3rd Sunday Advent B - Homily 2

Homily 2 – 2008 

You’ve got a few Johns to cope with today: There’s me, John, reflecting on another John, the Baptist, as he is presented in today’s Gospel passage by a third John, the Evangelist.

For John the Evangelist, the significance of John the Baptist is that he bore witness to Jesus.  He was the one whose role was to introduce Jesus onto the public arena and to identify him as one greater than he.  Further into the story, John the Baptist would give witness to the fact that Jesus, like the Lamb of God, was destined to take away the sin of the world.

We, too, in our different ways, are called to witness to Jesus, not necessarily by getting up on a soap box or a street corner or setting up a TV company and making televangelists of ourselves.  I like the comment attributed to St Francis of Assisi: “Proclaim the Gospel at all times.  But use words only when you have to.”  How, then? How can we witness to the presence and the power of Jesus, and to the way that he takes away the sin, the destructiveness, of the world?

Indeed, what do we see as the world’s sin? the world’s destructiveness? Sometimes it is hard to describe - since we are so used to it.  It’s everywhere.  We don’t notice it.  It’s a bit like the polluted air you sometimes see settled over the city of Melbourne as you come down the Pentland Hills on the highway near Bacchus Marsh.  It shows up in the myriad ways that people fail to respect the dignity of other people.  It is hauntingly clear in the countless war zones that scar our world.  It is written on the faces of raped women and hungry, disease-ridden children.  It is less clear, less confronting, less stark, perhaps, in our own little corner of the global village, but is nevertheless there in thousands of ways whenever we distinguish “them” from “us”.

Jesus’ answer to the mutual destructiveness of people was to love them – to see their dignity and to respect their dignity – whoever they were.  With eyes wide-open, he accepted the vulnerability of love, perhaps even the futility of love, and, rather than withdraw from his insistence on the way of love, he allowed himself, as the Lamb of God, to become victim of the world’s fears and aggression.

We witness to the impact of Jesus by taking on, after him, his way of redeeming our world.  It is fascinating to see the power of his way working so effectively in so many people - in so many of you - in the ways that you relate to others in love, expressed through your respect, care, protection, even advocacy, within your families, the local community, the wider world – shown, quite simply sometimes, by your listening to people, accepting them as they are, reaching out to relate to them, using your own giftedness to teach, to serve, to protect, to speak out on their behalf, and so on ….

These are the some of the ways in which, like John the Baptist, we, too, witness to the light that is Jesus.