Borders and the Gospel
For the Vigil of the Solemnity of the Nativity of John the Baptist.
There has been much discussion of borders and the term ‘humanitarian crisis’ has been ubiquitous; for years now with the refugees of Syria, now in Yemen, and of course on the Mexican border. Perhaps you don’t want to hear anything more about it, and I sympathise with that. Though, one of my mentors, a great Augustinian and scholar of Augustine, Tars Van Bavel, always told me: ‘you should preach with the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other’, because Christianity is incarnational, it speaks to the particular needs of each time and place. Indeed, the readings for the Vigil of the Solemnity of the Nativity of John the Baptist speak to these issues in an important way.
John the Baptist has been seen, traditionally, as a kind of bridge, from the Old Testament to the New, and we see this in the reading from Luke. The last verse of the Old Testament, at the very end of the Book of Malachi (4.5 or 3.24), reads:
See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.
And as we have just heard, the angel of the Lord proclaims to Zechariah:
He will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb, and he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. He will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn their hearts toward their children and the disobedient to the understanding of the righteous, to prepare a people fit for the Lord.
What apt words at this particular moment.
John the Baptist spans the borders by fulfilling the coming of Elijah, and thus carrying on the prophetic tradition, bridging the old covenant and the new, preparing the way of the Lord. There are many symbolic references in Luke pointing to how the lineage of John the Baptist, as well as his purpose, span all the way back to the bestowal of the covenant itself. His parents are said to attribute their ancestry all the way back to Aaron, the brother of Moses. Spiritually, they represent the lineage of all of those through the ages who have kept the strongest of faith, persevering in waiting. They are a kind of new Abraham and Sarah. Their names are significant, and even more so when they come together. Zhechariah, means ‘God remembers’, and Elizabeth means ‘the oath of God’. Their son’s name, John, means ‘the Lord is gracious’.
Pope Francis has noted that Christians should build bridges, not walls, so that the way of the Lord remains open, the way that is gracious, that is Love incarnate. As John the Baptist says, we have to clear the way, prepare the way of the Lord, keeping it free from obstruction. Pope Francis has been very busy having to speak to the multitude of ‘humanitarian crises’, noting that in many ways the situation is as bad as the crises caused by the Second World War. When I think of the word crisis, I always go back to the Greek origin of the word: κρίνειν (krinein), to decide. Crisis means a decision has to be made. In a humanitarian crisis, the decision is: should we turn toward the human, or away. This sounds simplistic, but that is because it is a fundamental decision, that goes to the very core of our being. We choose love, or we don’t. The word ‘crisis’ (κρίσις) appears in some form many times in the bible. It is usually translated as ‘judgement’. So here I think of the ‘judgement’ in Matthew 25: ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of my brothers and sisters, you did it to me.’ We helped, or we didn’t. We welcomed the stranger, or we didn’t.
Of course we know that it is more complicated than this in our world today, because of laws and politics, etc. However, this should cause us to ask ourselves: are those laws just? Are the laws oriented toward the human, or the inhuman? Do they nurture the goodness of humanity, or diminish its dignity?
Doing what God asks of us, trying to live in accord with the Reign of God, is certainly not easy; and can in fact be quite dangerous. It has gotten many people killed. John the Baptist was beheaded. We can think of more recent martyrs like St. Oscar Romero, who told the Catholics not to obey the Salvadoran government’s immoral orders, even those in the military, and he was shot dead.
This is quite scary. How can we have such strong faith, to remain faithful to the way of Love, even in the face of evil, persecution, violence, and possible death? This may seem very foreign to our notions of faith, in safer regions of the world, but it is a reality for many of our brothers and sisters. So how can we have the faith to be there for our brothers and sisters in their time of persecution?
Let me lighten things up here a little, though, without turning away from what we must face.
How often have we heard at mass: ‘The Gospel of the Lord’, and responded: ‘Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ’? Probably quite a few times. I’m reminded of a time, and you might be able to think of a similar occurrence, when the priest used the phrase quite emphatically in the middle of his homily: ‘The Gospel of the Lord…’, and before he could finish the rest of his sentence, many in the congregation had already unconsciously blurted out: ‘Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ’. I remember thinking sarcastically to myself, ‘good to know people are paying attention’.
