2nd Sunday in Advent

Today’s passage from Mark (!:1-8) is doing its best to encourage us to prepare ourselves for what is to come.

In a Peanuts comic strip, the little bird Woodstock walks over to Snoopy at his doghouse. Woodstock, who is wearing a party hat, asks Snoopy a question. Snoopy responds by standing on top of his doghouse and starts dancing around like crazy. When he finishes, Woodstock gets a sad, worried look on his face and walks away. Snoopy remarks, “Ten minutes before you go to a party is no time to be learning how to dance!”

We might say that ten minutes before you die is no time to be learning how to forgive; and forgiveness is one of the big things we have to deal with in Advent if we are to prepare ourselves by repentance. During the week I came across the following story of forgiveness.

Many years ago in India, a group of men travelling through desolate country found a seriously wounded man lying beside the road. They carried him to the Christian mission hospital some distance away and asked the missionary physician who met them at the door if a bed was available for the man. The physician looked at the injured man and immediately saw that he was an Afghan, a member of the warring Patau tribe. “Bring him in,” he said. “For him we have a bed.”

When the physician examined the man, he found that an attacker had seriously injured the man’s eyes and his sight was imperilled. The man was desperate with fear and rage, pleading with the doctor to restore his sight so that he could find his attacker and extract retribution. “I want revenge,” he screamed. “I want to kill him. After that I don’t care whether I am blind the rest of my life!”

The doctor told the man that he was in a Christian hospital, that Jesus had come to show us how to love and forgive others, even to love and forgive our enemies. The man listened, but was unmoved. He told the doctor that Jesus’ words about forgiveness and love were nice, but meaningless. Revenge was the only goal, vengeance the only reality. The doctor rose from his bedside, saying that he needed to attend to other patients. He promised to return that evening to tell the man a story, a story about a person who took revenge.

When he returned that evening, the doctor began his story. Long ago, he recounted, the British government had sent a man to serve as ambassador to Afghanistan, but as he travelled to his new post, he was attacked on the road by a hostile tribe, accused of espionage, and thrown into a shabby makeshift prison. There was only one other prisoner, and the men suffered through their ordeal together. They were poorly clothed, badly fed, and mistreated cruelly by the guards.

Their only comfort was a copy of the Book of Common Prayer, which had been given to the ambassador as a farewell gift by his sister in England. She had inscribed her name along with a message of good will on the first page. This book served the men, not only as a source for their prayers, but also as a diary, as a place to record their daily experiences. The margins of the prayer book became a journal of their anguish and their faith.

Those two prisoners were never heard from again. Their families and friends waited for news that never came; they simply vanished without a word, leaving those who loved them in uncertain grief.

Over 20 years later, a man browsing through a second-hand shop found the prayer book. How it got there, no one can say. But, after reading some of the journal entries in the margin, he recognised its value, located the sister whose name was in the front of the book, and sent it to her.

With deep heartache she read each entry. When she came to the last one, she noted that it was in a different handwriting. It said simply that the two prisoners had been taken from their cells, publicly flogged and then forced to dig their own graves before being executed.

At that moment she knew what she must do. Her brother had died a cruel death at the hand of torturers in a run-down Afghan gaol, and this injustice must be requited. She must exact revenge … but Christian revenge.

She was not wealthy, the doctor continued, but she marshalled all the money she could and sent it to his mission hospital. Her instructions were that the money was to be used to keep a bed free at all times for a sick or wounded Afghan. This was to be her revenge for her brother’s torture at the hands of Afghans and his death in their country.

The wounded man was quiet, silenced by this story of such strange revenge. “My friend,” said the doctor,” you are now lying in that bed. Your care is her revenge.”

This is the type of Advent repentance we are called to this Advent. May I suggest that if you haven’t experienced the sacrament of reconciliation for some time, maybe even years, you are either a saint, or you’re neither being honest with your God nor yourself.

John the Baptist calls his message to each of us: Repent and be saved—prepare for the coming Messiah.