On the Road Together
Reflection for the 2nd Sunday of Advent 2024
Sisters and Brothers in Christ,
As a kid trying out for a sports team, I remember the coach instructing us that making the “assist” to pass the ball at the right moment, or helping to give an opening to the one carrying the ball was as important as being the one to make the goal. While I didn’t make the team, I never forgot the lesson. I also recall once standing in the way of a video screen, oblivious to someone trying to see the program being shown until she said, rather insistently, “it is better to be a window than a door!”
When I read about John the Baptist’s disposition toward Jesus and the way he took up his prophetic role, I couldn’t help but remember these two lessons.
John was a strangely charismatic figure who drew people to his preaching as if he were a magnetic celebrity. People who were incorrigible public sinners, people of high status, those who were eagerly anticipating the Messiah, as well as those ordinary folks who were drawn to eccentricity or novelty… they all came to the River Jordan to hear him. Many people in these large crowds followed his warning of repentance and baptism and became his disciples. Even if his message seemed frightening, and imposed challenging demands for a change of life, there was a compelling quality of truth and authority that people recognized in him. They couldn’t miss the dramatic example he gave of someone who had allowed himself to be entirely purified of worldliness and given himself over entirely to serve a mission beyond himself.
But despite his popularity and influence, John also knew his place. He had not only been purified of worldliness and freed from the external preoccupations for prosperity, security, or secular power. He was also liberated spiritually from anything that would distract him from his singular purpose, preparing the way for Christ. He was a ‘way maker’, along the lines of the Prophet Baruch, leveling the roads through the mountains and filling in the valleys so that people could find their way toward the Messiah when he finally appeared. And when the time came, not only did he step aside and point the way for his own disciples to join Jesus, he allowed himself to be sacrificed so as to not be a distraction. He made the ultimate “assist” for the mission. John became a window clear enough to reveal the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
John The Baptist in the Desert by Philipe De Champaigne (1602-1674)
I find John’s singleheartedness and clarity of purpose both moving and powerful. When I think about how I take up my leadership role, his example prompts me to ask myself, how am I a “way maker” for Christ? To what extent am I free enough of worldly distractions and self centeredness to allow all that I am and all that I do to point beyond myself?
Suffice to say, I know I have lots of growing to do in this department, and that this kind of purity of heart and purpose is not something that can be accomplished by willpower or discipline. In fact, using willpower and discipline against ourselves can have the subtle but contrary effect, making us into the focus and object of attention.
Rather, John’s singleheartedness and his clarity of purpose is a response to a love so powerful that nothing else is remotely close. It frees him from self concern, fear, or any anything else that might limit his devotion to serving as Christ’s way-maker, to being a window rather than a door.
As we undertake this spiritual journey of Advent, how might we open ourselves to perceiving more profoundly how intensely God loves us and to allowing this love to liberate us in the ways it does for John? When we ponder the gift of the Incarnation, at the core of this mystery is God’s desire to self-communicate that love in a way that astounds us with humility and wonder: arriving as a baby born into a cold and unwelcoming world. Are we ready to open our hearts again to pondering this mystery, allowing ourselves to be freed from anything that gets in his way?
Together on this Advent Journey,
