the context of this text and the context is not just an empire and a city, it is also a history. A history of both events and prophecies, a history of salvation, that providentially focuses down on to John the Baptist’s appearance, where he starts his preaching and what he preaches; all three combine to shock both the powerful in Jerusalem and the people on the banks of the Jordan.
The prophecies of Daniel about the coming of the Son of Man and especially the angel Gabriel’s declaration shimmer around the appearance of the Baptist. Gabriel declared that the people of Israel, because they were still not fully obedient to the Lord, would be in a spiritual exile for 490 years [Daniel 9], despite physically coming back from exile in Babylon in 539BC! Now the 490 years are up, now there is an empire of iron [Daniel 7] and now a prophet appears when there has not been one for nearly 500 years! Here the Baptist is the Advent of hope, a hope based on the promises that make up the prophecies in the Old Testament, which now John the Baptism signals are coming into focus to be fulfilled.
Indeed, John the Baptist’s very appearance is an act of preaching in and of itself before he even speaks. For nearly 500 years there were no prophets, now one comes out of the wilderness and stands on the banks of the river Jordan! His standing there, like Elijah of old, awakens the hope that the words of the Angel Gabriel that the Jews would be in spiritual exile for 490 years is now over! The prophecy of Daniel of the final empire before the coming of the Kingdom of God being one of Iron and clay is remembered in the face of the Romans. The Baptist is preaching without words when he stands on the banks of the River Jordan. Indeed, his very location is itself an act of preaching. Location, location, location! How so?
The Baptist is standing in the exact place where Joshua passed over the river Jordan, led by the ark of the covenant and leading the 12 tribes of Israel having spent 40 years in the wilderness. It was the place that signalled the end of the Exodus and the beginning of their possessing the Land of Promise, the Promised Land. So, the place upon which John the Baptist stands reverberates with meaning for the Jews of his time. The arrival of John the Baptist spells the end of the Spiritual Exile of the Jews and the beginning of a new Exodus and a new possession of the Land. John’s action is a prophetic action and it is pointing out that a New Exodus is about to begin!
Not surprisingly, therefore, we find that the first words the Baptist utters at this location are from the Prophecies of Isaiah, a prophet who is all about prophesying the coming of a new Exodus. John is, therefore, signaling that he is the prophet of Hope, the Advent prophet of a new Exodus and it is a biochemical shock to all who hears him let alone sees him when he says:
“A voice cries in the wilderness; prepare a way for the Lord, make his paths straight.
Every valley will be filled in, every mountain and hill be laid low, winding ways will be straightened and rough roads made smooth.”
It is a voice that needs to be heard but will not be heard in cities, particularly cities like Jerusalem where there is a loud din of noise among the populace: the noise of selling and buying in the markets; the noise of robberies, assaults and murders in the alleyways; the noise of demands for food, healing, and justice in squares, forecourts and the temple. There is also the din of strident and conflicting voices: tyrannical orders, imperial commands and magistral judgments, plus religious controversies, debates, arguments and struggles between Priest, Sadducee, Pharisee, Herodian and Zealot that often bring harsh responses from the Romans. So much noise for a holy Temple and for David’s ancient city.
To hear the Lord you need to get out of the city, out of the towns and go into the wilderness as John had done. But John is also signalling that he is signalling a critique of both city and temple, of both the prieshood and their sacrifices and that is why he comes in from the wilderness and stands on the banks of the Jordan. It is in the wilderness that the Word came to John to go and be a voice that Isaiah prephesied would be sent before the Messiah, a single voice crying in the wilderness make straight the way of the Lord. A voice that booms over the poor, the rich, the populace and the powerful elites.
There were others too who like John had heard the call to go out of their comfort zones into a desert form of training so as to prepare for the Coming of the Lord. Indeed, these others formed communities which set up a desert training for both silence and for studying the prophecies found in Isaiah and Daniel and these communities where called the Essenes. They were Jewish monastic type of communities who lived for Apocalyptic times to come having rejected the corrupt Priesthood and the Temple of Jerusalem. The Day of the Lord was what they prayed for, studied and hope for. It was for them a day of deliverance from a city, Jerusalem, run by a corrupt Priesthood and the oppressive Imperial magistrate of Rome. It is a day that Isaiah also had spoken about but in the following terms:
That day, man will look to his creator and his eyes will turn to the Holy One of Israel. He will no longer look after the altars, his own handiwork, nor gaze at what his hands have made: the sacred poles and the solar pillars [Isaiah 17:8].
