The candles are burning low, the wax is dripping and pooling, time is passing and time is running out.
The charge in the smart phone is almost gone.
The gas gauge is running low, is the next gas station close enough?
The boat is taking on water, the mad scramble for the life boats.
A life approaches its end, are there days or hours left?
Will the harvest be gathered before the rain spoils the crops?
Time is pouring out of the clock, like sand from an hourglass, it is almost empty.
Time. Thick and slow as molasses and gone before you know it like a falling star.
John the Baptist shows up, and we suddenly feel the full weight of time.
There is urgency, expectation is poured into us and we are filled to the top and running over.
Something wonderful and scary is about to happen.
Someone wonderful and upsetting is about to arrive.
Be filled with expectation, hope and fear.
John is considered the greatest of God’s prophets, those visited by God’s Word who speak of things to come.
The prophets don’t predict the future, biblical prophecy is not about predicting the events of human history. The prophets rather announced the arrival of God’s future, the approaching collision with God’s history, the in-breaking of God’s Kingdom into our human activities.
The prophets speak of things that challenge how we live and how we understand the world. They tell us we are in a hurry about the wrong things and that we put off or deny the things that really count.
They always tell us that time is running out to reorder our lives according to the approaching Advent of God.
John’s vision of this approaching future is simple and eloquent, to share sacrificially with those who are without. It’s a vision of an economy based on gift rather than exploiting need.
And then he follows up with how we live with this approaching economy of gifting and sharing while in the middle of an economy that works by collecting and hoarding when he addresses the soldiers and tax collectors.
The way the Roman Empire worked at the time was that soldiers and tax collectors were what we would consider to be thugs selling protection, they took what they pleased and paid a cut to the next level up in an organization with the emperor at the top.
So tax collectors and soldiers were not thought very highly of,
but they made their living in a world of shameless exploitation. John simply told them not to abuse their authority, to be content with their normal wages.
This is the challenge that the prophets bring to our lives, to live as if God’s kingdom were here, even though it isn’t yet. The prophets force us to live in between these two kingdoms, to feel and struggle with the contrast of the “already but not yet”.
How do we prepare? How do we welcome? How do we make room?
What does it mean to repent? To bear good fruit?
How do we go about living in an economy of gift, of sharing while in the middle of an economy that works by collecting and hoarding?
How do we go about not taking advantage of the weak and the vulnerable?
How do we faithfully use our authority and power to serve rather than extort?
There is an urgency to the Gospel that we often forget about it, lost in the hustle of a busy life, we forget that time is the gift for bearing fruit, not for being in a hurry. There is an urgency to use what time we have the right way. John the Baptist won’t let us get too comfortable with the way things are.
The urgency is to know God more fully, to long to encounter God in how we live, to be expectant to experience the transforming presence of God in the world, to be anxious about living in the divine pattern of an ordered universe that has fallen out of order. The hope is that the brokenness will be healed, that sadness will turn into joy, that pain will turn into dancing.
Will I bear the fruit of love in time?
Deliverance is at hand, please hurry.
This is what Advent is about, this is what it feels like, time sweet as honey and as cutting as a knife.
John baptizes us into God’s time, and all our clocks get wet and quit working.
The candles are burning low, the wax is dripping and pooling, time is passing and time is running out.