Advent: 1 December 2022
Welcome to the second day of the A to Z Advent Calendar, drawing on quotations from my newly digitised collection – and thank you for initial responses to yesterday’s window.
B is for… the Baptist. During Advent we hear in church services the account of John the Baptist in the gospels. Luke tells of his birth to Elizabeth and Zechariah. Then, as an adult, John appeared in the wilderness of Judea, wore rough clothing, foraged for his food, preached a stark message calling for repentance, and baptised people in the River Jordan – including Jesus. He is the last prophet before Jesus, seen as preparing the way, anticipating the coming of Christ.
Here is Jeanette Winterson from her brilliant autobiographical novel Oranges are not the only fruit, exploring her own sense of the prophetic:
‘I could have been a priest instead of a prophet. The priest has a book with the words set out. Old words, known words, words of power. Words that are always on the surface. Words for every occasion. The words work. They do what they’re supposed to do; comfort and discipline. The prophet has no book. The prophet is a voice that cries in the wilderness, full of sounds that do not always set into meaning. The prophets cry out because they are troubled by demons.’
But consider this question from the late Elizabeth Templeton, a Scottish theologian I met once, in her book The Strangeness of God:
Can one be a non-judgemental prophet?
She catches here that sense that those who ask the most troubling questions about the status quo may indeed appear to be judging others around them, for their actions or inactions, prejudices and abuse of power. John the Baptist does sound judgemental. But perhaps we can better see that prophets point to God as the origin of all, the creator of life, and the one who longs for it to flourish. And so prophets also point to the ways that we spoil that gift of life, in their awareness of God’s desire for justice to come. They cry out because they are troubled by the way things are but need not be.
So here is an image of John the Baptist preaching, by Mattia Preti, from around 1665, which captures the sense of urgency with which he called people to repent in his conviction that the kingdom of heaven was near.
Yours,
Donald.