NewCreation

Homily for the Third Sunday in Advent Year B

The third Sunday of Advent. Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this the homily for the third Sunday of Advent, traditionally known as Gaudete Sunday, the Sunday in which the antiphon begins "Rejoice in the Lord always, for again I say rejoice," taken from Philippians, and in which we have the Isaiah reading where the response to the coming in is "I will greatly rejoice in the Lord." So also we get as the psalm for the day the Magnificat, because there's the sense that the virgin people of Israel and the Virgin Mary are the same: she in fact impersonates, fulfills, the virgin daughter of Zion who is about to give birth. And there is the sense of one coming in, and that that's what we are to be celebrating. Well, let's look at the Gospel, because curiously the Gospel almost repeats last week's Gospel, which was Mark's introduction to John the Baptist, and here we have John's introduction to John the Baptist. So let's look at it as a way, if you like, of getting into deeper focus on the one who's coming in, and we'll find some surprising things, I think, this way. So first of all, the place. You remember last time he was in the desert and he was baptizing, and here it gets more specific: he was at a place called Bethany on the other side of the Jordan. So that indicates that he put himself outside the promised land so as to create a new way into the promised land. The place Bethany — no one knows exactly what it was or what it is. The name in the Greek we have might be "the place of the boat" or "the place of embarkation." Origen in the third century thought it was in fact a Greek form of the Hebrew Beth-Abarah, "the place of the crossing," "the place of the pass." Both signify that what's being called to mind is the place where Joshua led the people over — the saviour led the people over. So it's a very significant place, and it's no wonder therefore that what John the Baptist is doing — he's clearly creating some sort of new movement — that it's got the authorities rattled. Before the Gospel tells us about the authorities rattled, it specifies very exactly what John is, and the terms are more meaningful than they might seem: "There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear witness to the light." In the prologue to John's Gospel we hear about the light — light was before all things — who is coming into the world. Now please remember: the light was the first day of creation. The one who comes in bearing light is the Creator. So to bear witness to the light is very much standing outside, if you like, the normal historical form of witnessing. What he's bearing witness to Someone who has been coming in from creation, the very Son of God, the promised Son of God, the firstborn of all creation, coming into the world. This is the light. So to bear witness to the light means something quite specific. Remember that in the Genesis account, light and darkness were separated, but here it's light that comes before darkness, and the darkness cannot hide it. So he's bearing witness to something that is from the beginning, that is from creation, so that all might believe through him. In other words, he's bearing witness to the creative light that's coming into the world, and everyone is going to be enlightened by it — or it should be possible for everyone to be enlightened by it. He himself was not the light, and he makes this quite clear, but he came to testify to the light. Now this is going to be tremendously important in the book of Revelation, which is also part of the Johannine tradition, whether or not it was written by the same person. John, we have the account of the two witnesses to the Lord who died and then whose witness was brought back to life, causing great concern. And it's long been suspected that one of those witnesses was John, because the notion of the witness being one of two witnesses pointing to the truth of something, as a way of showing the truth of what is said, was very strong. The other witness in the book of Revelation has always been a bit mysterious. I'm inclining now to think, because it's part of the Johannine literature, that it was Isaiah — that Isaiah was the other witness, also thought to have been killed in Jerusalem. And that's because John's Gospel says later of Isaiah, "He too saw the glory of the Lord" — in other words, saw what John the Baptist saw and bore witness to it. And here of course John quotes Isaiah as being what he thinks he's doing. So we have these two witnesses who are understood to have pointed to the coming in of the glory. And then we have this rather technical passage about the giving of witness. This giving of witness, understand, was a legal phenomenon. "This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, 'Who are you?'" Quick word: the Jews — let's avoid all possible ethnic problems here — the Ioudaioi were the religio-political ideological group formed by those who'd come back from Babylon, the Judahites, with a very strict Yahweh-and-Moses-only religion. They'd reorganized the feasts, they'd reorganized the running of the Temple, and their people — these were the sound people of the time — their people ran the show. The priests, the Levites, everything else worked according to their prescriptions. These were the guardians of orthodoxy, and as was perfectly clear to all people at the time, it was rather a narrow orthodoxy compared to the hopes and aspirations of the people, many of which are fulfilled in the Gospels as it had come before. In other words, it was a tight ideological group. It's worthwhile that we remember that — not the ethnic group that it became after about 130 AD. So the Jews sent priests and Levites. These are representatives of the temple function. They are