We are human, and it can be very difficult to stay focused, to pay attention, or not to get distracted. How do we stay attentive to our goal of ‘putting on Christ’, and having Christ living in us, at the core of who we are?
Looking at Peter’s letter: ‘…the things which now have been announced to you’. What is it that has just now been announced to you? The Gospel. It is important to think about what that really means.
The message we are fortunate enough to hear in the ‘Good News’ of the Gospel, we are reminded by Peter, was foretold and anticipated by the prophets, who ‘searched and investigated it’, or ‘searched diligently’ (ἐξερευνάω) for it. The lives of the prophets were, of course, by no means easy; most being scorned throughout life, then meeting a rather terrifying end. They knew this, and they knew that they would not live to see the result or the fulfilment of what they were working toward. So, why did they do it? God asked them, yes. But as Peter reminds: they did it for you. ‘It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you…’, so that we could hear this message and be transformed by it. But also then to carry it on. Peter’s letter is addressed to communities who are being persecuted for their faith, and so are tempted to conform to the societal standards instead of living in a Christlike manner. He’s trying to encourage them to keep heart, and stay focused on what is important—salvation.
And what is salvation but entering into and deepening our relationship with God and our neighbour; being attentive to maintaining a bond of love and trust with God and neighbour. Who is our neighbour? Jesus tells us it is those we might tend to see as enemies, as strangers, as unworthy of our help, as bad people. These are the people Jesus called ‘the poor’. These are the people with whom Jesus spent most of his time; to whom Jesus brought the Good News. We are called to love and embrace these brothers and sisters of ours, with joy and alacrity, because this is how we love Christ. Being called to live this way, loving those most in need, is what invites us to participate in God’s ever deepening love.
One way to develop this kind of faith, that embraces and does not exclude those in need, even when it is difficult or dangerous, is to remember our dependence on God. This has a radically humbling, but also wonderfully liberating effect. God tells us: ‘before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I consecrated you’. What a beautiful truth. The psalmist sings: ‘since my mother’s womb, you have been my strength’. When we put our trust in God, we have the freedom and strength to be the very person God made us to be. These words remind us of our being made in the image and likeness of God. One of the ways I like to think about what that means is that: being in deep relationship, of love and trust, with God and our brothers and sisters in God, is our deepest identity. It is what it means to be consecrated; it is our purpose.
When we turn to the altar in the Eucharist, it is not only the bread and wine that are consecrated, or transformed into the true Body and Blood of Christ, but all of us as well. Augustine reminds us of this very humbling and powerful idea in his Sermon 272:
So now, if you want to understand the body of Christ, listen to the Apostle Paul speaking to the faithful: ‘You are the body of Christ, member for member.’ [1 Cor. 12.27] If you, therefore, are Christ’s body and members, it is your own mystery that is placed on the Lord’s table! It is your own mystery that you are receiving! You are saying ‘Amen’ to what you are: your response is a personal signature, affirming your faith. When you hear ‘The body of Christ’, you reply ‘Amen.’ Be a member of Christ’s body, then, so that your ‘Amen’ may ring true!
In the Eucharist we are all transformed into the presence of Christ. This can be extraordinarily empowering, giving us the strength to be Christ’s presence to others in the world. This means treating others as Christ would. It also means that, as one body, the pains of our brothers and sisters are our pains, their fears are our fears, and their needs are our needs. This is what we are committing to when we say Amen. So Augustine also says:
All who fail to keep the bond of peace after entering this mystery receive not a sacrament that benefits them, but an indictment that condemns them.
Therefore, we look to Christ’s example, so we can love one another as he has; we look to those around us who are strong examples of what it looks like to bring Christ’s love to others; we try to envision what it would look like for us, and for all of us, to strive truly to be the Body of Christ. This vision is, then, the Good News, which when lived and carried out, through the Holy Spirit, is so marvellous that even angels long to look upon it.