In our Gospel reading today we hear about John the Baptist and we will hear more about him next week when we will be told more specifically the content of his preaching. What we are dealing with today is his appearance on the scene which is, as we are told, the fulfilment of the prophecy of Isaiah as quoted in the text. St Luke is very careful to make sure we know precisely when all this took place and so he tells us who was the Roman Governor of Judea and who the local kings were as well as the priests in charge of the Temple. He wants there to be no doubt about what happened, where and precisely when. It is important to understand that God works within history. He acts in particular times and places and with certain people.
God uses our culture and our particular understandings as well as our customs and traditions as he unfolds his great act of salvation in the world. So ours is no other-worldly religion, it is not something that concerns itself with airy-fairy and insubstantial things. No, our religion is absolutely concrete and very particular. It is about specific times and specific places and specific people. Ours is a religion that is all about the here and now, it is concerned with the actual world as we experience it. It is about us and about our specific realities and for this we should be very grateful indeed.
You will realise that the Advent season is not therefore something about the past or even about the future; Jesus being born 2,000 years ago in the past and who will come at some undefined point in the future. No, Advent is about the here and now. As we are so frequently told: Today is the Day of Salvation. St Luke is also very insistent that John does not begin his ministry of his own accord but as the result of a direct revelation from God. Moreover he tells us that this ministry of John the Baptist is the fulfilment of an important prediction by the Prophet Isaiah.
If you look at this prophecy of Isaiah you will easily see that it is reminiscent of the journey of the Chosen People through the Desert which we call the Exodus. Once the People of Israel had been rescued by God from slavery in Egypt they were led by him through the Desert of Sinai. On this journey lasting forty years they learned a lot about themselves and about God. They were given the Ten Commandments and were eventually led after numerous tests of their faith into the Promised Land.
One of the purposes of using this quotation by Isaiah is to stress that the People of Israel are now about to undergo a completely new Exodus albeit a much shorter one. John the Baptist is its initiator but it is Jesus of Nazareth who will after three years of public ministry lead the whole world into a completely new path one leading to ultimate reconciliation with God. John the Baptist begins his ministry by preaching repentance. He invites the people to confess their sins and to seek forgiveness and to symbolise this by washing themselves in the River Jordan in a primitive rite of Baptism. This is surely the correct way for him to begin a ministry that pointed to the revelation that the Messiah, the Saviour of the World, was in their midst and was about to begin his great work of salvation. John the Baptist wants the people to bare their souls and in an act of humility to seek forgiveness from God.
He understood that only by such an act of purification would the People of Israel be ready to welcome Christ into their world and to embrace the salvation he would bring. The prophecy of Isaiah tells us that there will be a voice crying out in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord.’ We immediately identify this voice as that of John the Baptist who comes out of the wilderness at a time no one expects proclaiming his message that the Messiah is arriving imminently. Clearly this is what St Luke intends us to infer. John the Baptist is someone exceptional; he comes like the prophets of old, having lived a life of penance in the desert; and he comes with a fiery message of salvation for the people. And like those old prophets his words are accepted by the mass of the ordinary people but completely ignored by the leaders and priests.
They think that he is simply someone come to disturb their cosy division of power and wealth and so they instinctively reject him. But as so frequently in the scriptures there is no one simple interpretation of the words under examination. Yes this one who comes to prepare the way of the Lord is a clear reference to John the Baptist but we must realise that it also refers to us who live in the present day. For it is our job also to prepare the way of the Lord. It is just as necessary for us to help our brothers and sisters to realise that the Lord is in our midst and that it is essential that they heed his words. It is our task to make the ways of our Master smooth so that all mankind shall see the salvation of our God. We are the John the Baptists of this present world; we are the modern day prophets proclaiming a message of salvation.
We are the ones whose task it is to draw everyone?s attention to the fact that Jesus is with us and that the salvation he brings needs to be embraced and accepted. It is our task to invite our neighbours to repentance. This is not easy. No one likes to be reminded that they are sinners and need to seek forgiveness. But if we take our cue from John the Baptist it might help us. In his day it was apparent to the people that John had already made his own this message of repentance. He had lived a life of penance in the desert; it was clear to everyone that he had already repented of his own sins.
His message was therefore completely believable backed up by the fact of him having obviously lived it out in his own life. Like him we too need to have repented and done penance for our sins because it is only through seeing this that those around us will realise that this is something they have to do as well. Of course, this won?t always win us friends among those who live around us. This message will be an uncomfortable one for many. The rich and the powerful and those in the media will surely despise us for it. But it is our mission and it is certain that some will listen and be converted. It is good therefore in this holy season of Advent to be reminded of our sacred duty and perhaps today we can make a resolution to carry out this blessed and vital mission.