Isaiah 40: 1-11 / Psalm 85: 1–2, 8–13 / II Peter 3: 8–15a / Mark 1: 1–8
This is the homily that was prepared for
St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, by Fr. Gene Tucker for Sunday, December 6,
2020.
“THE INSIDER WHO BECAME AN OUTSIDER”
(Homily
text: Mark 1: 1-8)
When we hear Isaiah’s words, “The voice of one
crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the
desert a highway for our God,’”, we must surely have arrived at the Second
Sunday of Advent. For in each year of the three-year lectionary cycle of
readings (this year being the second of the three, Year B), we focus in on John
the Baptist’s work and ministry, for it is John the Baptist who becomes the
focus for today. Our appointed Collect for this day also captures the theme, as
it reminds us to heed the voice of God’s messengers, the prophets, and to
“forsake our sins”.
That one crying in the wilderness, John the
Baptist, was one who had begun his life as an insider, but who became an
outsider, one who was (quite likely) a thorn in the side of the chief priests
and the other Temple authorities.
This last comment deserves some explanation.
John was the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth. His
father was a priest, serving in the Temple. Since his father was a priest, John
was also expected to follow in his father’s footsteps, for the priesthood under
the old covenant was a matter of one’s blood line and lineage. (There was no
need, under this system, little need for people to sense a call to the service
of God as a priest. There was, also, little need for screening bodies and
committees, such as we have today in order to select suitable persons for
ordained ministry.) In John’s case, he would have been expected to be schooled
in what was involved in serving in the Temple. And at the proper age (usually,
the old covenant stated, at age 30), he would have assumed his duties in there.
But along the way, something happened. We don’t
know for sure, and we can only guess, but at some point John departed from the
usual, customary and expected path he was supposed to take, and he went out
into the wilderness, preaching a message of repentance and forgiveness of sins,
accompanied by a water baptism.
Maybe John had seen too much during his growing-up
years in the Temple. Again, we can only guess, we can only surmise, we don’t
know for sure. Perhaps he had seen too many priests and too many worshipers
who were simply “going through the motions” of serving God. Maybe he had seen
too many people take the ritual bath (called the mikvah) that was required prior to entering the Temple’s
precincts, a ritual washing which was just that, a ritual, and nothing more.
Maybe he had seen too many people undergo the mikvah, and, after having done their duty under the Law
of Moses, those same people went out and lived lives that showed no sign of
genuinely different behavior than that which the Law required. Maybe he had
come to the conclusion that the Temple, its priests and its worshipers, were
manifestly corrupt, living by the wrong set of values.
All of what’s just been said is, at least,
plausible.
What we do know for sure is that John had chosen an
entirely different career path, that of outsider.
We find him, then, in the wilderness, calling people
to a genuine confession of their wayward ways, a confession – by the way – that
was surely oral and which may have been, at times, embarrassingly frank to
hear. (I think we forget that this may have been a real possibility.)
John had chosen to hang out with the troublemakers,
those who lived on the fringes of society out in the wilderness, those who
often caused unsettling reminders to come to the attention of the insiders,
people like those who ran the Temple in Jerusalem. (It’s worth recalling that
one of the factions among the Jewish people at that time were the Essenes,
those who had founded the Dead Sea community at Qumran, who also regarded the
Temple as being manifestly corrupt, so corrupt, in fact, that they, too, had
decided to abandon the Temple and even the society in which it was situated.)
John’s voice speaks with the authority of knowing
his subject well. It’s possible he drew on his firsthand observations of what
was going on in the Temple, and it could well be that he had come to the conviction
that what went on there didn’t really make much of a difference in people’s
behavior or lives. Perhaps he had had enough. Perhaps he had to speak out, to
challenge the status quo.
The Baptist’s voice calls to us today. His voice
calls us to genuine repentance, to a unification of intent with outward,
liturgical function. No “going through the motions” are permitted, if we hear
John’s voice correctly. His voice calls us to a “zero sum game”, in which we
empty ourselves before God, admitting that we’re in such a mess that we can
only, at best, be a little bit aware of how big our mess is. (I suspect that
Augustine of Hippo, that great fifth century bishop and theologian, would
wholeheartedly agree with this assessment.)
And perhaps our confession can wind up being embarrassingly
frank, and it might even be oral. Such is the character of the emptying-out we
are called to do.
But if God is the God who is holy and righteous,
God is also the merciful and loving God, that God who is more ready to hear than
we are to pray, and more ready to forgive than we are to ask for forgiveness.
Thanks be to God!
AMEN.
