Sermon for the 2nd Sunday in Advent – 5th December 2021: Malachi 3, 1-4; Luke 3, 1-6.

Fr Leonard Doolan – St Paul’s Athens

 

The homily this morning is shorter than usual because the Christmas Bazaar is being held today, and it opens at 11.00, so many members of the regular congregation are already there setting up their stalls.

Jesus says (Luke 7, 28) ‘Among those born of women no one is greater’. He is speaking of the one we know as John the Baptist, or as some prefer, John the Baptizer because baptizing people for repentance was perhaps his most note-worthy dynamic action.

What a remarkable character this John the Baptizer must have been. His appearance was described for us – wild and woolly we might say. His courage is described for us – he challenges Herod for his immorality, and pays the price for challenging him, for Herod has him beheaded. His attraction is described for us – for he gathers around him his own disciples, his own followers. We are told much more besides, but yet never enough. He is a tantalizing persona in the gospel narratives, and we are left wanting to know more about him.

In his context it would have been so easy for a desperate people to see John as the one whom God had sent as Messiah – and there is no doubt that he had many messianic characteristics – and yet when asked the question, ‘Art thou Messiah? He answers ‘No’. Indeed he is emphatic in this. He knows who the Messiah is – according to the biblical details we are given, the Messiah is the child mysteriously born to his ‘Aunt Mary’, the child born six months after John in Bethlehem of Judea.

At the time of John’s baptism of his younger cousin at the river Jordan, it is John who says ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ (John 1, 29). He refers of course to Jesus, upon whom he saw the glory of God revealed at the time of his baptism.

John is the one who points people to Jesus; John is the one who is the signpost to Jesus; John is the one who makes things right and ready for the coming of the Messiah; John is the one who rolls out the royal carpet, who makes the path straight, and prepares the way. It is because of this that John is referred to as the Prodromos in Greek, the ‘Fore-runner’.

The writer of this morning’s gospel is keen to set his narrative about Jesus, and thus about John also, in a very historical context: Time, place, people. John was called to proclaim his message in the reign of the Emperor Tiberius Caesar. He was Emperor between AD14-37, and it was his head that was on the coin when Jesus says, ‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s’ (Matt 22, 20). Pontius Pilate is Governor – he later presided over the trial of Jesus. Herod was the puppet king of the Jews, Annas and Caiaphas in the high priesthood at Jerusalem who later preside over the religious condemnation leading to the death of Jesus; time, place, people. In their time, their locations John begins to baptize and to proclaim the message foretold by Malachi – whose metaphor describes the refiner, or the alchemist almost – and as the wood-cutter, for John says the axe is already chopping down the trees that do not bear good fruit. This is an interesting detail, and often in Orthodox icons of the baptism of Christ, you will see an axe wedged into the trunk of a tree.

This holy season of Advent would be much impoverished without the rich details about John who fulfils the prophets. He sets the tone and prepares the way for us now and every Advent, to be ready to receive Christ anew, afresh, renewed, and re-animated in our hearts and lives – and in our church life and witness, as we share our story with confident humility, and humble confidence; to live, and to preach by our living, the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ – the gospel of peace and of love.