Second Sunday of Advent, December 4, 2022 – Isaiah 11:1-10; Romans 15:4-9; Matthew 3:1-12

For over a dozen years, part of my assignment in the Archdiocese was to work for the Office of Communications in the Chancery Building and that assignment would find me every other week at 1330 Avenue of the Americas. That is the headquarters of the ABC Network, and it’s a very beautiful part of Sixth Avenue. The building has a large outside plaza. You walk up two stone steps from the sidewalk and then there’s a big open area with two sets of stone benches, and in between the stone benches, beautiful plantings. Whenever I would arrive, there was a guy sitting or standing among the benches. His name was Moondog. At least that’s what they called him. Moondog. He was dressed in a leather tunic with a leather belt around his waist, no pants, and buskins for his shoes, and a Viking hat with the big horns, the whole thing, and a staff in his hand. And he would harangue passersby, especially those coming in and out of the building. Now, that building housed the corporate offices of one of the most powerful media networks in the country, the facilities of WABC local radio, ABC national radio and WPLJ, among other things. So, some of the most famous, and some of the wealthiest people in the country came in and out of that building every day. It always struck me as odd that they never had the cops remove Moondog. I often wondered about that. I suspect that some of those people going in and out of the building might have occasionally slipped Moondog a ten or a twenty to keep him from starving. 

Sometimes we have very strange people who dominate our society or our history for a brief moment. Henry David Thoreau. He wrote one of the first American classics, On Walden Pond. And yet, even among a pioneer people who lived ruggedly, he chose to live in absurd poverty. Took himself out to the woods, to a little cabin, and lived there, winter and summer for three years or more.

In the past century, think of Mahatma Gandhi. All he did was sit in a room and pray and fast, and yet much of the history of the twentieth century revolves around him and that gesture that got him martyred. The peace movement, the racial movement, the collapse of the British Empire, all revolve around that one rather absurd figure. 

Maybe these people I’m talking about will give us a lens into understanding John the Baptist. For us, John the Baptist is a saint. We have statures of him everywhere. As a matter of fact, Canon Law requires that the only decoration there has to be in a Catholic baptistry is a statue of John the Baptist. Go figure. And he’s so important to the Hispanic culture, that his feast of birth, June the 24th, is celebrated as a national holiday in several countries. And even us, in very cosmopolitan New York City, has a San Juan Fiesta on that day, or the nearest Sunday to it, every year.

But John the Baptist was crazy. All four gospels talk about him. There are several things that all the gospels have in common, but the image that we get has been toned down by centuries of prayer to St. John the Baptist. This morning we were told he was dressed in camel’s hair clothing, with a belt around his waist. That kind of outfit would have been abhorrent to his fellow Jews. He showed way too much skin. He ate locusts and wild honey. There’s a prohibition in the Torah against eating insects.

And so, who is this man? Only St. Luke gives him a genealogy and a pedigree. Luke tells us that he was the son of Zachary and Elizabeth. And, moreover, that Zachary was a member of the Tribe of Levi. They were all descendants of Aaron. Which means that they were some of the most prestigious families in all of Israel for centuries and centuries. And furthermore, that John’s father, Zachary, was a priest. Which means that he was a temple dignitary.
Now we are told that John was preaching and baptizing at the Jordan River, near the desert. That is exactly geographically accurate if his family lived in Jerusalem, because Jericho is only about six miles away. The desert extends right out from the bottom of the mount on which Jerusalem is built. So that’s right. That’s where he was. It really was that kind of place. Water and desert at the same time.

The message that was mentioned this morning. Isaiah’s “A voice of one crying in the wilderness. Makes straight his paths,” is something that the Christians found in the Book of Isaiah that helped then to understand John the Baptist, and also, in a way, to marginalize him, to tame him down. But his message, his message, is very interesting because the Essenes, those people who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, that were only discovered in 1949 and changed everything we knew about the Old Testament. The Essenes lived right near Jericho. And it’s very likely that John the Baptist, sometime in his teenage years, became fascinated by the Essenes, who were radical Jews. Who did not follow the culture of the rest of the Jewish people. Had no use for the temple priesthood. Thought they were scoundrels. And so, maybe John the Baptist was an Essene.

