He didn’t look like
them. He didn’t talk like them. He was not part of the crowd that had always
held power. Yet he talked about change. And the people listened, and followed.
I am talking about John the Baptist.
John the Baptist
dressed in camel’s hair and had a leather belt. He didn’t dress like the
Scribes, Pharisees and Temple priests. He never was part of that crowd. But
John the Baptist talked about change that was certainly coming. The thing is
for the change to take place, it was the people who had to change. If there is
going to be no more war, then people need to stop hating others. If there is
going to be charity and care for all, then people needed to look inside their
hearts and pull out the justice of God that resides there. If there is going to
be change, then people needed to change.
That is the
change we can believe in. Prepare for the
Lord, John the Baptist proclaims in the Gospel for this Second Sunday of
Advent. Prepare for the Lord by preparing yourselves. And the people from throughout
the Judean countryside and the inhabitants of Jerusalem went out to the Jordan
River where John was preaching. And they confessed their sins. And they were
baptized. And the change had begun.
We all want our
country and our world to be better. We all want a cure for cancer and AIDS and
malnutrition and every ailment or condition that is killing people. We all want
the poor to be cared for. We all want an end to violence both that which is
carried out by terrorists and that which takes place in every town and city
throughout the world. We all want peace. But what are we doing about it? The
heart of John the Baptist’s message is that if we want change, if we really
want the One who will reform the world and return mankind to God’s original
plan, then we need to change.
This is tough. It
is just so much easier to sit back and expect the government to change, the
world to change, other people to change. But if we really want change we can
believe in, the way we need to change.
The Gospel is calling
us to look to ourselves. Perhaps someone has mistreated us. We were innocent,
and that person attacked us. Maybe it was a parent who constantly belittled us.
Maybe it was someone at work or at school who really enjoyed making our life
difficult. Perhaps it was someone we barely knew, who took it upon himself or
herself to berate us. How have we responded? Sadly, many times I have responded
by matching nastiness with nastiness. Perhaps you have too. How can we expect
there to be peace in the world, when we respond to hate with hate? If we want
the world to change, we need to change.
Perhaps our
economic position in life has been rather poor. We shop at discount stores and
buy inferior products because we simply can’t afford to buy brand name clothes,
brand name food, and so forth. But do we hope that some day we will have so
much that we will be able to squander our money? So many professional athletes
have given horrible examples of greed. So many are making five million or more
and spending ten million or more. Is this our idea of success? Are we looking
to ourselves first? How can we expect there to be an end to world poverty when
our basic attitude, our deep hope is to someday be able to be selfish? If we
want the world to change, we need to change.
John the Baptist
knew that he was striking a chord with people. He saw them responding to his
preaching. The Gospel of Luke says that the crowds asked him, What shall we do? He said, If you have two cloaks, give one to someone
who has none. Share your food with the
hungry. When the dregs of Jewish society, the tax collectors sincerely
asked him, What shall we do? he told
them to stop cheating people. Even soldiers asked John what they should do. He
responded that they stop bullying people and acting unjustly. John wanted to
make one thing clear, though: People should not be changing just because they
were drawn to his words. He was merely preparing them for the One whose words
would be those of the Word of God. One
mightier than me is coming after me. I
am not worthy to even take off his shoes. What I do is earth bound, I am baptizing with water. What he will do is infinitely beyond the
earth. He will baptize with the Holy
Spirit.
Our
determination to reform ourselves, to change ourselves so that we can change
the world is not merely based on humanitarian needs, but is based on the
spiritual. We belong to Jesus Christ. We are His People. He has called us to
make His Presence real throughout the world. For us, love is not merely the
opposite of hate. Love is the Presence of Jesus Christ within us and among us. For
us charity is not just the opposite of greed.
Charity is the Lord working through us to care for others.
Every year we
priests go on rants about how so much of our society is trying to destroy the
original meaning of Christmas. We decry the use of the terms “Holiday Season or
Winter Holidays, or Seasons Greetings.” And we should. We are saddened that a
spiritual celebration has been transformed into a series of drinking parties.
And we should be. But, perhaps, we should all be less concerned with the
commercialization of Christmas and the debasement of Christmas from the birth
of a poor child in a stable to the celebration of materialism, and be more
concerned about what we are doing to prepare the world for Jesus Christ.
What John the
Baptist is telling us is to look within, change our own attitudes, and then
trust God to allow this change to have a part in the transformation the world.
Change we can
believe in will only take place if we are the ones who change. That is what it
means to Prepare for the Lord ■
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Ilustration: St. John the Baptist, painting by Jacopo del Casentino and assistant, c. 1330, El Paso Museum of Art.