The Prophet of Advent is John the Baptist and thanks to the liturgy of the Church he also comes to our times. Times when we have also corruption and tyranny, both nationally and globally. Times when the people are like sheep without a shepherd because both political and religious leaders are acting like wolves. We too need to get out of the din but in our case the din comes out of our corporate-world- controlled-Mass-media. From this din of false news we need to enter into the silence of the desert for the good news. We too need a new Exodus, an external and interior journey into the wilderness of Advent where we can be still, silent and alone with the Lord, so we can hear ourselves think and hear the Lord speaking to us, prompting us, enlightening us to inspire us.
John the Baptist is the Prophet of Advent who stirs us up and gives us that same spirit to thunder against the powerful who could not in the end contain him, tame him nor silence him since he is still with us today, twenty centuries after his martyrdom. Though the powerful today act like gods in shearing the sheep, they are really puppets of the dark devils that haunt and enslave the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve. They are here today but they will be gone tomorrow for it is the Wild Man who will have the last word as he brings God’s untamed Word: ‘prepare you the way for the Lord, the Lord who is my Son!’
So Advent is a time of watching, staying awake, hoping against false hopes and fighting for the truth that sets us free but it does call us also to a moral renewal. The Baptist is the Advent Prophet who calls us to repent of our sins and to use the wonderful sacrament of mercy that is the Sacrament of Confession. Advent is the time, here and now, to be about the business of God: a time of cleansing our hearts and ordering our lives so that we may receive that vision from the Lord that shows how we are to rebuild our families, our homes, our society and our culture. Rebuild we must for it is now all crumbling before the Great Reset of a religious, political and economic tyranny that seeks to take away the rights to life, health, home, education, property, work, wage and liberty that belong to the dignity of being human.
Advent today is a season for an Exodus from tyrannical authority and a life style of narcicistic self-indulgence by making straight the crooked ways of vices, lies and self-deceptions; by filling in those empty holes in our lives that spell fear, depression and despair; by laying low the mountains of pride, abusive forms of power, propaganda of fear and protocols of control by our dissent; by leaving the noise of the metropolis and going into the silence of the desert.
Like the monasteries in the Baptist’s time and the monasteries that followed Christ’s time, we can establish deserts and hills of silence, where we can set up and live out in fellowship with one another a daily rhythm of life, a daily rhythm-divine. The rhythm is built on two points of the day:
the morning offering when we awake, reflect on the day to come and then offer it up to the Lord;
and the Examen of night prayer when we reflect on the day that has past and discern how Our Lord Jesus Christ has walked with us during the day for which we give thanks for his blessings, ask for healing for hurts and injustices we suffered and ask for mercy for sins of commission and omission.
In such a rhythm we will discover how to step away from our now decadent and dying society and the divided and imploding culture so as to forge a way of life based on the story of salvation that Advent proclaims is being fulfilled and that we are called, by the Baptist, to enter into by living it out in terms spelt out by the words of the Psalmist:
‘day unto day takes up the story and night unto night makes known the message’ [Psalm 18(19)].
As we enter the 2nd week of Advent, we remind ourselves that this week is about the Second Coming of Christ and how the Baptist is given to us this Sunday to challenge us with the questions: how ready are we to meet the Lord? Are we people of hope or fear?
One of the signs of the End time does include what we actually find today: men, women and children living in and dying of fear as they await what menaces the world! The Baptist calls us out of our locked down prison cells and out of our locked down mind-sets of fear into the freedom and hope of the desert where we can straighten ourselves out and unbend the crooked ways of our lives by rekindling our love for God and our love for our neighbour. Note that evil and it’s servants always wish to stamp out the love of God and the love of neighbour in human souls through the tools, images and phantasms of fear. Let us live the season of Joy that is Advent and not buckle to those who want to declare war on the Joy of this season!
In the Divine Office of Thursday week one of Advent, on 2nd December St Ephraem gives us a very good description of the spirituality of Advent for our meditation when he writes:
Keep watch; when the body is asleep nature takes control of us, and what is done is not done by our will but by force, by the impulse of nature. When deep listlessness takes possession of the soul, for example, faint-heartedness or melancholy, the enemy overpowers it and makes it do what it does not will. The force of nature, the enemy of the soul, is in control.
When the Lord commanded us to be vigilant, he meant vigilance in both parts of man: in the body, against the tendency to sleep; in the soul, against lethargy and timidity. As Scripture says: Wake up, you just, and I have risen, and am still with you; and again, Do not lose heart. Therefore, having this ministry, we do not lose heart [From a Commentary on the Diatessaron by St Ephraem, deacon].
