A slow burn

stjohnstmarkchurchburySunday, December 8, 2024

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In the 3^rd year of the reign of King Charles III, when Sir Keir Rodney Starmer KCB KC was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Andrew Burhnam was Mayor of Greater Manchester and Justin Welby was (just about) the Archbishop of Canterbury, the word of God came to the assembled congregation in the wilderness of Heywood…

As it is written in the book of the words of the prophets Isaiah and Baruch, and I paraphrase here: ‘Acquire for yourself a bulldozer and do some bulldozering’.

I wonder which local valleys you would fill and which hills you would make low? Which crooked you would make straight? Which bit of rough you would make smooth?! For this is a Gospel for us here and now, in this time and in this place.

Deliberately quick

We’re in chapter 3 of Luke. In the first 2 chapters we have an elderly, apparently barren, woman getting pregnant, as does her young cousin, an unmarried teenager. And at the end of chapter 2 we fast-forward to a 12-year-old giving his parents a heart-attack when he wanders off alone in a big city. And now we zip along another 18 or so years to a man from the desert proclaiming to a rapt audience.

Perhaps the pace is deliberately quick so that we don’t forget the prophecies before the birth of John the Baptiser? His Dad, Zechariah, had said (1:76-77): ‘And you, child, will be called a prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins.’ I wonder if any of our parents had such high hopes for us.

But let’s not forget all those names that Luke started with. He began his Gospel telling us that it will be an ‘orderly account’. So, he’s been very deliberate in placing John in an exact historical, political and religious context by doing all that name dropping at the start, just as I did with you.

Does something

Yet the word of God doesn’t come to any of Luke’s celebrities. It comes to John, somewhere in the wilderness. John, the son of two elderly parents who had given up hope of having a child. And John does something with that word that he’s been given. He goes into all the region, proclaiming, drawing crowds and preparing a way with a metaphorical bulldozer. He uses that word powerfully and visually.

Luke then draws Isaiah into this too, with some verses taken from Isaiah 40:3-5: ‘The voice of one crying out in the wilderness…’ John is placed on the threshold between all those Hebrew prophets of old – and the one who is to come, Jesus.

And we shouldn’t be altogether surprised that the word gets to John in the wilderness. The wilderness is where Elijah fled to and encountered that still small voice. It’s where David ran to in order to escape the anger of Saul. It’s where the people of Israel spent their time getting away from Egypt and taking a circuitous route to a land of promise. Later in the Gospel, Jesus himself is led by the spirit into the wilderness. And throughout his ministry, Jesus continued to withdraw to give himself space and solitude and allow God to divinely provide for his needs. And he encourages his followers, then and now, to do the same.

Slow-burn

It’s interesting to take a closer look at the verse which follows Zechariah’s prophecy, in Luke 1:80. We’re told that John ‘grew and became strong in the spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day he appeared publicly to Israel’. Rather than a sudden burning-bush-type-moment, it appears that the word of God comes to John as a slow-burn over a number of years until he was ready to share it.

John ‘grew and became strong in the spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day he appeared publicly to Israel’. And this should all be an encouragement to us. We might not be famous, but the word of God still comes to us. And we might feel we’ve been in a wilderness for years. But perhaps God is slowly helping us to grow and to become strong, like he did with John, until we’re ready to get out there.

More than that, maybe we think of the world that we live in as a wilderness. The pain and injustice. Violence and hunger. Scarcity and isolation. Or closer to home we might be disheartened by falling numbers attending church and feel we’re in a bit of a desert time. We might wonder if God is there at all.

Bit-by-bit

Instead, it’s precisely in places like this that God provides what we need. Abraham, Jacob, Moses, the people of Israel, David, Elijah, Jesus… Some of those wilderness stories do have dramatic one-off events – but John’s story shows that God may be doing his work on us bit-by-bit over a number of years.

It’s also worth just thinking about John, who in the Gospels always seems to be second fiddle to Jesus but was absolutely essential in preparing the way. We need to stop and thank God for all the male and female ‘John the Baptists’ in our churches and congregations today. Those who sort the music, give out the hymn books and put them away again, who serve, arrange flowers, bake the cakes and pour the tea. I’m sure you could add to that list.

But that’s pretty much everyone here, isn’t it? We’re all essential in preparing the way. In pointing others to Jesus by the way that we live our lives. All this time perhaps, feeling like we’re in a wilderness, but quietly growing stronger in the Spirit.

Demands something

And whilst this may give us all some comfort, let’s not forget the message from Malachi. As we move through Advent, we might be coming over all baby-Jesus-in-a-manger, peace-on-earth-and-goodwill-to-all, great-joy-for-all-people etc. But Malachi tells us that the arrival of the Lord will demand something from us. We will not be left unchanged but will be re-formed and re-fined to be more like Christ.

That might not be easy – it might ask us to give up things that we hold dear. Sometimes that might be the safety and security of doing those things that we’ve always done in favour of something new and risky. But it might scratch an itch that you didn’t know you had. Satisfy a hunger that you didn’t know was there.

Hope

Kevin Sinfield, the Rugby League star who has done so much to raise money for MND and the Rob Burrow Centre, said in a TV interview recently that: “There’s nothing more powerful than providing hope.”

In Luke, John’s example gives us hope that when God seems silent, he may actually be preparing us for some special task. But Malachi also reminds us that the promise of Christ’s arrival should prompt us to self-reflect and maybe even make us uncomfortable. Because we need to be asking ourselves whether we are making the most of what God has already given us.

Are we making the most of what God has already given us? This Advent, we need to spend time thinking about that, to reflect, to prepare.

A blessing

I’m going to finish with ‘A Blessing for Advent’ by Jan Richardson. It seemed to sum things up for me.

Strange how one word

will so hollow you out.

But this word

has been in the wilderness

for months. Years.

This word is what remained

after everything else

was worn away

by sand and stone.

It is what withstood

the glaring of sun by day,

the weeping loneliness of

the moon at night.

Now it comes to you

racing out of the wild,

eyes blazing

and waving its arms,

its voice ragged with desert

but piercing and loud

as it speaks itself

again and again:

Prepare, prepare.

It may feel like

the word

is levelling you,

emptying you

as it asks you

to give up

what you have known.

It is impolite

and hardly tame,

but when it falls

upon your lips

you will wonder

at the sweetness,

like honey

that finds its way

into the hunger

you had not known

was there. Amen

‘A slow burn’ was delivered by Ian Banks at St Margaret’s Heywood on 8th December 2024. It was based on Luke 3:1-6 and Malachi 3:1-4

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