The Fiscal & Military Impact of Advent
Sermon preached in St Salvator's Chapel, St Andrews on 13th December 2009 by John Bell
Readings: Zephaniah 3: 14 - 20 & Luke 3: 7 - 18
CINDERELLA
This being the pantomime season, I ask you to envisage this hopefully fictional scenario.
It is happening in a theatre near you, where Cinderella is playing to packed houses. On the evening you are present, all have cheered Buttons and booed the Ugly Sisters as happens on such occasions.
Now towards the end of the show, the prince arrives in the downstairs world of Cinderella, finds her looking forlorn, moves towards her holding the slipper she left behind at the ball the previous evening, and opening his mouth says:
Senior Antonio, many times and oft in the Rialto
have you rated me about my moneys and my usuances.
Still have I borne it with a patient shrug
for suff¿rance is the badge of all our tribe.
You might - understandably register surprise. Has Prince Charming been enjoying a spliff during the interval,? Or is the wrong actor in the right place at the wrong time?
JOHN THE BAPTIST
This being Advent season, I am amazed that so few people register the same surprise when we hear in Luke¿s Gospel the recorded speech of John the Baptist.
a) unseasonal greeting
For in this season which celebrates Little Donkeys and Mistletoe and Wine in innumerable retail outlets¿.in this season which reputedly focuses on peace and goodwill... in this season which anticipates the birth of a baby in a byre in Bethlehem¿.there is something unseasonal, something incongruous about listening to a 30 year old adult male greeting people who have walked some distance to be baptised by him, not with
¿Hello, friends. My name¿s John. It¿s nice to see you.¿
But with:
¿You brood of snakes,Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?¿
Even if we get over the incongruity of that hostile greeting in the season of good will, there is yet another seeming dissonance.
b) unusual evangelism
For it seems that this scrawny evangelist on the margins of society is fired up with conversionist Zeal. Yet his discourse very quickly moves from the overtly spiritual to the clearly pragmatic when he tells all the budding converts to show egalitarian philanthropy:
Whoever has two shirts must give away one. Whoever has food must share it,
And then, specifically, to civil servants: Don¿t tax people above what is their due.,
And finally to soldiers:
No bullying. No blackmail. Make do with your pay.
¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿
a) Unseasonal speech
The first incongruity - the atypical speech of John in the season anticipating the birth of Jesus can be easily dealt with. There is an intentional anachronism here. The lectionary readings for the Sundaya in Advent to do follow a pre-natal chronology.
John was not preaching when Jesus was a fetus. He was preaching when his second cousin, Jesus, was also in his 31styear. The words we heard find their appropriate chronological context just before Jesus baptism. But as the prophetic words from Zephaniah and other prophets suggest the presumed nature of God¿s Messiah, so John - like the prelude to a Gilbert and Sullivan opera -sets out some of the themes on which he expects Jesus will enlarge.
Repentance and conversion, of course, are at the centre of his message. But it is not repentance and conversion which have deal primarily with the allegedly `spiritual¿ aspects of life. John speaks of a much more holistic phenomenon. Hence the seeming mundane nature of his address to the `brood of vipers.¿
Holistic Conversion
John, living in the light of the incarnation, has been set on fire by a crucial truth which must be reiterated in different ways and in every age. Namely that -at least for people of Christian conviction - there is no spiritual transformation which does not have its existential concomitants.
There is no reorientation of belief divorced from a dramatic change in lifestyle.. The spiritual and the material are conjoined. This we may detect in perhaps the most quoted (or misquoted) verse in the Gospel which does not read
God so loved humanity that he sent his son
or
God so loved Anglicans
or
God so loved Celtic Spirituality
But God so loved the world¿ THE COSMOS.
And if that finds its place towards the beginning of one Gospel, a less famous but equally significant verse appears towards the end of another.
In commissioning his disciples, Jesus does not say:
Go to every part of the world and proclaim the Gospel to all souls¿
or
to all people
or
to all who will listen to you
but
to ALL THE CREATED ORDER
And when the apostle Paul, muses on the significance of the incarnation in his letter to the Colossians, Paul does not write:
God chose in Christ to reconcile all Jews to himself
or all gentiles to himself
or all middle class religious people to himself
But ALL THINGS to himself.
The incarnation ¿in the light of which John the Baptist preaches is the mark - among other things - of God¿s affection for the whole world
¿.for the earth as much as for those who walk on it,
¿and for the redemption of human affairs as much as the redemption of human souls.
Wet Clothes Not Enough
Hence John dares to confront people with the claim that if they are serious about changing their ways, then the proof will not be wet clothes after baptism in the Jordan, but an amendment of their economic, physical and military behaviour.
I hope someone is preaching about this this morning in Copenhagen, because the solution to the multiple dilemmas which face the world as a result of global warming will not simply be the result of a more convincing theory, a change of heart, or even by a deep spiritual stirring. It requires a total transformation of behaviour.
When people had to deal with the iniquity of slavery, the abolitionists did not say to the slave owners
Just reduce the cruelty you inflict by 20% in the next decade or two, as long as it doesn¿t ruin your economy.
