Advent 3 – John the Baptist
Luke 3. 7 – 18
Popularity and reputation are elusive things to seek, mingling as they do with matters of approval, offence, reward, integrity and communication. The current form of social media has not necessarily changed this game, but it has certainly made it louder. So it is of real interest that the “Most Popular TV Presenter(s)” for the last twenty years running at the National Television Awards have gained even more publicity, and hardly any notoriety that I can observe, by making the most effective of the attacks on the British Prime Minister this week. Who would have known that it would be Ant and Dec who would be in the vanguard of speaking truth to power? Sometimes you don’t need to be popular to do this. But you do need to be true.
I wonder, sometimes, whether we, the church, are just too polite for our own good. We are Christians – and western ones at that. Some of us are English Christians, if that’s all right with you, if you don’t mind me saying so. And of course we should earn our hearing. Of course we should respect other people. Of course we should listen, understand, clarify, put ourselves in their shoes. Of course we should not seek to offend, we should not antagonise. And in the church we should aim to please, we should act in a way which is worthy of our setting and our calling: we should craft acts of worship which satisfy the demands of taste and culture and depth and artistic merit. We should speak with good judgement and sound learning. It is what we do. All of this will enhance reputation, and even increase popularity, even if seeking such things is not why we do it.
But there are times when this degree of politeness, courtesy, good judgement and inoffensive behaviour might itself be an offence to the gospel. The passages which stand out in the Bible are those where the old order is not gently soothed and smoothed, but overturned, where injustice is not tolerated but exposed to the light. Take John the Baptist, who is remembered on this Third Sunday of Advent as a forerunner of Christ, the one who prepared the way. With the great and good standing before him he starts his message by calling them a bunch of snakes. He slams the immorality of his King, attacks the corruption of the religious establishment and gives the occupying Roman forces a hard time too. He is not one to consider his own popularity or manage his good standing before he says what needs to be said. His reputation is made up of more than his ratings.
There is a time to speak, and a time to stay silent. The prophets, John, Jesus, Paul, all speak out, and we will fail them if we do not, on occasion. So thank God for those who make prophetic statements. When my Archbishop at the time took out a pair of scissors on national TV and cut up his dog collar to highlight the situation in Zimbabwe he inspired many to make their objections plain and their protest real. (His fellow clergy decided, though, that if we did the same it would simply look like we’d forgotten our collar, but it didn’t stop us making our truth speaking as effective as we could). Thank God last month for Richard Ratcliffe’s hunger strike, and the many who made their desperation at Nazanin’s plight known, not least to Liz Truss, future Prime Minister as she wants to be. Thank God, and then ask yourself whether there are some things which require a protest, require a hard word, require us to stand.
John the Baptist inherits a prophetic ministry from the many who went before him who looked carefully at the way power worked and the way people lives, and shone a light on the whole thing. There are many layers here though, and they start with our own self examination. It would be all too easy to throw stones at the powerful and their parties without looking at what needs to change in our own behaviour too. John’s predecessors were not afraid to stand before Kings and Priests, nor were they afraid to speak to the crowds and often be a lone voice about the way injustice and unrighteousness played out in what individuals bought and said and did or failed to do. Kings were required to account for their ill treatment of the poor or the stranger. And the people were asked why they themselves soled the poor for a pair of shoes and persecuted the stranger next door. Truth speaks to all, as well as to the temporally powerful.
So the important questions asked of John in today’s Gospel are by the ordinary as well as the powerful. “What should we do?” Those who had much were invited to consider that they might have too much, especially with their neighbours had too little. Those who were tempted into corruption and accepted sharp practice were invited to act by the rules. Those who held roles which gave them power over others were invited to do it with humanity, not giving in to the will to dominate. Later in the Gospels John is indeed before a king, and again, at the risk of his own life, he will not waver from making the truth known. At every point John challenges his hearers to recognise their part in injustice, and to repent, to turn away from it.
In following John we recognise the call to repent ourselves, and recognise the challenge to challenge others to do the same. In repenting of practices which will damage the planet, we call on our communities, nation and world to change. In seeking to share our riches with those who have little we challenge tax regimes which proportionately benefit the rich at the expense of the poor. In repenting of the ways in which our language and actions exclude and divide we challenge all racist and phobic practices and patterns, not least in of churches. And in following John we open the way for Christ to take our repentance and pronounce forgiveness and the presence of the Kingdom of God by the power of the Holy Spirit.
The Christ for whose coming we are preparing came to bring peace, and a sword. His coming should not be the occasion of sentimental cooing over a lovely baby. Whatever the carol says, the baby cried. The baby cries today over Afghanistan and the Yemen and gross consumption which will kills us with its excess. Christ cries over every injustice and abuse of power, just like the prophets and John said. To prepare for the coming of Christ is to rejoice that a new world will begin, and then to do all that we can to make it happen. And, just sometimes, that might mean following the example of the most popular TV presenters in the land and speaking truth to power. Listen to John speaking of Jesus: “He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire”. That’s not just to warm your hands. It’s to set the world ablaze.