The gospel of Luke which we are going through this year must be many people’s favourite. It has many of the most well-known of the parables of Jesus: the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the Pharisee and the Tax-Collector, the Lost Coin and many more. It has the Magnificat and the Benedictus and what is relevant for us today is the story of the birth of John the Baptist. Zechariah his father was a priest; he was old as was his wife, Elizabeth and they had no children. During the time that Zechariah was officiating in the Temple, he entered the sanctuary to offer incense: and there was the angel Gabriel with the message that his wife was to bear a son, who was to be called John. Now Zechariah was a reasonable man, not used to dealing with angels. “Are you sure?” he said, “We’re getting on a bit.” Gabriel drew himself up to his full impressive height and said, “I am Gabriel. I stand before the presence of God and I’m bringing you good news and you doubt it?” And he struck him dumb. I’ve always felt that was a bit hard on Zechariah, but there you are, the baby was born, he was named John and Zechariah’s dumbness was cured. And he expressed his joy in a poem which we now know as the Benedictus, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel.
John grew up and became – what? An itinerant preacher? A recluse? Zechariah called him the prophet of the Highest, the forerunner of the Lord. We call him John the Baptist because he preached a message of repentance for the forgiveness of sins with baptism as a sign of that. His preaching, and the call to repentance, struck a chord with the people and as it says later in Luke, they flocked to him. Now that made me wonder what would happen if John the Baptist was preaching today. People then are different from people now. In Israel at that time, suffering under Roman occupation, but with the strong sense of identity that they were the people of God, there was a widespread anticipation that God would do something about it. Everyone was looking for a Messiah. It was like the hills in summer after a drought – a spark will set off a fire which will spread and spread. John’s fiery preaching fitted in with the feelings of the time. But he always said he was not the Messiah, but the one who was to prepare his way. People now could hardly be more different from people then. They live their lives as if there’s no tomorrow and regard rules as things other people should obey. Repentance? What’s that?
Now John was the precursor of Christ, the man who prepared the way, so in many ways what he did was what we must do ourselves, but in this very different world. We need to prepare people for someone who, just as in those times, was unexpected, a surprise. Someone who fulfilled their needs, but not according to their expectations and I think that is as true today as it was in John’s time.
Today, there are two ideas, namely religion and God, which have never been more misunderstood and which get in the way of understanding Jesus. Religion is easier of the two, so let’s start with that. For people today, religion is about believing impossible things and obeying irrelevant rules. Why on earth should they want anything to do with it, particularly when it leads to suicide bombers. Well, following Christ will not lead to suicide bombers but that reaction is understandable, even though it is wrong. Religion is certainly about beliefs, but it is not just about words. We pray that what we say with our lips, we may believe in our hearts and what we believe in our hearts we may show forth in our lives. Religion is to do with how we live our lives, not so much with what we say as what we do.
And this is where people like Richard Dawkins seem to completely miss the point. Doing good things is hard – it goes against our nature. Given that Dawkins has spent his life studying evolution, for which concepts like survival of the fittest and the struggle for existence are fundamental, I really wonder how he can believe that people will be nice to each other simply because he, and people like him, say so. Religion is a whole set of practices and ways of thinking which take us beyond our animal nature and, as we say in religious language, bring us closer to God. Religion is about the values we hold and the goals we pursue and the ways we use to get there. Now it is certainly true that rules, laws, can be of benefit and are part of religion. The law is a gift of God. Lawlessness equals godlessness. But life is too complicated to be nailed down in laws or even treated with reason, as politicians have found to their cost. At some time during their time in office prime ministers always seem to succumb to trying to legislate for behaviour. And every time they fail. And that’s partly because life is too complicated, but also because we fail in our endeavours to do good. John the Baptist didn’t mince his words with those who thought that religion was a matter of obeying laws. “You vipers’ brood” he called them. “Repent, and prove your repentance by the fruit it bears.” Rules are necessary and practical, but they are incomplete and we need help when we fail to obey them.
Religion is about trying to follow an ideal and rules help us on our way. Religion is a process and that process consists of engagement with God, through prayer, worship and through our own inner life. It’s this process which gets us over our failures and points us in the right direction. And it’s here we come to that other great misunderstanding in ideas of what we mean by God. The image people have of God is an old man on a cloud, taking his screwdriver out to fiddle with the universe when things get too much for us. We all know that’s not right.
But what image can we replace it with? Religion is to do with values and goals, what is good and what evil, why are we here. Perfectly sensible questions, but unlikely to receive any answer that we could understand. We use the word, God, for all those things we cannot hope to know, so anyone who talks confidently about the nature of God in the face of this lack of knowledge is certainly wrong. So how do we go about this engagement with God, whom we cannot fully know.
It’s not so impossible as it seems, but we must use figurative language and render ourselves open to accusations of illogicality from those who insist on interpreting religious statements literally. But that shouldn’t bother us too much. There are plenty of illogical statements in physics which can be verified experimentally. Reasoning does not always lead to truth. For religion, one way in to understanding the nature of God is through poetry, as in our first reading from Isaiah. The bible is about rules and it is history and it is poetry: different ways of looking at things and all helping us to understand how we relate to God. But most of all our understanding is helped by the person of Jesus Christ. Here is something concrete we can use to understand God, or rather to understand what getting closer to God actually means. There is so much in the life and teaching of Christ – the woman caught in adultery, the parable of the Good Samaritan and above all, the crucifixion, as to dispel false notions of God and make it quite clear to us what God would have us do. There is no way you can read the gospels and take them to heart – really take them to heart – and not get closer to God.
And this image of God is so surprising, it baffled even John the Baptist. At one time, he sent his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come?” And Jesus returned him an answer, “The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are made clean, the poor are hearing the good news – and happy is the man who does not find me a stumbling block”. To prepare the way for the Lord, we don’t need to out-argue people, but we do need to present Christ. Remember that after the transfiguration Jesus said, “And I, if I shall be lifted up, shall draw all men to myself.” We don’t need to make people Christians, we do need to make them followers of Christ.
May God help us in this task.