Thinking Anew:THE resonance and power of words change depending on the environment in which they are used. When we are comfortable and secure it's easy for us to grow lazy, lazy with everything, even how we measure up the words we use and hear.
In the current economic environment most of us are worried, anxious about what is going to happen and where it is all going to end. It is a time of incredible rumours. And things are changing at extraordinary speed. Speed, words, uncertainty and wild rumours make for a terrible cocktail of worry and fear.
Every Advent we hear what John the Baptist has to say. It’s part of the liturgical calendar, part of the annual cycle of prayer and ritual and maybe just because of that it is easy to let the words gently roll over our heads without ever really thinking about them.
For most of us, experience can be a far better teacher than words. In One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Noble Laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn asks how can you expect a man who’s warm to understand one who’s cold? Reading tomorrow’s Gospel (Matthew 3: 1-12) the words about John the Baptist are certainly pertinent in the current climate.
“In due course John the Baptist appeared; he preached in the wilderness of Judea . . .” The reader is told that Isaiah speaks of the one who is “a voice crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare a way for the Lord, make his paths straight’.” John the Baptist calls the Pharisees and Sadducees “a brood of vipers”.
He warns them that they can never sit back on their laurels even if they think they have Abraham as their father.
Strong words.
There is a wonderful and refreshing openness and honesty about how John the Baptist speaks. It’s a far cry from the facility we have developed in public discourse of talking out of both sides of our mouths.
John the Baptist was not a sycophant or someone who spent his time making sure to say the right thing to the right people in the right place. He paid the ultimate price for speaking his mind and having the courage to tell the ruling classes how he fundamentally disagreed with them. He spent his life telling people about the one who was to follow him and that of course was God incarnate, Jesus Christ. John the Baptist was a prophet, who searched and spoke the truth no matter what the consequences.
There are very few people who have the courage and the strength to stand up against those in control. It’s not easy to criticise our bosses.
Every society has its norms of behaviour. And in every society the people in control make secure their positions. Some do it in more subtle ways than others. That’s the way of the world.
There is something profoundly wrong with the relationship between the governed and those who govern, between the people in charge and those who are on the margins. And that too is the way of the world. But we as Christians have a horizon beyond the “ways of the world” and however faltering and insecure our vision is, we say there is finiteness about the world that does not apply to God. Our hope, our eternal vision is in God.
That faith should fortify us and give us strength to attempt to speak the truth no matter what the prevailing conditions might be. Not always easy but we also believe that in some way we are given that grace, that power to speak and live the truth. Christians call that grace. John the Baptist found himself crying in the wilderness and again that’s part of the human condition.
Tomorrow’s Gospel gives us a great opportunity to examine whether or not we kowtow to the status quo. We might also ask ourselves how we listen to the words of John the Baptist.
Advent affords us a great and real occasion to remind ourselves no matter how weak or cowardly we might be, we believe that God is always willing and kind enough to offer us that strength, that conviction to seek the truth, whatever the circumstances or situation.
Hope in God and love for his Word offers us an amazing horizon. There's so much more to all this than "the ways of the world". – MC