Now, only St. Luke tells us that John the Baptist and Jesus were related by blood. But it’s interesting that Matthew - the gospel we read this morning - Matthew has a secret conversation between John and Jesus, that indicates that somehow or other the two of them knew each other before Jesus got baptized by John. And even St. John, the gospel writer, suggests things about John the Baptist that suggest that he may have been a radical. One of those people fulminating to overthrow the Roman Empire. Because they appeared all the time. From the second century B.C. to the end of the first century A.D., all sorts of rebels rose up to try and overthrow Rome. They all ended the same way. They had a big following for a while. They preached fire and brimstone. They said everything was going to come to an end. They got arrested, they got crucified, that was the end of that. John the Baptist may very well have been that kind of bizarre and crazy guy. So why is he so important to us? Because he speaks at a time of crisis.

There is a story that the word “crisis,” in Chinese, is made up of two symbols. One symbol is “danger,” the other symbol is “opportunity.” Now, the Chinese themselves would tell us that’s not true; it’s a mistaken notion. But it’s a fascinating concept, isn’t it? That a time of crisis brings with it two things simultaneously - danger and opportunity. And that’s what John the Baptist is speaking about. Danger to the souls of the people to whom he’s preaching. “You are in danger of losing salvation. But you also have an opportunity to change your life. To do things in a different way.” And that’s what he says to the Sadducees and Pharisees who come out from their offices in Jerusalem to listen to him. He says, “You’re a brood of vipers. You’re corrupt. But here’s an opportunity to turn things around.“ That’s what comes down to us as the story of John the Baptist. 

Aren’t we, in effect, in a time of crisis? In our social life. In our political life. In our civic life. It’s a time of danger. Every night we watch the news with trepidation that what’s going on in Ukraine, is going to turn a cold war, hot. It’s a time of crisis and danger in our own society. It is also a time of opportunity. We have all sorts of things going on now that could be the seed of better things to come financially, racially, culturally. Those seeds are being planted. If we water them, they will grow.

But this is also a time of danger and opportunity in our own lives. You know, I am talking to a congregation this morning largely in the second half of their life. That’s when the doctor sends you for tests, and there is danger. That’s when things begin to change in your life, and there is danger. But there is also opportunity. Some of you get to be grandparents, a few of you great-grandparents, for the first time. You get to deal with children again, with all of the joy, and little of the responsibility. But with a great deal of wisdom that you might not have had the first time around. Your children are discovering what it means to be parents, and so now they see you in a different way. A new kind of companionship can grow up that wasn’t there before. There is danger. There is opportunity.

I’m going to suggest two simple things as we journey our way through Advent. The first is this. You’re all here at Mass on Sunday, and most of you come whenever you can on Sunday. We have Mass every day of the week, except Saturday. Why not – you know, I don’t want you to go to Mass every day in Advent. That’s ridiculous. Even I don’t go to Mass every day during Advent. Thank God for Father Mathias. But pick one day, just one day. Go home today and mark it on your calendar. And then pick out a snow day, ‘because this is December, and this is Wurtsboro. Pick out a snow day. Mark those two days on your calendar and go to Mass one of those two mornings. And journey with Jesus. And pray to Jesus. Pray to the Father through Jesus and the Holy Spirit, for those things in your life that are dangerous, and for those things in your life that offer opportunity. 

The second thing is this. If there is danger in our lives, in your life and mine, it is likely that it comes from some sort of acrimony, some sort of distancing. Pick up the phone. Call that person. Break the ice. Or, if it’s that other kind of danger, go to confession.  We have confession here every Saturday from 4 o’clock until about a quarter to five. The Diocese has Confession Day all throughout the Diocese of New York, the Diocese of Brooklyn, and the Diocese of Rockville Centre, on Monday, the 19th. In the afternoon and evening, every church is open for confessions. I go to dialysis, so we don’t have confessions here that day. But I have confessions the next day, Tuesday, the 20th, from 4 o’clock right thru 7:30 or 8 o’clock at night, right thru.

It might be time to deal with that thing that’s a danger to your spiritual life. Simple things, but things that turn a time of crisis from danger into opportunity. I think even crazy old Moondog would agree.