For this Sunday's Readings at Mass, CLICK HERE.
​
Homily 8 December
​
All four of the Gospels mention St John the Baptist, but only Luke’s Gospel situates John in the political context of his time. We see Luke doing this at the beginning of today’s text. He mentions important political figures of the first century: Tiberius who was the Emperor of Rome, Herod who was son of Herod the Great, his brother Philip who ruled the northeast of Galilee.
To Luke’s original hearers these political figures would be as easily recognised as Trump, Putin, Xi are to us today. Luke mentions these figures because he wants to make it known that the message of John the Baptist was meant to impact those at the top as much as those at the bottom. When John the Baptist cries out, “Prepare the way of the Lord,” he not seeking to prepare the way of the Lord into heaven, or even prepare the way of the Lord into our hearts, he is announcing the way of the Lord into the complex, corrupt, and violent world in which we live.
The message of John the Baptist (and the message of Christianity) is that God is coming. God is coming into this world to change things, to clean up the mess of the world. John’s language about making winding ways straight and rough ways smooth is his way of saying that God is coming to unravel all that is corrupt and unjust. God intends to eliminate poverty, violence, war, hatred, and greed. God is coming to set things right, so that this world will not be Rome’s kingdom or America’s kingdom or Russia’s kingdom, but the kingdom of God.
Today the Gospel challenges us to accept John’s message. But this is not easy. When we look at the difficulties in our world, it seems more logical to conclude that, far from coming, God is staying away. But faith calls us to believe that John’s message is true, that God is still coming into the damaged world which we call home.
Such a conviction marks the difference between believers and unbelievers. All people of good will want a better world, a world that is peaceful and just. But believers trust that peace and justice can be established in our world, not simply through the efforts of powerful men and women, but through the presence and power of God working around them and through them to bring about God’s kingdom.
So the next time we become despondent because of all that is wrong in the world, the next time we become frightened by the presence of evil, the next time it seems hopeless that this world will ever be free of hatred and greed, John the Baptist tells us to believe that God is not indifferent to our world, that God still intends to change what is wrong.
Of course, many people might see a belief such as this as religious nonsense. It certainly would have seemed that way to the Emperor Tiberius, if someone had reported to him that there was a wild Jewish prophet proclaiming the coming of God in the Judean wilderness.
But today only a handful of people remember who Tiberius was while millions remember and listen to the preaching of John. Let us also believe then that John’s message is true. Let us believe that even as we work in our small ways to bring about God’s kingdom, we are not alone. God is active. God still intends to come.