JB and the purpose of Advent

We had our community bible study on Thursday night, and although I was one of the people leading it this week, I was also cooking, and so was making a cheese sauce until a minute before we started.  Lesson one: always be prepared spiritually as well as practically for leading worship.  A few minutes of prayer (and possibly Psalm 115 as well) to offer what you are about to do up to God and to ask Him to work through you goes a million miles.

As it was, I didn't really know what to say.  And I am sure that everyone was a little bit narked with me by the end of it.  In any case, I had the real privilege of listening in on what everyone else was thinking.

The passage was Luke 3:7-18.  Fiery stuff, as John the Baptist interacts with a crowd who think that he is the messiah (Jesus has not yet begun his ministry).  The first thing I liked that was said was that we are like the crowd in that we demand immediate solutions from God.  They want something they can do now to gain salvation.  But John cannot satisfy them.  He is only the herald for the one who will bring salvation.  He knows they are not yet ready to hear Jesus' message and so beings to prepare the ground for the Good News which will shortly follow.

An icon of John the Baptist

Christ is in a green mandorla, showing that he is hidden from us as his 

ministry has not yet begun.  John is gesturing towards him, 

trying to get people to prepare themselves for Christ and to actively wait for him.

He warns them not to rest on their laurels.  Just because they are Jewish does not mean they will enter the kingdom of God.  Rather, they must change their attitude to the world and those around them.  Give your excess to those who have nothing; do not justify your behaviour by saying that everyone else behaves like that, but rather be prepared to meet God as an individual, in the terrifying nakedness of one who is truly known by God.

It is a message that requires remarkable courage to hear.  In Advent, Christians are called not to rest on their laurels, not to believe that just because they go to Church once in a while, or even all the time, they are ok with God.  We are called to re-evaluate our relationship with the world, our brothers and sisters, and our Father in heaven.  We are called to be prepared to stand naked before the God who knows us truly.  And we are called to remember that, actually, we are never standing anywhere else.