We get a full dose of John the Baptist during the season of Advent, whether we want him or not.
Like the season of Lent is for Easter, Advent is supposed to be a season of preparation for Christmas. But we know in our culture Christmas begins the day after Thanksgiving or before. Advent is seen as an inconvenient speed bump as we are racing into Christmas parties and celebrations.
John the Baptist is the ultimate Advent police; he seems to be warning us not to begin our celebrations too soon. He is the ultimate live off the land type of person; no thrills life style and totally self reliant. He doesn't have to do any fundraising and so he can say anything he wants. Imagine your typical parish priest during the season of Every Member Canvass saying, "You brood of vipers, you think you can come to church to avoid hell." Oh, by the way the pledge card need to be turned in next Sunday.
The church have used John the Baptist to reinforce the themes of the season of Advent. It is a season to recommend simplifying our lives as a way to reduce the clutter and distractions in our lives that keep us from appreciating the birth of Christ in our lives.
John the Baptist had other significance for the early Christians.
In John's own time, he and Jesus were reforming rabbis in Judaism. They both were associated with apocalyptic and end of time movements because the Jews were so oppressed by Roman occupation, there was desperate hope for catastrophic end of the world God-intervention.
The people who followed John and Jesus were perhaps a bit more desperate than the Jewish religious leaders. They were wanting a great David messiah but the Pharisees and Sadducees were more realistic about the Roman control. So, the Jewish leaders did not want firebrand prophets stirring up too much trouble which would bring the Roman soldiers to put down anything that looked like a political insurrection.
John the Baptist was probably an older mentor for Jesus, as Jesus submitted to baptism by John the Baptist into his community.
John the Baptist figured prominently in the Gospels, the literature that revealed the values of the early church. The early church valued and venerated John the Baptist. John the Baptist has a marvelous birth story to parallel the miraculous birth story of Jesus. Jesus even hinted that John seemed to be like a reincarnation of the life of the prophet Elijah. John the Baptist had a significant number of followers, who continued to remain together as a community long after John had died. However, because of the close relationship between John and Jesus, the followers of John the Baptist were perhaps the ones most likely to graduate from John to become followers of Jesus. The writings of Gospels are proof that Jesus and his disciples were trying to convert the members of the community of John the Baptist to the Jesus Movement. One could even say that the community of John the Baptist, was the proto-church or the immediate predecessor of the Jesus Movement which became the church.
One of the rather harsh realities of the Gospel are the very strong words which John the Baptist and Jesus had for the religious leaders of their time.
As we remember that the Gospels were written when the Jesus Movement had become separated from the synagogue sim the separation involved breakdown of community relationships. Strong words of disagreement were exchanged as the synagogue excommunicated the followers of Jesus and as the members of the Jesus Movement realized that they could not be be regarded as fully observant Jews because of their Gentile backgrounds.
Some of the harshness of the words of both John and Jesus found in the Gospel are more representative of the later break down between the synagogue and the Jesus Movement rather than the ways things actually were during the time of John or Jesus.
Before the Gospels were written, St. Paul wrote the theology of the separation that took place between Judaism and the Jesus Movement. Paul wrote that the tree of Judaism had been cut down as it were and Gentile Christianity was grafted into the stump of Judaism.
John the Baptist was presented as the prophet who prepared the way for the separation of Jesus Movement from the synagogue. If John was presented as calling the Jewish religious leaders a brood of vipers, which essentially was saying that they were children of serpent of the Garden of Eden, and if Jesus was presented as one who called the religious leaders children of the father of lies, the Gospels are proof of the severe break down between the synagogue and the Jesus Movement.
It is unfortunate that during periods of church history, Christian leaders and people with power have often used the words of the Gospels as justification to persecute the Jewish religious minority who lived in their societies.
We can let the harsh separation between the synagogue and the Jesus Movement remain as part of what the Gospels represent; but we should accept the separation of Judaism and Christianity into two different missions. The words of the Gospels must not be used to justify any religious discrimination, especially in our time where love and justice has taught us to honor the faith of all.
John the Baptist visits us in our Gospel reading each Advent season and we should take insights from his witness. First, reform happens because sometimes reform is needed. Reform involves change and change is not always smooth or easy or even peaceably friendly. Change sometimes upset us both personally and as community. We don't always like to let go of comfortable habits even when it becomes obvious that we need to find new insights for new action and new ways to constitute ourselves as a more winsome community to more people.
John the Baptist was presented as one who prepared the world for an encounter with Jesus. Advent is the season of preparation to celebrate the birth of Jesus. And in this Advent, we once again seek to prepare ourselves for the celebration of the birth of Jesus. And so we look forward to something new at Christmas in the rejoicing refreshment of realizing once again that Christ is born in us. And we can be thankful for the John the Baptist aspect of personality during the season of Advent as a necessary precursor to the experience of something new and fresh in our personal lives and in our community. May the witness of John the Baptist today, be a witness of expectation for something new and fresh today. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment