So, have you been paying greater attention to the world?

Have there been moments of astonishment in your week?

If so, have you shared them with others?

Me – Listening to people
Olive tree

In Luke’s gospel today the writer pays attention to the time, place and political context of the story that astonishes him and which he shares with us, he does this because the context matters.

That “the word of God came to John son of Zechariah.”
In the “fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar”.
Luke also identifies the political context………….

“when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene.”

After naming Rome’s political powers, both great and small, Luke then identifies Jerusalem’s religious establishment; the story takes place “during the high priesthood of Annas and [his successor] Caiaphas.” It is worth noting that John’s father Zechariah was a priest in the Jerusalem temple.

These minor details highlight a major theme in the Advent story.
The time matters, look, pay attention now to where the power lies, to which voices are crying in the wilderness.

The “word of the Lord” through John the Baptist came neither from imperial Rome nor from Israel’s religious establishment in the temple. It did not come from someone dressed in fashionable clothes who lived in an expensive palace.

Nor from a business board room, tech entrepreneur, a sports celebrity or a religious institution.

No, God’s word to all humanity came from a wild and woolly ‘swampy’ protester who lived in the deep of the desert, on the fringes of society rather than in its corridors of power, at the periphery rather than at the epicentre.

The divine messenger and his message originated in an unlikely place and from an improbable source.

John the Baptist would have been easy to ignore if you expected or wanted something normal, safe, or traditional, which is after all our default position.

But neither John nor his message was normal by any stretch of the imagination.

John may well have been part of the apocalyptic Jewish sect of Essenes who opposed the temple in Jerusalem.

At least this much is clear — he was a prophet of radical dissent and the end, he paid the ultimate price for faithfulness to his prophetic calling.

Whereas John’s father Zechariah had been part of the religious establishment as a priest in the Jerusalem temple, John fled the comforts and corruptions of the city for the loneliness of the desert.

Theologian, Marcus Borg describes John’s message as one of both “indictment and invitation”.
We need to repent, said John, because in Jesus “the kingdom of heaven is near.” A challenge and an invitation – change your ways and you will find joy.

Repent i.e. alter fundamentally, then the kingdom will be yours he and his cousin Jesus offer a life change that will bring you deep fulfilment.

It’s the exact same message that Jesus instructed his followers to proclaim: “As you go, preach this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven is near’; it’s the message that we today need to hear and follow if we are to experience the story of Jesus: “Repent and believe the good news, that in Jesus God’s kingdom has arrived.”

The kingdom of God that Jesus announced and embodied is what life would be like on earth, here and now, if God were king and the rulers of this world were not.

The ancient Hebrews had a marvellous word for this, shalom, or human well-being. Entrance into this promised kingdom requires a counter-cultural choice.

John’s terrible indictment to repent is also a tender invitation to be our ‘best’ selves.

Repentance doesn’t mean to feel bad; it means to think differently. To repent doesn’t mean to grovel in self-hatred, morbid introspection, or pious sorrow.

It involves a change in our actions and a change in our disposition. When we repent, we turn around, change directions, choose a different path.

Repentance signals an abrupt end to life on autopilot.

Genuine repentance is a deeply personal and individually unique act, but repentance has its communal aspects, and if you are lucky, other people might help you, but no one can repent for another; you can only repent for yourself.

John urged his listeners to prove their spiritual intentions by concrete deeds rather than by claims of religious or political affiliation.

Some people took him at his word, but many in the political elite and religious establishment did not.

The political and religious leaders who rejected John got one thing right — they understood that his message was not only deceptively simple; it was deeply subversive.

About six months after John emerged from the desert like some scraggly lunatic and baptized Jesus, he was murdered at the whim of Herod the tetrarch because he had spoken truth to power.

As for the religious establishment, Jesus tells us that “the Pharisees and experts in the law” spurned John’s call to baptismal repentance, and in so doing “rejected God’s purpose for themselves”.

The prophetic word of God from John the Baptist, then, did not originate with the state powers or the religious establishment, nor did it find a receptive audience with them.

The claim of God’s kingdom upon my life, John preached, is ultimate. That means that the claims of the state and religious establishments, of race, gender, culture, and money are invalid. The earliest and most radical Christian confession was simple: “Jesus is Lord.” By direct implication, Caesar is not lord or god, and neither are all the other many false gods of money, sex, power, etc.

With his Advent announcement John urges us to spurn anything and everything that hinders our allegiance to Jesus.

In an established Church of England this is hard if not impossible, I suggest to you that from within the confines of the House of Bishops it is Bishop Helen Anne Hartley of Newcastle who is the lone voice in the wilderness.

That it is the medics and journalists desperately trying to get their voices heard from the Gaza strip that are the ones crying in the wilderness.

Will we listen, will we cry out, will the church repent?