Written by During the first pandemic lockdown in 2020 when our roads and streets became traffic free, the lack of transport noise led many of us to appreciate the world of nature in ways we had never done before. In that Spring, we heard rapturous birdsong and on our daily bouts of exercise saw our surroundings in new ways. That more peaceful lifestyle motivated some people, who could afford it, to leave town and city life and move to live in the countryside.
John the Baptist, we are told in today’s Gospel, also withdrew from town life to live, in his case, in a wilderness. However, it seems John withdrew there not just for solitude but in disgust and to challenge the religious leadership officiating in the towns and villages.
In today’s reading John singles out the two groups in Judaism that angered him most, the Sadducees and Pharisees. Although they were traditionally enemies of one another, John lumped them together in his withering criticism.
The Sadducees were the aristocrats of Judaism. They held high positions in the priesthood and had incomes and lifestyles to match. They were deeply conservative and accepted only the teaching of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, and insisted that everyone should take part in the sacrificial worship they conducted.
The other group, the Pharisees, were lay people, not clergy. Theologically, they were liberals, the opposite of the Sadducees. They interpreted and promoted the study of other books in the Jewish Bible and insisted that the worship of God, built around the Scriptures, could take place in synagogues and not just in the Temple. (Where the Sadducees promoted worship led by the priesthood, the Pharisees favoured what we might call a priesthood of the laity or ‘non-ordained people’.)
What particularly angered John about these groups was their sense of privilege and exclusiveness. They saw themselves as special and looked down on others, taking pride in their heritage and religious practice. This angered John and made him rage against them. He described them as ‘brood of vipers’ and told them that that their sense of being true children of Abraham, the father of their faith, was misplaced. In direct and simple language he told them ‘you need to radically change if you are to be ready for what is to come, something that will be bigger than you anticipate. You ned to prepare for the divine judgement that the Messiah will bring.’
To reinforce his point about this coming judgement, John used imagery from the agricultural world of the time. He compared the process of judgement to farmers winnowing grain at harvest time. After the stalks had been cut down, they would thresh the grain to break down the kernels into their components of wheat and chaff, which, of course, remained a mix in need of sorting. The sorting would be carried out on a windy day when forkfuls or pans of grain would be tossed into the air to let the wind separate the grain from the useless chaff. In the wind the lighter chaff would be blown off to one side while the heavier grains of wheat would drop back to the ground in a heap. Later, the chaff would be swept up and burned. So which are to going to be, John asked: the grain that is saved or the chaff that is burned?
John’s expectation was a terrifying image of God, although it must be tempered by its context of time and place. Nevertheless, having to face God and account for how we have lived is an uncomfortable (and inescapable) part of Our Lord’s teaching in St Matthew’s Gospel. As we proclaim in the Creed, ‘he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead”.
Fortunately for us, however, the dreadful events predicted by John were replaced by Jesus’ message of God’s mercy and compassion. For us, then, and to get the balance right, we need to have a proper fear of divine judgement but an even greater trust in God’s love.
In the First Reading, Isaiah presents a beautiful vision of the Messiah opening up a new age is which not just people but the world of nature would be transformed. Blessed with remarkable gifts, this person, he said, would bring about harmony and peace in an era of reconciliation and justice, not just among humans but in the animal kingdom as well. How this vision challenges us now when the relationship between humans and nature has never been more broken, and the peril of climate change hangs over us while wreaking havoc amongst the poorest nations and people’s on earth. What kind of divine judgement awaits us for this calamity?
Michael Campion
Holy Name, Jesmond
4 December 2022
Sunday Mass: Saturday 4pm, Sunday 10am 