Posted by Second Sunday in Advent
At that time when John had heard from in prison the works of Christ, sending two of his disciples he said to him: Art thou he that art to come, or look we for another? And Jesus making answer said to them: Go and relate to John what you have heard and seen, The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the deaf rise again, the poor have the gospel preached to them: and blessed is he that shall not be scandalised in me.
Today is the Second Sunday in Advent. Last Sunday the lections focused on the second coming of Christ in glorious majesty at the end of history. Today, the lections focus on the nature of his first coming into the world in great humility. The question asked by St. John the Baptist is “Art thou he that art to come, or look we for another?” In his preaching John the Baptist had looked forward to the coming of one who would baptise with the spirit and with fire, who would separate the wheat from the chaff. He had pointed to Jesus as one in whom his hopes would be fulfilled, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He must decrease in order that Jesus might increase. The implication of his question from prison (he had been imprisoned by Herod Antipas) is that the ministry of Jesus in Galilee had taken a different course from the one that he was expecting. Where was the separation of the wheat from the chaff that John had looked forward to? Jesus answered by referring to the fulfilment of the hopes of the prophet Isaiah about the eyes of the blind being opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. In other words, though future in its fullness, the Kingdom of God was now being manifest in Jesus’ words and mighty works. He was indeed the one who would come, the fulfiller of the hopes of Israel, but this was his first coming in great humility to preach the good news to the poor. His final coming in glorious majesty to separate the wheat from the chaff was still to come.
“Blessed is he that shall not be scandalised in me”. The doctrine of the coming of the Messiah into the world not at first in glorious majesty, but in great humility was, as St. Paul put it, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks. But why was it such a stumbling block? It was a stumbling block to the Jews because they did not recognise a coming of the Christ into the world in great humility before his final coming in glorious majesty. This is what St. Paul means when he says that the Jews look for signs, in other words signs of the messianic age. For when the messianic age dawned everything would be different. In this present world there was a contradiction between what is (the reality of sin, suffering, disease and death) and what ought to be (the realisation of God’s purposes). The Hebrew prophets therefore looked forward to a new age when God’s purposes for Israel and the world would finally be fulfilled. A new age would dawn and God’s kingdom would finally be established on earth. The nations would come to Jerusalem to hear the Word of the Lord. They would beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears intro pruning hooks. Nation would not take up sword against nation, neither would they train for war any more. Every man would dwell under his own vine and fig tree and no one would make them afraid. How then could Jesus be the promised messiah when the world remained still very much under the thrall of sin, disease and death? The Christian answer, building on Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel, is that it was indeed the case that the first coming of the Saviour did not fulfil all of the prophecies of the Old Testament for they would not be all fully realised until the final coming of Christ at the end of the age, in that new heaven and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. But, though future in its fullness, the prophecies of Isaiah about the eyes of the blind being opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped were already being fulfilled, and the good news was that God’s Kingdom was already being inaugurated in the person of his Messiah. In his life, death and resurrection he had defeated the powers of evil, had taken it upon himself and somehow subsumed it into good. He had inaugurated a final period of grace in which the good news that he preached to Israel would now be preached to all nations so that they would renounce idolatry and turn to the one true God, before the final coming of his kingdom when the earth would be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea.
If this message was a stumbling block to the Jews it seemed simply foolishness to the Greeks for they looked to enlightenment from philosophy rather than from a crucified Saviour. When St. Paul preached in Athens he seemed to those under the influence of the philosophers to be talking nonsense. Perhaps when he referred to the Greeks who sought wisdom he had in mind this incident and the difficulty he had in getting his message across. The philosophers differed widely among themselves but they all agreed in cultivating a certain detachment from the world of suffering. For the Epicureans (in some ways the forerunners of the modern materialist) the world was without purpose and design. It was therefore best to have as much pleasure as was possible within reason and to put up with the rest of life with all its trials. For the Stoics the universe was governed by a divine principle (Stoicism was essentially pantheistic) and since creation was itself divine nothing was really wrong. It was therefore best to cultivate detachment from things and to cultivate a spirit of self sufficiency, to accept what pleasure one could in moderation and to put up with the rest of life with all its trials by adopting an attitude of detached indifference. For the Platonist this world was only a shadow of the eternal world, so the divine was as far removed as possible from the world of time, of change and suffering. It was therefore best to cultivate a certain detachment from this world, which was only after all a world of shadows, and cultivate the higher wisdom of philosophy.
It is worth emphasising this point because it is sometimes supposed that it was easier for people in the ancient world to accept Christianity than it is for people today. It is often said that people were less sophisticated and sceptical in those days than they are today. In fact, the difficulty the pagan world had with Christianity is that it seemed to people to be more primitive than their own tradition, a “superstition.” The message of a crucified saviour seemed crude and unsophisticated when compared to the enlightened wisdom of the philosophers. Far from being an advance on the age of Christendom into a superior age of enlightenment our age is in fact regressing to the old world of paganism, in which people put their faith in materialism or in pantheism and it is seen as desirable to avoid suffering at all costs, to accept what pleasure one can and to put up with the rest of life with its trials and tribulations.
But for those with eyes to see, the coming of Christ into the world was indeed the fulfilment of the hopes of Israel and of the world. It is the same Christ who came into this world in great humility who will come again in glorious majesty to judge it at the end of time.
Stir up our hearts, O Lord, to prepare the ways of thine only begotten Son; that through his coming we may attain to serve thee with purified minds, who livest and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.