The Second Sunday of Advent
John the Baptist is the central figure of the Advent season. He proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, we are told in today's gospel. Biblical scholars now believe that he was in fact a member of a radical religious sect called the Essenes who operated in the Judean desert and on the shores of the Dead Sea. Loyalty to the old religious institutions of Israel was waning; various radical groups emerged from the ashes of those institutions to live the monastic life in the caves of the Judean hills, or else to live their lives as wandering preachers. John the baptism seems to have been a wandering preacher, operating mainly in the Judean desert, a barren land devoid of all distractions. He travelled to the Jordan river for a public ritual of Baptism, a ritual to which Jesus himself would submit before he began his public ministry. He drank no wine or strong drink and existed only on locusts and wild honey. In other words, he was shorn entirely of the ordinary props provided by normal society; he was left with nothing but his own soul. But what are we today to make of the Baptist's imagery and message? What does repentance mean in our context today? More to the point, how does the message of John the Baptism help us in our preparation for Christmas time?
The people of Israel spent a couple of generations in exile, captives of the Babylonians, from about 600 B.C. to 540 B.C.E. The second major part of the book of Isaiah, chapters 40-55, concerns the end of this Exile and the return of the captives to their homeland. Today's first reading begins that section.
Isaiah says that God has told him to tell the Jewish exiles that their exile is over, their sins are atoned for. The next few sentences describe how the exiles are to return home. The first image is of a grand religious procession from Babylon to Jerusalem. It's not just people who are making the procession, but God as well. (Other ancient people carried idols of their gods on floats in solemn processions; Isaiah, no idolator, imagines God leading the people.) To pave the way, valleys and mountains are to be leveled, and a highway created in the wilderness. If this procession is to reach its destination, all obstacles must be removed.
The goal of the exiles is the region known as Judah, and within Judah the city Jerusalem, and within Jerusalem the hill Zion, where their Temple had stood. The last paragraph depicts a lonely sentry who never went to Babylon but waited in Jerusalem, always looking out for the return of the exiles. He finally sees the approach of the procession described above, and he can't contain his joy. He shouts it from the highest hill, "Here comes your God with power!" Then there follows an image in startling contrast, the tender picture of a shepherd cradling lambs. The shepherd is leading the flock to security.
This is where the prophets of the Old Testament and John the Baptist got their imagery. But, as the Christian message spread beyond the hills and valleys of Palestine and Judea, those same hills and valleys were lifted out of the local terrain to become features of the universal Christian imagination. Just as the tribes of old were enriched by the visit of their king, the Christian community, and each one of us in person, is led back each year to the sanctuary that is the Bethlehem crib. But we too, like the Judean tribes, must be willing to make the necessary preparations. The mountains and the valleys are no longer external, geographical features. Rather, they represent attitudes within us, and sinful outposts, that are hostile to the message of the saviour. They represent our fears and our obsessions, our grudges and our addictions, our prejudices and our unforgiven hurts. They represent the internal obstacles that impede the path of the saviour on his journey to our hearts.
We have surrounded the feast now with such mountains of material dross that we will have difficulty in recovering the original message. This is but another mountain that Christians must lay low. The Baptist's clearest message was contained in the way he lived: God is found in simplicity. Happiness depends on our learning to trust him alone. He, or it, will never be purchased.