Zeph 3:14-20 Canticle 9
Phil.4:4-9 Luke 3:7-18
It is safe to say that the New Testament in part is a discussion about the meaning of the Messiah.
The writings of the New Testament stretch from the earliest writings of Paul in around the year 55 (already 25 years after Jesus) to portions which were written into the second century.
With so many writings and at different times in a time span of 70-90 years after Jesus, it would be natural to speak of the messiah as a composite of reflections representing a diversities of views and discussions.
And the New Testament is written in part, as a testimony that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah, this figure who was written about in the Hebrew Scriptures as well as the one who was referred to in various ways in the other apocrypha writings which did not attain canonical status to be a part of the Bibles of Christians and Jews.
In the Season of Advent, the very name Advent refers to "coming," but we should rather say, "comings" because Advent is used to refer to both the first and second comings of the Christ.
In our appointed Gospel, we have the interesting discussion presented about John the Baptist. John the Baptist is presented as having to deny that he was the Messiah. Why would such a denial be needed? It would indicate that there were people who believed that John the Baptist was such a formidable person that his followers and others were speculating as to whether he might be this great mythic figure of the Messiah about whom public discussion was happening.
The Gospels are presented in part by former disciples of John the Baptist who made the transition from the community of John the Baptist into the Jesus Movement as followers of Jesus of Nazareth.
Was Jesus the Messiah or was John the Baptist? A presentation of a confession from John the Baptist by one of his former followers would be useful to resolve this question.
In the words of John the Baptist, there is an interesting distinction between what he said about himself in his denial of being the Messiah, and his confession about Jesus of Nazareth.
John said, "I baptize with water, but the one more powerful than I, is coming,...and he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire."
In Christian baptism the elements are water, chrism or oil, and the fire symbolized by the Paschal Candle and baptismal candles. The Holy Oil anointing is symbolic of the anointing or baptism by the Holy Spirit and the fire symbolizes the heat of the refiners purifying fire.
The Messianic reality of Jesus of Nazareth is being known within myriads of people as a baptism of the Holy Spirit to know the inward abiding presence of the Risen Christ. This is the messianic difference between John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth as the members of the Jesus Movement confessed it in the Gospel. The arrival of the Risen Christ within the lives of many people were for them his second coming.
To say that Jesus as Messiah in a spiritual and hidden kingdom has not really been regarded by many Christians as being incarnational enough, not materialistic enough, not politically evident enough throughout the world. Christians have often fought to be the Empire of the world to prove that Jesus of Nazareth was a Davidic-like King who intervened in the world to dominate on behalf of Christians.
Christians who want Jesus to be in charge of an Empire have gotten wrong the main feature of Risen Christ incarnationalism. The meaning of Spirit-filled people indwelt by the Risen Christ becoming incarnate again in the deeds of love and kindness of such people, not in their having political power within society. It is a mistake for us to misinterpret what the messianic means in our lives today. It is interior life changing power; it is not being a political state.
The baptism with fire by Jesus as Messiah and Risen Christ is for us to continue in the age of the suffering servant Jesus who remains identified with us in the continuing ordeal of this world. We are living in the age of the always already baptism with fire, the perpetuity of life being an ordeal.
Having the Spirit of the Risen Christ during the ordeal of living is the crucible that is observed on gaudete Sunday, the Third Sunday of Advent. How do we experience a deep inner joy even within the features of the ordeals of life when life is not always happy events for us and for many people within this world? The Risen Christ is still within us and this world as the continuity of the ministry of suffering servant Messiah. And so we can have the joy of Holy Spirit even while being very unhappy with specific conditions of suffering in this world which is consistently experienced as both entropy of apparent conditions while experiencing new birth and new beginning within new surpassing new states of becoming.
Within the age of the baptism of fire by Jesus the Messiah, we have the visions of the apocalyptic as affirmation of the normalcy of justice and the reality of endings making room for new beginnings of better approximations of justice being lived out within the lives of those who claim to know the presence of the Risen Christ.
Many Christians seem to reduce the ordeal of our age to a war or a game with the hope that someday our team will win when all the bad guys are punished.
The ordeal is the actual life of the free conditions of probabilities, namely, living with what actually might happen now and in the future given what has already happened in the past.
Many Christians want the end of the life of probabilities where only good wins, thus making goodness a future automatic robotic happening, and robbing morality of any significance when only the freedom to be good would persist.
I would invite during this Advent season to embrace the age of the baptism with fire, the age of the ordeal of the always already conditions of free probability for all things to happen. We can rejoice within the conditions of the fiery ordeal because we have been baptized by Jesus the Messiah into a Holy Spirit Kingdom, who is our rejoicing in spite of the fiery ordeal.
May God give us all grace to survive and thrive within the fiery ordeal of what may happen, and may we know the messianic baptism of the Holy Spirit by the presence of the Risen Christ in our lives. With this baptism, we have been given the joy to rejoice. Amen.
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