clearly worried by John. He's baptizing. This seems to be some sort of priestly ordination rite — whatever it is, it's the sort of thing that temple authorities ought to know about, and they're worried about it, because they were perfectly well aware how unstable their hold on the Temple was, given what people's expectations were: that at the right time the great prophet would come, the one whom Moses had said would be able to offer the sacrifice of atonement because he couldn't offer it, the one prophesied by Daniel. This one would come in and would perform the sacrifice and eventually bring to an end the Temple. In other words, they were aware that there were stirrings and shakings whose code they knew very well. So the first people to come are these priests and Levites, and they ask him, "Who are you?" He confessed and did not deny it but confessed — and incidentally, this is the suggestion that he's giving a firm legal answer. He's been put under oath and he's giving a firm legal answer. "I am not the anointed one. I am not the anointed priestly royal figure." They knew that he was of priestly family. They knew therefore that he understood all the priestly symbolism. He said, "No, I am not the priestly royal figure, the one who is coming in." And they asked him, "What then? Are you Elijah?" Because Malachi, the last book of the Hebrew Scriptures, announced that Elijah would come before the one who came in. And so he said, "No." He said, "I am not." "Are you the prophet?" He answered, "No." The prophet — that's the one whom Moses said would come and would be able to perform atonement sometime in the future, which he was not. In other words, a definitely unexpected figure. Then they said to him, "Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us." In other words: listen, we're here on a specific business mission, we've got a legal thing to sort out here, we just want to make absolutely clear what's going on, we've got to report back — so don't, you know, see if you can give us a little bit more than the strictly legal answers which you're giving to us. "What do you say about yourself?" He said — and here again, as always, our translations are slightly misleading by giving us correct English rather than significant English. Because the Greek does not say "I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness." It says "I, voice of one crying out in the wilderness." Very deliberately, it does not include the formula "I am." The phrase "I am" will be of enormous significance in John's Gospel, indicating the one who is coming in, the presence… of the Lord. And John, as part of pointing to the light, sees himself as voice: "A voice crying out in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord." In other words, my voice is supposed to remove the scandals and obstacles which people like you in the Temple are creating to the coming in of the one – removing obstacles, removing stumbling blocks, scandals. And he quotes from Isaiah, which we saw last time. Then in our translation it said, "Now they had been sent from the Pharisees," though the more probable translation is there were also there some who had been sent from the Pharisees, because they had a slightly different intellectual interest. They were not intimately linked with the scribes and the Pharisees. They were Judean, or they were part of the same ideological group, but they had quite a different way of reading the events of the time. They were, if you like, much more interested in particular applications. So they ask John, "Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah nor Elijah nor the prophet?" They said, okay, we get that the priests and Levites can go back and give their answer to that, but what – so what is this baptism about? And John again gives them this very – let's say "careful" is the wrong word – very succinct answer: "I baptize with water." And that will have taken them back. They will have understood all the things to do with purity and ablutions; they would have understood the rite of priestly ordination; they would have understood the Exodus; they would have understood the Jordan. In other words, that all of that is building up to something to do with the promised land and the promised one. And then he says, "Among you stands one whom you do not know" – in other words, of the same type as you, not a priest, not a Levite, but of the same type as you, on your level. "Among you stands one whom you do not know" – the unknown God, the hidden God of Israel. "Truly, Lord, thou art a hidden God," as Isaiah said. "The one who is coming after me – I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal." Now, I didn't realize this until recently, but this is apparently a reference to the levirate law. If a married man died without having offspring, his wife was married to his brother so that he could produce offspring for his brother via her. And if he refused to do so, the one who would take up the charge would untie the thong of his sandal. This was one of the ways of showing the repudiation of one. So what is John saying here? It's the one who is coming after me – although theoretically I get to marry the person first – it's the one who is coming after me who is the real bridegroom. In other words, this is a hidden reference to the coming in of the bridegroom. This bridegroom figure – we will see that it's the bridegroom and the Lamb of God who… "takes away the sins of the world." All is being set up to announce the coming in of the one who will open the marriage supper of the Lamb, which is, if you like, the central image of the one coming in that we are going to rejoice in, starting with the hidden birth, the silence surrounding all things before the light comes into the world. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.