Advent 3. John the Baptist – The curious teachers life gives us
Preached at St Andrew Droylsden
Luke 3.7-18

Here’s a quirky question for you; an Advent brain teaser to ask your friends and neighbours over the Christmas mince pies.
Raise your hand if you know the answer.
How many beans make 5?

This secret-sacred wisdom was passed down to me by my father
and by his father before him.
I do not know how many generations back in my family I would need to go
before finding out who first asked the question….
Or – who knows – perhaps it’s just a piece of music hall banter picked up from the radio during the blackout.
But I shall certainly pass it on to my youngest daughter as I have to my older two.

How many beans make 5? Do you know…………?
Once my father had passed the answer on to me with much fuss and ceremony
(and oh how I wish he’d actually made the same effort to pass on to me the more important ‘facts of life’ I so needed to know!)
there I was set up for life, with the answer to one of its more burning questions…..

How many beans make 5?
Mr Tomlinson, my history teacher, looked around the room as he asked the question to class 5W.
There was stony silence amongst my peers….
Reading our blank faces he bellowed again, with increased desperation and outrage,
demanding to be told the answer, as he might have routinely demanded of us the date WWII began
the date his life was changed for ever.…
How many beans make 5?

My moment had come; ever the swot, I sensed the fateful hand of unforgettable triumph descend upon my head.
I raised my hand and answered. Please, sir, I know….
Do you?
The answer provoked a gasp of disbelief around the class room.

‘This boy’, said Mr Tomlinson, ‘has more wisdom in his little finger that in the rest of your heads put together.’
My triumph was short lived, as was my enhanced status with Mr Tomlinson, who died shortly afterwards.
But the revenge of my class mates was long-lived and, for them, delicious….
How many beans make 5?
I wish I’d never known!

Sometimes life gives us extraordinary teachers. Mr Tomlinson was one of them.
Unique, unforgettable, complete one-offs,
as were my father and grandfather.  Bless them all.
And often the things they tried to teach us were nothing compared to the things we actually learned from them.
Life can be like that, can’t it?

John the Baptist was one such teacher. Just like my Mr Tomlinson.
Awkward, unkempt, unorthodox, uncomfortable to be around;
more than slightly mad.
John the Baptist was Jesus’ teacher. Or – more accurately – Jesus hung around him for a while at a formative time of his life.

And twice a year the church remembers John the Baptist.
We bring him out of storage, dust him down and wind him up. Just like clock-work.
In the summer John is a wanderer, dressed in camel skins and eating locusts.
An ox of a man smelling of animals and sweat who lost his head after a party trick went wrong…

In the wintertime, Advent III – today – John spits and swears and waves an axe about his head,
threatening to split us clean in half, straight down the middle,
unless we start to mend our ways…..
How many coats should you have?
How much food do you actually need?
How many locusts make 5……?
The end is nigh, time is running out…

John is uncomfortable company for us as we realise our own time is running out in the rush to get Christmas sorted.
He screams out difficult questions with seemingly impossible answers that tie us in knots,
but which refuse to let us go.
How much?
How many?
Why do you do this?
Why do you want that?
What’s life all about…? Tell me. Answer me. You there at the back. Raise your hand if you know the answer….

Jesus was fascinated. What a teacher this man was for him.
He hung around him for a long while and listened; following him from town to town across the wilderness.
more than once finding himself on the end of John’s rough and ready tongue…..

In fact all the people who daily came out to run the gauntlet of his rage
felt that the radical message John had,
the difficult questions he asked,
the unforgettable impact he had,
(the way he really got up the noses of the religious leaders of his day)
singled him out as a man who could lead a revolution;
turn the known world upside down. If he wanted to.

The crowds openly spoke of him as the Messiah
(when they could get a word in edge-ways, that is!)
‘Are you the Messiah, the one who is to come and lead us, defend us, unite us, inspire us, teach us….?’
But he only shook his head and wiped the sweat off his brow with the back of his hairy hand.

The real teacher was still to come, he said;
It wasn’t him – but another.
one whose legacy would not be rough words and angry gestures,
one whose stories got under your skin and made you scratch your soul,
one who would never lose his head, but simply give his life….
John’s teaching was an inspiration; but, like many teachers,
often the things they tried to teach us were nothing compared to the things we actually learned from them.
Jesus’ pondered John’s questions
and then knew he had to find his own answers,
find his own path, go his own way and respond to the calling that was his and his alone.

Jesus eventually left, taking with him John’s passionate desire for justice,
a few of his best followers
and a knack for asking awkward questions.
He left the wilderness to John and chose, instead, the towns, villages and marketplaces….

Three hectic years ahead of him. And uphill all the way.
But, as he sat around the fires with his closest, and a cup of wine to cheer their hearts,
it was something he felt he’d been born to.
He remembered the stories his mother had told him about his birth,
wondering how much of it was fact or fiction,
and he cherished the things his father Joseph had told him, passed down for generations;
he remembered his teachers, their strange ways and endless, curious questions in the Temple.
He remembered the sense he’d had at his baptism,
the possibility he’d sensed in his being,
the need to say YES;    to assent to the calling he felt, rising within him,
the need to speak out and make a difference
to ask awkward questions and somehow find the answers…

How many beans make 5? 
Does it matter? I’ll tell you, if you like….. But you may not thank me for the answer.
Let me ask you instead, a different question;
a quirky question for you; an Advent brain teaser to ask your friends and neighbours over the Christmas mince pies.
Raise your hand if you know the answer.
Soon it’s Christmas once again. And, who knows, perhaps our last…. ‘What then should we do about it?’
And will our answer provoke a gasp of disbelief………?

Terry Biddington

 

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