John the Baptist song

I have found this Song by Peter Kearney to be very insightful about John the Baptist.

JOHN AND JESUS         Peter Kearney

Of John and Jesus, the rise and the fall -

John was the prophet, the greatest of all

And Jesus the saviour whom God did send

They had the same message and came to the same sudden end.

 John kept to basics in food and in dress

He made his home out in the wilderness

The down and the out were his neighbours there

He showed us a way when we didn't know where to begin.

He said: Come on everyone to the river to drown

To be tumbled and tossed, turned upside down

Change your heart, come clear your mind

And find your feet on new ground.

One day the Pharisees came from the town –

Smooth talkin' men in their fancy gowns

And John he said - "you're a brood of snakes

You know every law but not what it takes to be good!"

He spoke without fear and news of him spread

The poor, like children, came to hear what he said

He wasn't giving them stones, he gave them bread

They fed on the truth - every word that he said said it all.

John gave a warning- "destruction is due!"

The people asked him - "just what should we do?"

"If you've got two coats then one is to share

If you have power, be sure you are fair to the poor."

You know that Jesus, when he came along

He went straight to the river to be baptised by John

He took his place where John took his stand

Brought news of a Kingdom where the poor of the land could belong.

*

Herod the King liked to hear John speak

What he said made him nervous but he sure was unique

Then John criticised his plans to rewed

So they put him in prison - before very long John was dead.

And how many people since Jesus and John

Spoke out the truth and soon were gone

After naming the names of the snakes in the pile

They're gone - but just for a while.

*

"What did you go to the desert to see?

Was it a reed shaking in the breeze?" "

Oh no it was a wiry tree

Growing up strong in a place where a tree shouldn't be!"

http://www.peterkearneysongs.com.au/

Song also available on Itunes to download.

John the Wild Man

Wild Man John exhorts people to fight within their times against their temptation to believe that they can have the riches of Caesar’s kingdoms and the endless pleasures of the empire and still be God’s people.

John inveighs, calling them a brood of vipers who choose to flee from the real work of preparing the world for God. Repent! he exhorts them, urging them to follow a different drummer – him, and the One who is to come.

... God’s earth has always belonged to all people  – people who have moved across  continents and seas, moved bodies and souls, languages and religions with them. Somehow the church has allowed privatization to encroach upon our minds and our land. And somehow the church has allowed  hospitality for the stranger, the persistent biblical theme, to fall into dishonor among the people of God.

Our flight has been into fantasies that are ungodly at best, demonic at worst. The fight Wild Man John urges is for us to separate ourselves from all of this, in a warfare of repentance, of turning away.

This infested darkness, this bog of angers that has hold of our souls, is the place where the Presence will come. Born into no palace but in an animal’s stall, laid in an animals’ trough, then fleeing from war, the Child and his immigrant family have no papers as they arrive in Egypt, where they live as refugees outside the system, the father working any job he can find, the mother, too.

John’s repentance begins with an acknowledgement that God does not need us. We need God, who insists on joining us together as brothers and sisters, us and all the despised people in the world, this motley crew of religions and pieties.

Just getting to that relationship requires a terrific fight.

Everything else follows on from there."

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/biteintheapple/advent-fight-or-flight/

John and Jesus

"John dreamed of the peaceable realm and so do we. He never lived to see its full embodiment, but he planted seeds that enabled Jesus to move forward as its messenger and embodiment. John is Advent personified: he embodies the fierce urgency of the now, but not yet. He is impatient with our foolishness and sin, and wants us to be better. As Advent messenger, he knows that salvation occurs through the transformation of one person at a time. This very moment is the right time for us to let go of the past, turn away from our half-heartedness and complicity with injustice, and find a new pathway to God’s peaceable kingdom, one step and one breath at a time.

The uniqueness of John’s message is a good theme for this Sunday’s sermon. His radical vision, preparing the way for Jesus, challenges us to prepare the way for Jesus’ mission in our time. Our preparation is a matter of deeds as well as words. Walking in the way of Jesus involves a commitment to constant transformation and renewal, to changing our ways in response to God’s wondrous gifts of grace. Like John, we are challenged to announce the coming of a world not yet born, critique our own and our community’s hypocrisy, and recognize that Christ’s presence demands a radical reorientation of values so that we might recognize the realm of God already emerging in our midst."

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/livingaholyadventure/2013/12/the-adventurous-lectionary-the-second-sunday-of-advent-john-jesus-and-spiritual-friendship/

Jesus Prophet

a hopeful imagination

Each one of us is a prophet. There is a prophet within, and it is not the part of us that tends to say, you have been bad and you need to beat your self up. It is a part of us which can leave us feeling uncomfortable if we are spending our lives living only for our own profit, with no reaching out to others, especially the poor; it is a part of us which we tend to try to squash/repress if we are too comfortable. The prophet is the part of you who longs for change, (in us and around us) and sees its possibilities. The prophet has a vision of how things could be and urges us on to that sacred place. They have what a theologian called Brugemann called, a hopeful imagination. God calls us to have just such a hopeful imagination. God sends you and me as prophets to witness to hope and God's unfailing love. Like the prophets before us, may we never be silenced.

El Greco, john the Baptist

I love the earthiness and depth in this painting. He is not depicted as mad but reflective and sincere.

Che Jesus

Che Jesus,

They told me that you came back to be born every Christmas. Man, you're crazy!

... with this stubborn gesture of coming back every Christmas you are trying to tell us something:

That the revolution that all proclaim begins first of all in each one's heart,

That it doesn't mean only changing structures but changing selfishness for love,

That we have to stop being wolves and return to being brothers and sisters,

That we ... begin to work seriously for individual conversion and social change that will give to all the possibility of having bread, education, freedom, and dignity.

That you have a message that's called the Gospel,

And a Church, and that's us­

A Church that wants to be servant of all,

A Church that knows that because God became human one Christmas

there is no other way to love God but to love all people.

If that's the way it is, Jesus, come to my house this Christmas, Come to my country,

Come to the world of men and women. And first of all, come to my heart.

Anonymous, Cordoba, Argentina, at Christmas, 1970

El Greco, John the baptist