Earth and Heaven

2nd Week of Advent - Thursday; Memorial of St Lucy (13 December 2018)

Isaiah 41:13-20. Psalm 145:1,9-13. Matthew 11:11-15.

“If you will believe me, John the Baptist is the Elijah who was to return.”

To understand Jesus we may have to understand John the Baptist and his role in the gospels. Jesus today has high words of praise for John the Baptist. John had a unique role which sets him apart from all others: he was the one to announce the long-awaited arrival of the Messiah. John is the last in the line of the great Old Testament prophets, men who spoke in God’s name pointing the way for God’s People, at times denouncing their behaviour and at others pointing to a great destiny ahead. John forms a kind of bridge between the Old and the New Testaments.

John the Baptist is described as "Elijah who is to come." We know that the prophet Elijah did not die a natural death. He was carried off to heaven in a chariot. However, it was a Jewish belief that some day he would return from heaven to this earth, and even have a normal death. But the important point was that his return would be the immediate prelude to the arrival of the Messiah. Therefore, in calling John Elijah, Jesus is clearly pointing to himself as the Messiah.

Even from his mother's womb John is called to prepare the way for the Lord. "As for you, little child, you shall be called a prophet of God the Most High. You shall go ahead of the Lord to prepare his ways before him" (Luke 2:76). John is a voice crying in the wilderness, calling the people to transformation and conversion. He baptises Jesus in the Jordan, and symbolises that God becomes as available as Jordan River water. It is after Jesus' Baptism that the heavens were suddenly opened. What does it mean to have the heavens opening? It means two worlds becoming one, the sacred and the secular coming together: the joining of earth and heaven.

The work of religion is to put together earth and heaven, darkness and light, night and day, death and life, and thus find they are one mystery. There is no separation between holy and profane, useful and worthless, good and bad. Lao-Tzu's Tao Te Ching, considered the wisest book ever written, says: When people see some things as good, other things become bad. That is to say:

If we see some things as good, then other things become bad.

If we see some things as beautiful, then other things become ugly.

If we see some things as blessings, then other things become curses.

If we see some things as miracles, then other things become ordinary.

If we see some things as God, then other things become not-God.

And such a vision is not real.

From God's point of view, nothing is worthless. This is what we need to learn. There is nothing that is not holy, there is nothing that is not useful or unworthy. Our Creator didn’t use gold, uranium, diamonds, or pearls when making the human body, but just dust (earth). Everything is holy and worthy if we have learned how to see.

Good things, bad things; good people, bad people. These opposites are valid only by contrast. Could it be that whatever seems bad to you is just something you haven't seen clearly enough yet? In reality—as it is in itself—every thing, every person, lies far beyond your capacity to judge.

As John the Baptist (the Elijah who returned from heaven to earth), we are called to join together earth (dust) and heaven.