Third Sunday of Advent 1996

What gives me joy?

The figure of John the Baptist who is central for the reading of the gospel today, and for last week as well, has been in a very real sense tailored by the Gospel writers to be, as the great Carl Barthes put it, the "big finger pointing to Jesus." And that is, at least as we get the picture of John from the Gospel, and especially from this passage from the Gospel of John, exactly the way he is presented, but I think we’ve lost a great deal in forgetting the larger historical context out of which John comes. And so I’d like to talk about that with a view to setting his Advent role a little more clearly.

The Jews had not had a Prophet, one of those people who felt they were moved by God to speak as God would speak, to see as god would see, for five-hundred years. After the Babylonian exile and after the return from Babylon, prophecy, classical prophecy, simply stopped. There were no more... And yet for several hundred years the Prophets had been the great carriers of the tradition of Judaism, the bearers of the faith, the continual rejuvenators, refreshers, re-creators, of the Jew’s religious memory. And so when John showed up he made an enormous impression on people. How did they know he was a real Prophet?--Well, that’s a big question. It is not a self-evident question; he didn’t go around with a sign saying, "I’m a real Prophet..." But what seems to have marked him out and convinced people that he was a genuinely prophetic voice was that what he had to say was absolutely in line with the classic prophetic tradition which is expressed in this line from Isaiah: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me," that is, "God’s activating power has come into my life." To do what?--To bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken hearted: "People came at liberty to the captives, released the prisoners, proclaimed the year of the Lord Saviour..." In other words, what we somewhat meagrely refer to as social justice was the heart of the religious vision of all these men and women who were prophetic figures. That is, they believed that what God of the Jews was about was this extraordinary thing which was to favour the oppressed... With a view to do what?--With a view to recreating the human community. It is not some kind of nice, Britannic, upper-class, gentlemanliness of "noblesse oblige." The Prophets were there to say that we all belong to each other, and with each other. And the great problem, today as it was then of course, is the distribution of wealth.

It seems clear that the historical John the Baptist was, in vain, against the High-Priestly class which had, we know this from archaeology, inordinately large houses in Jerusalem. And so, to the extent that you have that extraordinary wealth in the hands of so-called religious leaders, John comes forward to complain about that. And that marks him as a Prophet, as well as, you know--he eats Prophet food; honey and lotus, and wears Prophet-clothes; camel-skin clothes... But then, because of that five-hundred year hiatus, there grew up among the Jews this notion that before God would definitively intervene in human history to create the human community there would be a resurgence of the prophetic voice. And there are echoes of that in this reading. For instance, why should they think that john was Elijah? Elijah was one of the great Classical Prophets, if you remember from the scriptures, who was mysteriously taken up to God in this fiery chariot. And, right before the end-time, Elijah was to return with a view to doing what?--To announcing that god was going to definitively intervene and bring us human beings together. If you know any Jewish friends you know, even today, at Passover an empty place is organised with a full setting and even a special cup called the Elijah cup because the Jews believe that God is finally going to intervene and Elijah is going to return..., and the best time for Elijah to do this is, of course, during Passover..., the great Feast of Liberation..., where human oppression is removed. So that’s why they thought John might be Elijah--and the Messiah, of course, who was never supposed to be a divine figure, but simply another agent of God, was going to do what God had in mind anyway.

Again, this establishment of absolute justice among us human beings; the end of oppression, the end of all these divisions... So they thought that John might be the Messiah. In fact, and this seems very clear, there was a bunch of people who thought that John was the Messiah, that John himself was the Messiah. In fact, there’s a group today, I’m told, someplace in the middle of Palestine that still operates on that belief: "The Messiah has come and John is it..." And we know that the first Disciples of Jesus were initially Disciples of John the Baptist.

So this is where John fits historically. He is this end-time figure who is doing what all the Prophets have done and the Jews of his time thought that this was going to be the absolute beginning of the total renovation of the world and of God’s creation. Because at the time, even though the Gospels were written between seventy and eighty-five of the first century, there were still a bunch of people running around as John’s disciples saying that John was the Messiah, the Gospel writers had to be very careful to subordinate John to Jesus. And this is what I mean by "tailoring" john to the followers of Jesus. So, especially in the Gospel of John, if you remember the Gospel of John, Jesus’ first Disciples were already disciples of John the Baptist. The Fourth Gospel, above all, is at pains to depict this man as doing nothing for his whole life but announcing somebody beyond himself.

So what does all that have to do with us? I mean historically it’s interesting: I can put my professorial mode... Well, I think if we’re trying to salvage Christmas, and salvage Advent, then it is inordinately important, as I suggested last Sunday, to ask: "What gives me comfort?" Well, you’re going to hear, and you heard echoes of it, a kind of prolepsis of that, of Christmas, in the second reading with the word "rejoice." What gives me joy? What gives me joy? This excavation of the historical John is an attempt to restore clearly the kind of joy that is to be expressed with Christmas. For instance, next Sunday, the last Sunday of Advent, we’re going to see this worked out in the figure of another human being, only female..., who comes out of the kind of subordinate position in a patriarchal society and becomes the principle agent of God’s activity, precisely as John has lined it up: namely, God is going to restore us... We’re going to have the figure of Mary for next Sunday’s readings... And Mary’s going to say exactly the same thing: that God is going to put down the mighty from their thrones, as we’ve already heard Nicole read in the Psalm which is the Hymn of Mary...

So, what gives me joy? That’s this week’s Advent project. And what is the figure of John? Where is the figure of John the Baptist in clarifying that, or is he raising the question for me?

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