By Revd Chrys M Tremththanmor
Surely by now you all know of
my passion for ‘Doctor Who’ and other science fiction tv programmes. But I also
enjoy watching, to my shame, a number of these so-called ‘reality tv’
programmes. ‘The Apprentice’ is a great favourite of mine, and I’m enjoying the
current season very much.
A couple of years ago I watched a tv programme called ‘School of Saatchi.’ It seems that multi-millionaire Saatchi is a great collector of modern art. His support enabled the careers of such people as Damien Hirst (the artist known for pickling full sized sharks and halves of sheep in large tanks) and Tracy Ermin (whose unmade bed was an art exhibit).
‘School of Saatchi’ was a tv
programme following six modern artists who are set various challenges. They
needed to impress Mr Saatchi because the winner would be given a studio and
funding for three years.
Now, I have to admit that I’m not a fan of modern art. In fact, I’m going to sound terribly old fashioned by saying that I like to know what I’m looking at when I look at a piece of art. I like knowing that it’s a landscape, that a portrait actually looks like a person, and that a sculpture is out of solid stuff like marble or bronze. I have certain expectations of what makes art ‘art.’
So what these modern artists come up with, well, it just confuses me. One of the contestants hung a whistle, on a cord, from the sort of plastic bar which you put on a bathroom wall help you get into a bath. The judges went on and on about the sexual symbolism. Maybe I’m a bit too innocent, but I just didn’t get it.
Another artist had his family make lots of lots of Indian style flat bread, poppadums, and he piled several hundred of these into separate stacks on an Indian carpet. The judges said how clever it was, that it showed how family influenced your life and the gift this was and so on and so on. Again, if the judges hadn’t explained the art I would never have got any of that.
I think what I’m saying is, I prefer art which doesn’t need explaining! I can understand a landscape or a portrait. I don’t understand a pile of bread on a carpet. That’s why I need an interpreter, someone to tell me what I’m seeing.
John the Baptist, whom we heard about today, was a prophet, the last in a long line of prophets. We sometimes misunderstand what ‘prophecy’ was about. Prophecy wasn’t seeing into a definite future, and writing it down into mysterious symbols which only a few people could decode. Prophets read ‘the signs of the times’ to warn people what could come if they didn’t change their ways.
We see prophets acting in this way, again and again, in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament. Time and again the people of Israel reject their God, the God who had brought them out of captivity in Egypt to their land ‘flowing with milk and honey.’ They worship foreign gods and war with other kingdoms. The prophets warn them what will happen. Israel will be defeated in battle and taken into exile. And this is what happens.
But the prophets also promise a return, and in due course this happens as well. The Jewish people return to their promised land. And a new note of optimism begins to sound from the prophets. One day, they say, a Messiah will arise. One day a man will come, God’s Anointed One, who will establish a kingdom of peace and of righteousness.
We heard an echo of this from Jesus himself. When he replied, to John’s disciples, that ‘the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them’ he was quoted from the writings of Isaiah, chapter 35 in our Bibles.
As we well know, and as we will celebrate on Christmas Day, this Messiah did come. But he didn’t come as the Israelites had expected. They were looking for a king born in a castle, and God’s son was born in a stable. They were looking for a military leader to win physical wars, and God’s son focussed instead on the true battle, our human battle with evil. They expected the Messiah to sweep away Roman rule, and instead the Christ was crucified by those same Romans.
So for people to recognise the Messsiah they needed help. That was the role of John the Baptist, the last and the greatest of the prophets. John the Baptist was the interpreter sent by God to explain who it was that now walked among them, and to tell them now was the time to repent.
In the Gospels we find having to explain things to the people. As we heard in last week’s reading, John said, ‘I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.’ John was pointing away from himself and interpreting the importance of the one was to come after him.
Elsewhere in the Gospel of John we have John the Baptist declaring of Jesus, ‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!’ John knew what Jesus’ mission was. Jesus’ mission was to be the final sacrifice for the sin of the world. That was Jesus’ true battle, and the source of his true kingship.
Perhaps we too would prefer a God who is easier to understand. We might too prefer a God who acted the way we wanted, who would smite our enemies (or at least make their lives a bit less comfortable) and make sure our lives are happy, healthy, and wealthy.
But John the Baptist shows us a God whom we don’t expect. A God of humility and generosity, a God who is willing to suffer and to die for the salvation of humanity. We expected someone easy to understand, but we are given something confusing which needs someone else to explain to us.
We, those who recognise the cost of our redemption, are called to be those interpreters in turn. In a world which sees Christmas as an annual excuse for over consumption, we are called to point to the true ‘reason for the season.’ We are called, like John the Baptist, to point to the wonder of the ‘Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.’ And, perhaps above all, we are called to do so with the same humility which John the Baptist showed. We too must point away from ourselves, point instead to the true Messiah who gives light to the world. Amen.