During the past weeks I have been presenting some thoughts on the season of Advent. Firstly, I explored the “‘mystery of Advent” in the context of how the people of the bible developed their understanding of “the coming of the Messiah” – as a King, a Priest-King, as a Suffering Servant, as a Reign of Peace and so on. Secondly, I reflected on the four weeks of this season and the personal qualities we are encouraged to develop, the concept of “the path to holiness”, the key words in the readings from scripture and the mystery of “the four comings of the Christ”. Last Sunday, being Gaudete Sunday, has as its theme “Love.” Today we continue to look at the mystery of Advent within the mystery of human history, and another figure appears before us in this drama – John the Baptist.

Luke, in speaking of John the Baptist, the Herald of the Christ, quotes the fortieth chapter of the prophecy of Isaiah:

“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

Behind the High Altar of the Benedictine Monastery at Essen, Germany, there is a famous tryptich by the artist Matthias Grunewald. It is a Calvary scene, but there is a figure in it that could not possibly have been there. He stands in the background behind the Cross, bearded and with a wild look and dressed in the skins of animals - he is an unmistakable John the Baptist whom Herod Antipas had executed almost three years prior to the Crucifixion. Obviously the artist was trying to make a point by powerful symbolism.

In the left hand of the Baptist figure there is a scroll, and with his right hand extended he indicates the Crucified Christ. The scroll is meant to represent the Law, History, Art and Prophecy of the Old Covenant of which he is the last prophet: the Crucified Christ is the heart and soul of the New Covenant of which John is the first prophet. He closes the door on the Old Covenant and ushers in the New: “Behold the Lamb of God.”

John the Baptist is the Season of Advent personified – an Advent which ushers in each new Christian Year and conveys a message the poignancy of which has become finely honed in this new millennium. It proclaims to an unbelieving generation that the power behind the shifting panorama of world events is not some inscrutable unknown about whom we must forever speculate. Instead we say with John the Baptist “The only Son who is near the heart of the Father - he has made him known.” (John 1:18 & 19)

As part of the spiritual exercise of the Advent Season, we have the call of the Baptist “Prepare the way of the Lord - make his paths straight!” At this very beginning of this new Church Year, it seems reasonable that we should learn a lesson from the person of John the Baptist - that very lesson that Grunewald was trying to teach in his tryptich. Each age presents the follower of Christ with new challenges - and Advent starts off each successive Christian Year with the Baptist’s clarion call “Prepare, prepare the way of the Lord.”

The Baptist stands with a foot in each Covenant - the Old and the New - and is in every sense a bridge between them. Remember, our Lord was baptised by John. The covenants are firmly founded in space and time, and Christianity is an historic faith. It is well to notice the constant appeal in the Gospels to history; and this appeal is nowhere more clearly enunciated than in the first verses of Luke which I have already quoted. The theme of Advent is waiting and preparation - and we are encouraged by the nature of the Season to enter into the history of our spiritual heritage - to be with the temporal universe as it waits in time and space for the Christ – the Anointed One.

So the Loving God moves and works within the space-time continuum that is the home of the universe and the Crown of Creation, Humanity. It is also true that the unknowable God works beyond it in ways we could not possibly comprehend. Advent is also a time for loosening God from the shackles of the narrowness of our own preconceptions. (There is the constant danger of creating God in our own image!) The Liberal Catholic Church in its teachings, has a very big canvas on which it explores the ineffable – the unknowable God as well as the God of history.

And what of the idea of time anyhow? Ask a real scientist and (as far as I am aware) one will be told that the force we know as time is essentially indefinable on the basis that a thing cannot be defined in terms of its effects! The best that can be done is to say that its effects are observable in a multi-faceted stream of cause and effect stretching throughout what we know as history - and this is no definition at all. (Our understanding of the past, the present and the future has changed a great deal since the writing of the bible.)

An aphorism attributed to Einstein which is both accurate and amusing is: “Time may be defined as nature’s way of preventing everything from happening at once” - and this is not far from the truth. When God created, a universe and time came into existence, as part of the perfect creativity of his Divine Nature.

Humanity is made in the likeness to God - the Imago Dei, and this likeness included the ability to make moral decisions on the basis of personal preference – for we are also finite beings sharing in the nature of the Infinite. Hence from the outset there existed the need for redemption. In every sense - sin was inevitable - because the creature attempts to imitate the Creator. Now, the words “redemption” and “sin” are not used very often in Liberal Catholic Teaching or the Liturgy, but they are there, and require discussion on another occasion. Suffice it to say that they are very much part of the season of Advent and what follows it.

The Adam and Eve story was never meant to be taken literally, and the Liberal Catholic approach is to look more deeply into the story or myth, for there are great spiritual truths to be found. It shows by marvellous symbol the fact that as soon as the Imago Dei was complete in Humankind, that is as soon as humanity started to exist, choices were made against the perfection of God - and “Sin” (which means ‘missing the mark’) as an alien life force entered the newly-human created order. Advent, therefore, can be understood as the time when we wait for “the Great Repairer”, “the Great Healer”, that particular moment of God’s involvement in human history.

The superb creation process then took place over scores of millions of years. Homo Sapiens arose from the primates as the high-point, and great civilisations arose. God chose an insignificant tribe of nomads from the Fertile Crescent - the Habiru (the Hebrews)-and the world waited for the Messiah: God delivered them from slavery in Egypt and established a Covenant with them, and the world waited for the Messiah: a Kingdom was established - and a Temple was built, to be destroyed and rebuilt at least twice, and the world waited for the the Anointed One.

At that point along the stream of history when the world was best able to receive it, the wait was over, and the Christ was born, lived, taught, healed, died and rose again. This, of course, encompasses the great mystery – the mystery of the Incarnation, and the season of Advent is preparing for this great event, with John the Baptist pointing to it as well.

The Liberal Catholic Church and its writings suggest that there are many ways in which these mysteries of our faith can be understood. Each of us will see something different in these stories, and this is as it should be. Our Church does not impose one particular viewpoint, rather it presents to us the mysteries of our faith as Christians and leads us into the greatest mystery of all, the Holy Eucharist. And as our church emphasizes the incarnational aspect of our faith rather than the redemptive aspect, we should find these weeks of preparation and the weeks of Christmas of especial significance.

What I have presented this morning is a very basic and somewhat “orthodox” understanding of aspects of the season of Advent. Yet, this is its foundation, whatever superstructure you may wish to build on it. Especially have I emphasized that wonderful mystery, the mystery of the involvement of the Divine in human affairs, and the way in which it points to the abiding presence of the Christ within each of us – “Christ in you, the hope of glory”.

And John the Baptist straddling the Old and the New Dispensations rings out again his Advent cry: “Prepare the Way of the Lord. Make his Paths straight!”

Frederick A. Shade
17^th December 2004