 |
||||
|
2 Sunday Advent B. |
|
||
|
||||
The personality of the week as we prepare for Christmas is John the Baptist .I imagine that his father, Zechariah was a high profile man in the Temple, and his mother Elizabeth a very religious woman. The Temple was as busy as a shopping centre. The bankers took advantages of business there too. The parents of John would have wished their son to follow the religious traditions of his people and be a cleric in the Temple. What happens? John becomes a kind of religious hippie; a rebel against some Temple devotions. He wears outlandish clothes to mark his message. He eats weird foods. He lives rough, and he shouts ‘Change your hearts and thinking or you can’t change the world. There is One coming who has a new message for all the world, that life, is not about show off religious practice or temple trading. The One to come is for the poor, the under privileged, the outcasts, the lepers and people of the street .The love of God is the love of people, all kinds and all sorts. The Shopping Centre is a kind of temple. It is vast, ornate, and busy with life. I saw Santa’s Grotto there last week. Like the Temple, the Centre has an abundance of blessings. Isn’t it strange that the very blessings can distract us from the important message of Christmas, which is love of God in loving one another. Father Andrews tells parents who worry about the religious practice of their children, that religious devotions, even creeds may not be that important, but to give our children a capacity to love, to learn to love, IS all important. The Christ of Christmas that John preaches is about the power of love, not the love of power.
|
||||
|
||||