It is
easy to find truth; it is hard to face it, and harder still to follow it…. The
only people who ever arrive at a knowledge of God are those who, when the door
is opened, accept that truth and shoulder the responsibilities it brings. It
requires more courage than brains to learn to know God: God is the most obvious
fact of human experience, but accepting him is one of the most arduous.
Fulton Sheen Lift Up Your Heart
Why do we bother to read
the Bible? It’s a serious question. It’s just a load of stories isn’t it? It’s
all made up; we don’t have to believe all that stuff, do we? That’s what the
world would have us believe. Jesus is something half-way between a hippie and a
social worker, and so on and so forth. The Church gives us a very simple answer,
it points to Christ, who is the author and fulfilment of scripture, this is why
Scripture teaches us, and gives us hope. Unlike those people who keep saying
that the Church doesn’t need to read the Old Testament, that the picture of God
is all wrong, that it’s all about patriarchal oppression – men being nasty to
women, we affirm the whole of Scripture and its truth and divine inspiration,
because it points us to Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, the Word of God, the
beginning and the end of scripture, and its fulfilment, the Way, the Truth, and
the Life. When the Church reads the Bible we see Christ foretold, perhaps nowhere
more than in the prophesy of Isaiah, who points to Jesus’ life and death so completely
that he is sometimes referred to as the Fifth Gospel. He points to Christ, so
that we can live in the way God intends us to.
In this morning’s Gospel John the Baptist fulfils the message
of the prophets, he has a message which is as true now, here, today, as it ever
was ‘Repent, the Kingdom of God is at hand’ He calls us to make a spiritual u- turn,
to turn our life around, to turn away from what separates us from God, our
sins. He calls us to the waters of baptism, so that we can be healed and restored
by God, filled with his grace, and prepared to receive the Holy Spirit: “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after
me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize
you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Mt 3:11). The problem with the Pharisees
and Sadducees who come to John is that they do not show the repentance
necessary, they haven’t made the u-turn, they don’t have the humility to
recognise there sinfulness, and the need to be washed in the waters of baptism.
They are confident that they are children of Abraham; they don’t have the right
attitude for God to be at work in their lives.
As well as seeing Jesus as our
Saviour, John the Baptist sees Jesus as Our Judge, he points to the second
coming of the Lord when, as St John of the Cross puts it, ‘we will be judged by
love alone’. It is love that matters –
in Christ we see what love means – costly, self-giving and profound. As we are
filled with His Spirit, nourished by Word and Sacrament, we need to live out this love in our
lives. This is how we prepare to meet him as we prepare to celebrate His Birth
and look forward to his Second Coming. So let us be prepared, let us live out
God’s love in our lives, let us turn away from everything which separates us
from God and each other, let us live out that costly, self-giving love in our
lives, as this is what God wants us to do. It is through doing this that the
world around us can see what our faith means in practice, how it affects our
lives, and why they could and should follow Him.
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