By Elizabeth Anderson
The new trial use commemorations approved by the Episcopal Church’s 2018 General Convention include several feasts that are both ancient and widespread,...
One of the best things about Advent is the presence of John the Baptist, that hair-shirt-wearing, locust-eating, wild-man prophet, the “voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.”
Perhaps we could say that what the Baptist said does not matter as much as the fact that he said it, how he said it, to whom he said it, in whose name and by what authority he said it, and at what cost he said it. Perhaps what Jesus says about his own good works and about John’s confrontation with the authorities, even if it hardly amounts to a political philosophy, is what the Church needs to sure of before it can have a political philosophy. Perhaps if we have a problem with Matthew 11 it is that it just too clear and simple to be ignored.
The Gospel reading for this week, in which John called all of us to repent is indeed good news. It is good news precisely because it demands that we face God’s grace and allow ourselves to be changed by it.
This Advent has been different. The early push to Christmas decorations in the mall and the early rush to Christmas music on the radio grated, if it is possible, a little bit more.
John the Baptist figures prominently in our Advent worship, but, in some of the lectionary readings, we meet a Baptist not only charmingly eccentric, but, well, unpleasant.
