John the Baptist didn’t fulfil his vocation. The job he had been born to do went undone. He was a priest on both sides of his family. We know his father Zechariah was a priest from the encounter he had with the Archangel Gabriel during his Temple service. John’s mother Elizabeth was also from a priestly family, like her husband both of the tribe of Levi and descended from Aaron. But John never offered sacrifice in the Temple. He never fulfilled the vocation he was assigned at birth.
Instead, John takes off into the wilderness, seemingly in spite of his vocation rather than in accordance with it. And there, he appears and preaches repentance, a very different thing to what the Temple said it was about. The sin offerings in the old Temple addressed sin but never forgave them. Thus, all the people remained in their old sins. Even the priests who made the sin offerings on behalf of the people were themselves tainted. There was among them every kind of sin found in a human society: ambition, corruption, aggression, contempt. And all of them, priests and people together, were guilty but not forgiven. Any wonder then that the Psalmist prays to God: “You took no pleasure in holocaust or sacrifice for sin.” The whole thing needs to be done over.
Thus, what we see in our Gospel reading, in the Visitation of Blessed Mary to Blessed Elizabeth, is so wondrous: the babies in their mothers’ bellies are priests, preparing for the sacrifice that will at long last take away sin. John the Baptist is a priest by birth-right; Jesus is so by divine right. John repudiates the Temple; Jesus will become the Temple. John never shed an animal’s blood in worship; Jesus will offer his own blood in loving service to his heavenly Father.
The Lord Jesus is the Lamb God provides: he will take away our sins. He will create all things anew. We have a sense of what that newness will be like. Elizabeth’s old age is forgotten for the time being as her body bears another. Mary’s virginity is consecrated by God by his Spirit’s conception of his Son in her body. Everything is beginning again. We can be free and faithful to God through the sacrifice of the Lamb.
Thus, our Second Reading brings us to what Jesus made of his incarnation. The author places the Psalmist’s words on the lips of Jesus, as he looks at his new human nature: “You wanted no sacrifice, but you prepared a body for me.” The Son of God himself marvels at his Father’s will and work, and how it will be achieved in his own body. To renew all humanity, the Son of God needed a body like ours. And so, in his flesh, the impassible Son of God will suffer; the untouchable God will be cradled; the pure spirit which God is now has flesh and blood as well.
In response to that new aspect of himself which the Son has received, he prays: “Here I am! I am coming to obey your will.” No Temple priest, not even one as noble as John the Baptist, so perfectly obeys the divine will, let alone making the perfect sacrifice for sins. Jesus, and only Jesus, is the Lamb of God, whose self-sacrifice takes away the sins of the world.
Today is the last Sunday before the twenty-fifth of December. This is the last of our weekly Easters before Christmas. The Advent candles have seen better days; the Christmas crib has all but Christ in it. We celebrate on this day, and therefore anew, the sacrifice of Christ which makes us free, the resurrection of Christ which makes us new. All things begin again with Christ. All things tired are refreshed. All things which are for God are now also for Christ.
Fr Paul Rowse, OP
Parish Priest
Comments