Why Advent needs the strange figure of John: a homily for the Second Sunday of Advent

Why Advent needs the strange figure of John

At the early Eucharist on the Second Sunday of Advent - 5.12.21

Luke 3:1-6 (Year C)

It is not just a list of the great and good, a bit of historical background, that we hear Luke recording at the beginning of today’s Gospel reading. 

No, this list would have produced awe, reverence, fear across the ancient world.  The Emperor Tiberius; Pontius Pilate the Roman governor; Herod, Philip, Lysanias, governing on behalf of the Romans; Annas and Caiaphas, the high priestly family in Jerusalem, permitted to rule by the Romans.

Here was a dominant combination of political, military, economic, and religious power: claiming the right, by divine sanction, to determine the life and the fate of millions. 

Surely it was to these names that one would look to know heavenly meaning and divine purpose: to their overwhelming power, their exalted claims, their laws and proclamations.

Luke, abruptly, suddenly, definitively, says ‘no’ to this. Why? Because “the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness”.

Not to those who exalted themselves and made proud claims in Rome or Jerusalem, in the court of Herod or in the headquarters of Pilate. No, the word of God - God’s proclamation of His purposes - came to the strange, odd figure of John in the wilderness.

It is one of the startling messages of Advent, cutting across the claims of this world, its power, wealth, celebrity, influence.  It is not there that we will encounter the revelation of God’s purposes … but in the wilderness of Judea, and in that strange, odd character of John the Baptist.

It is in John that ancient prophecies from the story of Israel come to pass.  He is the voice “crying out in the wilderness”; he is the one who will “prepare the way of the Lord”. 

He is, yes, an incongruous figure amidst our festive preparations: the wilderness, after all, is not the scene most of us picture in our minds at this time of year.  

But this is what is needed - an odd, strange figure, in a harsh landscape, to cut through our complacency and our assumptions.

An odd, strange figure, in a harsh landscape, capturing our attention, telling us that the purposes of God are revealed in the One whom John announces.  That the ancient words of Isaiah the prophet are coming to pass, “and all flesh shall see the salvation of our God”.

This is John’s Advent proclamation.  He is pointing us to the One in whom God’s saving purposes are found, revealed, embodied: Jesus of Nazareth.  As we will shortly pray in the Great Thanksgiving: “we remember his passion and death, we celebrate his resurrection and ascension, and we look for the coming of his kingdom”.

It is not in the powers of this world that we find the saving purposes of God. Truth and meaning are not found in the values encouraged and stories told by the powers of this world ... but in the One proclaimed by John, the One whose saving cross and resurrection are set before us in this Eucharist: Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

On this Second Sunday of Advent, may the strange figure of John in the wilderness, and his stirring proclamation, call us, amidst distractions and other voices, to encounter afresh the saving purposes of God in Jesus Christ.