“Voices in the wilderness”.

In autumn 1931 the great Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi visited Britain. His passion for independence, his advocacy of fair trade and support for the poor were already known, and the visit was a personal triumph, widely reported in the media. During Gandhi’s time in Britain he met national figures such as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lloyd George and Charlie Chaplin, and visited centres of learning and culture such as Oxford, Cambridge and Eton. True to his ideals, he also went to poor places including London’s East End and the mill towns of Lancashire, still in the grip of Depression, where he was received with enthusiasm. The one person who refused to meet Gandhi was Winston Churchill, who sneeringly called him a “rebel fakir”.

The main purpose of Gandhi’s visit was to attend a “Round Table” conference in Birmingham – which, like so many such events, turned out to be a waste of time. Before the Conference began, the delegates were invited to take tea at Buckingham Palace with King George V. However the Secretary of State for India was hesitant about including Gandhi. This wasn’t just because he didn’t know if the King would be willing to meet such a revolutionary. He was also concerned that There was also the Gandhi wouldn’t observe the usual dress code for such occasions. Finally the invitation was sent and Gandhi did attend the reception.

And he didn’t observe the dress code! For he wore his trade-mark home-spun loincloth, which must have made a great contrast with everyone else’s formal attire. Afterwards journalists asked Gandhi if he had felt uncomfortable. He was a master of the one-line comment and replied, “Well, the King had sufficient clothes on for both of us”.

Gandhi was one of the most charismatic political figures of the early 20^th century, still hugely respected today. Even though there were other Indian politicians pushing for independence, it was his clothes, his frugal life-style, his refusal to be corrupted and his dramatic political acts such as the 240-mile Salt March, which caught peoples’ attention. In many ways Gandhi has become an icon or even a prophet of non-violent action, for people of all faiths and none. (And, I have to say, he was like many other prophets: obsessively determined and difficult to get on with. Perhaps that’s par for the course).

Here at the beginning of the Gospel story we find another unorthodox and determined character with an unusual taste in clothing: Jesus’ cousin John the Baptist. Although Luke’s Gospel gives us an insider’s story of his background and birth, Matthew’s does not. Instead John simply bursts onto the scene as a fully-pledged adult preacher, calling on people to turn from sin and come back to God. In the stuffy world of formal religion, John comes as a breath of fresh air: his appearance is striking, his message is uncompromising and direct, his demeanour is sincere and strangely compelling. Against all the odds, people from all Judaea come streaming out into the desert to hear him.

I’ve often thought that John appeared out of his proper time, that he was an Old Testament prophet who emerged four centuries after his predecessors. His message was consistent with theirs as, following in the true prophetic tradition, he both told people to return to God and foresaw the coming of God’s Messiah or Liberator. But there was one crucial difference in John’s preaching from what had gone before: his Messiah wasn’t some vague, mysterious figure who would materialise at some time in the future. John was convinced that his appearance lay just around the corner – and, as we know, when Jesus did come onto the scene John immediately cried out, “Look, everyone: it’s him!” It would be interesting to know how long John’s ministry had been going on for before that happened – long enough for a band of faithful disciples to have been formed, that’s for sure.

I’m sure you’ve all heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls that were produced by a Jewish sect called the Essenes. Some scholars have suggested that John was one of them; and, even if he wasn’t, he may have been influenced by them. Certainly John and the Essenes both saw their role as preparing for the Messiah and both followed the ancient tradition of God speaking in the ‘wilderness’ – for every Jew recalls that this is where God revealed himself to Moses and later gave the Law. John may not have directly referred to that – the quote about “a voice crying in the wilderness” comes from Isaiah, not Exodus – but I’m sure he knew that his desert preaching was a powerful symbol.

Well, John the Baptist lived two thousand years ago – yet his message about turning from sin to God still needs to be heard. We must also notice John’s stinging criticism of religious leaders and ask who are today’s equivalent of the Pharisees and Sadducees, smugly confident in their Biblical orthodoxy and virtuous lifestyle. Are they to be found in theological colleges, bishops’ palaces, ministers’ manses – or in the pews? That’s something to think about: the answer might surprise us.

Now we do have to be very wary of self-styled prophets as what they say doesn’t necessarily come from God! For instance in October 2020 Denise Goulet, the senior associate pastor of a church in Las Vegas, welcomed Donald Trump to a service and declared that he would win the upcoming election. She was very specific: “At 4.30 a.m., the Lord said to me, ‘I am going to give your president a second win. He will be the president again’.” Goulet was by no means alone; and even after Trump’s defeat there were American pastors – some with 100,000 followers on social media – who predicted that the result would be declared void and that Trump would return to the White House. They were clearly wrong; yet one man, Jeremiah Johnson, who was bold enough to admit it received a torrent of abuse, death threats, and accusations that he was “a coward and a traitor to the Holy Spirit”!