When Mandela and Tutu sought the end of apartheid, they didn¿t say to Botha and De Klerk:
Could you somehow manage a staggered reduction in discrimination?
The horrendous nature of these practices was too gross for tinkering with minor amendments.
Repentance on behalf of those who sullied humanity required a total change of mind and change of practice. And this is what John articulates as necessary if we are to assent to God¿s desire for the redemption of the world. All things¿in the soil as much as the soul¿have to be transformed.
A THREATENING WORD FOR TODAY
But what a threat¿ what an uncomfortable word to hear today¿ if
if
if we are serious about God.
Let the person who has two shirts give to whoever has none
I have 22.
I counted them last night.
There are ten I haven¿t worn in a year.
Why does my wardrobe need to be better stocked than my father¿s with surplus to my requirements? And though I may plead that many are second hand, I doubt whether many of those bought new have a guarantee that whoever made them in some sweat shop in India or China was fairly rewarded for their labour.
If I cannot give a shirt to whoever has none, perhaps I should be willing to pay for the item at a price which ensures that the unseen seamstresses are well enough rewarded to afford decent clothes for themselves. Whoever has food has to share it with those who have none
Oh we have mountains of it¿
¿some estimates suggesting that we waste over 25% of what we buy.
How odd that Western rationalism which baulks at the thought of Jesus feeding 5000 people with 5 loaves and 2 fishes, rarely questions how, for all our surplus and all our global awareness, we are unable to feed the hungry crowd.
In his timely book Worldshift 2012, Irvin Laszlo begins the first chapter by noting:
Overproduction of food occurs in many parts of the world, yet someone dies of starvation every six seconds. 6 million children per year die through lack of food: 155 million are overweight.
As for exacting no more tax than what is appropriate I would imagine that today, John might slightly amend his text.
What would he say to a society which in the last few days has heard of how the very bankers who presided over the credit crunch and were bailed out by the taxpayer, are intent on doubling their salaries to avoid paying the proposed windfall tax on bonuses?
What would John say to a society in which these great purveyors of disinterested journalism - the Murdoch press - have no compunction about exposing some poor single mother who supplements her state benefit with part time cash-in-hand part time jobs, while keeping totally silent about how much New International in its various outlets has avoided paying in Corporation Tax by dint of offshore accounts?
Maybe John, instead of requiring that the excisemen exact no more tax than what is appropriate would instead say.
Exact NO LESS tax than what is appropriate
¿¿¿¿¿..
And as for soldiers being told not to bully
¿is that not a perennially required admonition?
I was in Vietnam just four weeks ago, and in Ho Chi Min City visited the WAR REMAINS MUSEUM¿.which perhaps is the necessary counterpoise to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington DC.
For while the USA remembers 58,000 troops who died in an illegitimate conflict, Vietnam bears witness not just to the slaughter of 3m people (2m of whom were civilians) but to an invading force which exhibited bullying and sadism from the war managers in the White House to the pilots of planes who cavalierly sprayed Agent Orange in an orgy of ecocide.
And why? ¿ to effect regime change.
I wonder if, at the end of the present Iraq enquiry, it will be evident from Whitehall to Abu Ghraib that the political and military operations will be reported in euphemistic anaemic language to disguise what was, in fact, an adventure in imperialistic bullying.
BUT JOHN WASN¿T SPEAKING TO THE MIGHTY
But¿
But I am aware of an incongruity in my own exposition, never mind John¿s speech. Maybe it is quite wrong to apply his words at the power broking and global exploitation of today. After al, John was speaking to a ragged assortment of humanity in the desert. He was not addressing Herod in Palestine or Caesar in Rome. He was not demanding a change of heart from Government Ministers and Army Generals. His audience was much more pedestrian
Yet this too is part of the mystery and hope of the Incarnation to which John was bearing witness.
NOT TOP DOWN
For under the dispensation of heaven, faith in top down transformation is difficult to substantiate.
We had a prime minister in this country some years ago - I forget her name for the moment- who believed that if the affluent and the entrepreneurs were allowed to flourish, the benefits would trickle down.
After the several years of her reign, her favoured process showed not signs of success. The wealthy were wealthier, the poor poorer, the gulf between them wider. God in Christ does not espouse a trickle-down redemption.
He comes into life not in a Temple Tower or a Royal Palace. He is born in a stable. He arrives not with trumpets and a ticker-tape procession. He comes in a total silence of publicity. He does not gain a worldview by rubbing shoulders with foreign glitterati, He lives for years as an asylum seeker in an alien land. He does not choose for his principal ambassadors, the most voluble orators. He trusts those who have no track record and are camera shy.
TODAY
At this important moment in global history, God loves the world as much as ever, and wills that the redemptive work of Christ pervade aid, trade, global economics and military endeavours Irrespective of what might or might not be decided at Copenhagen, it is not principally in the mighty God puts his faith. It is you whom God encourages, trusts, enables, relies on¿. you in whose hearts God has kindled the fire of love and the yearning for a better tomorrow.
TO THE ONE WHO MAKES THIS AND ALL THINGS POSSIBLE, BE OUR PRAISE AND OUR GLORY, NOW AND FOREVER. AMEN.