Gospel Reflection For the Third Sunday of Advent, 17th December 2023

by Fr Brian Maher OMI

Gospel Reflection for Sunday December 17th 2023 | Third Sunday of Advent

During the week a reader commented: “I am surprised that people flocked to him for baptism and repentance. His reputation was not great!” That surprise is well founded because John the Baptist was not what we would call an ‘attractive’ person. From his appearance to his message he was uncompromising and confrontational.

Yet people did flock to hear him and be baptised by him. Last week’s Gospel makes that clear – “All Judaea and all the people of Jerusalem made their way to him…”. While we might allow for some exaggeration in the word ‘all…’ there can be no doubt that he was a popular and listened-to figure.

So why then did people flock to him?

If we allow ourselves to see the clues in today’s Gospel I think we will at least find the start of an answer to the surprise felt by last week’s reader.

Today’s Gospel revolves around a set of questions, asked by a group of priests sent to John. To us they may sound unimportant and trivial, but for any Jew listening they were critical and worrying questions. We clearly see this in the concern of the Jewish leaders who were anxious enough to sent some priests to find out who this strange man was.

Those leaders would have known that John came from a priestly family, his father being Zechariah, a loyal and true priest himself. For John to suddenly appear out of the wilderness, wild in appearance and with a message calling for repentance and baptism, would have utterly confused them. Surely John was one of their own people, the son of a priest and expected to be a priest himself?  A wandering nobody or a slightly mad itinerant from the desert could be ignored or laughed at, but the son of a priest, intelligent and with training in the Law of Moses was another thing altogether. Here was a man who needed careful watching. Left to himself he could upset the very delicate political situation they were trying hard to handle.

And this political situation was dangerous and daily becoming more dangerous. Revolution was in the air. Israel was a proud nation with a long and impressive history. They believed themselves ‘chosen by God’ to be ‘his people’. What’s more, they believed that God had proved this time after time through their history. Didn’t he lead them out of Egypt and slavery? Didn’t he save them from their exile in Babylon and bring them back to their own land? Didn’t he send great prophets like Elijah, Isaiah and Jeremiah to speak on his behalf.

Now another crisis had overtaken them. The mighty Roman Empire, that all-powerful war machine that ruled half the world, occupied their land, trampling on their traditions, demanding huge taxes and ruling with cruelty and terror.

God could not allow this to continue. His very Temple – the place where he resided with his people – was desecrated every day by Roman soldiers. It was an intolerable situation and, just as in Egypt and Babylon, God would come in might to free his people. It is important for us to remember that for the Jewish people this was not a kind of pious and vague expectation. No! God had never let his people down in the past. He kept his promises and his covenants, and just as their last great prophet Micah had told them, “from you shall come a ruler, who will shepherd my people Israel.”, so they believed that a new King was coming to free them from Rome.

Expectation was high, people constantly looking for the new prophet, ruler, shepherd, Messiah to make himself known. It was a situation rife for exploitation by confidence tricksters and those with political ambitions. There were, in fact, many travelling itinerant preachers claiming to be this prophet. Most faded quickly into oblivion though some attracted small groups of followers. A number of more radical political sects also emerged dedicated to freeing Israel by force, among them the Zealots and later the Sicarii (assassins).

The Pharisees, Sadducees and other religious leaders were caught in the middle of this growing tension. They owed their own power and status to their Roman occupiers and they were expected to maintain the compliance of the general population in return. They found themselves, as we might say, between a rock and a hard place!

Some may find all of this history boring and irrelevant and I understand that. However, to truly walk the tracks and trails of Galilee with Jesus, or to truly understand the radical nature of the ‘Kingdom of God’ he offered his people, it is good for us to know a little about the tensions and conflicts into which he was born.

Today’s Gospel brings us face to face with a group of increasingly worried Jewish leaders. Their problem is the popularity of John and the number of people from Jerusalem going out to hear him. His ‘strangeness’ made him potentially a loose cannon, answerable to nobody and liable to trigger riots and revolution if he said the wrong things. Hence their questions:

Are you the Messiah? No!

Are you Elijah? (a great prophet of the past who also came from the wilderness and looked and spoke like John). No!

Are you the prophet? (promised by earlier prophets but not the Messiah) No!

The leaders must have been relieved to hear these answers. If John had answered ‘yes’ to any of them there would have been a problem. A person claiming to be the Messiah, the expected Prophet or even Elijah from the past could take on a type of cult leadership which might trigger a revolution.

The trouble was that John, probably in his usual irascible way, did not qualify any of his statements. In other words, while they knew who John was not, they had no idea who he was or claimed to be. Given his popularity that would have been a worry.

So they pushed him for an answer and he said only, “… among you stands one you do not know.  He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.” If any answer was to set alarm bells ringing for the authorities, then this answer would do so. Now they were looking for an unseen threat who would be even more dangerous than John – and it was a threat already with them! I wonder did John know how this answer would worry the authorities, and maybe even smile to himself? We’ll never know, but I would love to have been there to hear it.

And this is where our Gospel ends. John, this strange man, accountable to nobody, is preaching the coming of someone far greater than he is, someone who is already present but as yet unknown. The Jewish authorities, worried about the possibility of a revolution against Rome, are satisfied the John himself is not a threat to peace, but his prophesy of “the one who comes after me” must have caused huge anxiety among them.

As we know, but of course they did not know, was that the coming one was Jesus, probably there listening to John. A very short time later John does point to Jesus as the ‘promised one’ and then begins to step back himself. John leaves the stage empty and waiting to greet the one they were waiting for; The Messiah, anointed of God, ruler, shepherd, who would make the final Kingdom of God known to the world.

And Jesus does make the Kingdom known to them, but it is a Kingdom so different to what they were expecting that they either did not, or could not, accept it. Instead of power and glory, Jesus talked of gentleness and becoming like little children! Instead of retribution and punishment of Israel’s enemies, Jesus talked of forgiveness. Instead of a Kingdom where God’s chosen people would rule, Jesus talked of a Kingdom where all would be welcome and equal. It was a Kingdom which contradicted everything they were expecting; in weakness here would be strength, in forgiveness there would be power, in gentleness and humility there would be greatness and in death there would be life.

The ‘light’ spoken of at the start of the Gospel is this Kingdom, brought by Jesus. John the Baptist was the first to witness to the light and we are called to continue his witness.

The light dawned with a small child born in Bethlehem, and it continues this Christmas with me and you once again welcoming our very God among us.

Many thanks,

Brian.

If you have any comments, questions or thoughts on this scripture reflection, please feel welcome to email me at b.maher@oblates.ie