However there are others who, I think, are genuine prophets –although we may never have heard of them. As I was preparing for this service I came across Bastiaan Wielenga,  a Dutch missionary who went to India, settled there, taught theology and became an Indian citizen; he died at the end of 2015. So why do I say that he might have been a prophet? Well, as a Christian Marxist he swam against the tide of capitalism and was convinced of the need for an international peace movement. More to the point, he was thinking through a Christian approach to the environment long before ecology became “mainstream” – in fact Christians have a terrible record on matters such as climate change, often treating them as side issues which have little to do with salvation, and regarding them as the preserve of mad scientists, pagans and tree-huggers. As long ago as 1999 Wielenga wrote a book called “Towards an Eco-just Society” and his lifestyle matched his words: for instance he never owned a car or even a motorcycle after coming to India but always walked, cycled, or used public transport. I suspect that many people thought that he was a bit of an “odd-bod”; but they must have said that about John the Baptist as well. Was Bastiaan Wielenga another voice crying in the desert? Perhaps. Can we repent of our misuse of this planet? We must.

Someone you may perhaps have heard of is an American called Jim Wallis. For 50 years he edited a magazine which challenged (only with limited success) the unholy alliance between evangelical Christianity and right-wing politics, and promoted the “Common Good” rather than the “American Dream”. It’s been said that he “changed the public conversation about who owns God and God-language” and that “the moral voice he was trying to cultivate was a voice in the wilderness”. Wallis has his critics: some younger Christians believe that he should have been more openly involved in party politics and that he ought to have championed the cause of equal rights for gay people earlier than he did; they may be right, but he was speaking in a different time.

Now, at the age of 73, Wallis is taking up the issue of American democracy which, he believes, is fundamentally rigged against black people who can so easily lose the right to vote. He believes that this isn’t just a political issue but a moral and theological one: “We were all made in God’s image and likeness”, he says. “Voter suppression on the basis of skin colour throws this away”. Is Jim Wallis a modern John the Baptist? Some people clearly think so; others clearly don’t.

You may or may not agree that Bastiaan Wielenga and Jim Wallis were and are Christian prophets, although you might be happy to give that title to figures such as William Booth of the Salvation Army who exposed London’s poverty, Dietrich Bonhoeffer who resisted the Nazis, and Martin Luther King. Certainly they, like John, were exceptional public figures whose words and deeds marked them out from the crowd. But what about the rest of us Christian ministers? Should we be criticised just as John censured the religious leaders of his day? I’m afraid that the answer may be “yes” as we’ve often failed to speak about issues which concern us, fearing the backlash it may provoke.

For instance, back in 2002 the ‘West Bank Security Wall’ was starting to slice through Bethlehem, surrounding houses and throttling its economy. I played with the idea of focussing peoples’ attention on this monstrous structure by asking my church to cancel all our special Christmas services and activities and saying why. That, I thought, would make a prophetic statement: but I was too lily-livered to suggest it. There have also been the times when I’ve wanted to say, “We’re not going to do Remembrance Sunday this year as I’m so uncomfortable with the language that’s used, the pomp and ceremony, and the implicit link between patriotism, the military and our Christian faith. We’ll do an alternative service for peace instead”. Again, I’ve never dared to do it – or even dispensed with the red poppy and worn a white one alone. And over the last few weeks I have, for many reasons, felt very unhappy with the football World Cup. But did I challenge you to think seriously about the World Cup, even to the extent of not watching the matches on television? I did not. So I’m clearly not courageous like John the Baptist but a bit of a coward who dislikes controversy. I say that to my shame.

And what about the rest of us? – for surely all Christians are called to “raise our voices in the wilderness” and challenge the way things are. That may not be easy (and I take my hat off to activists in China, Iran and Afghanistan who have openly criticised their leaders even though they know the likely consequences); but are we just too willing to keep quiet because it makes for an easier life? What we should be doing is questioning the world’s values, but we often prefer to accept the status quo, following the herd and staying silent when tricky issues crop up in day-to-day conversations. I can’t imagine John doing that!

For we live in a wilderness of people who don’t know or care about God; a wilderness where people worship consumerism and materialism, where they are told that they have a right to every pleasure, whim or fancy, where offerings are made with clicks on a keyboard or with plastic cards. At Christmas, especially, Christians can – and should –  be saying, “Stop! Enough! What on earth do you think you are doing?” As one Catholic writer puts it: “Can we, this Advent, be the voice of hope crying in the wilderness pointing to a different way of life, a life which has meaning and purpose? Can we too cry out against injustice and oppression? For whenever we do something, however small, which leads to hope rather than despair, which gives comfort rather than brings pain, we are the voice crying in the wilderness. Whenever we show the love of Jesus in our words and our actions, we are the voice crying in the wilderness. We, too, can be prophets”.