A QUESTION OF FAITH

With Anthony Thacker, Minister of Burbage Congregational Church

AS 2016 draws to a close, we reflect on a momentous year, a year of profound transformation – or at least the promise of change.

This was of course the year in which the British people voted to leave the European Union. And Hinckley, as elsewhere, will have included people who voted on each side. Among those who agreed with the desire to leave the EU, there will be many, I suspect, who are impatient to see this decision implemented; and among those who voted to remain in the EU, many will have the opposite feeling. Either way, we have been told by our Prime Minister to wait until March 2017 before Article 50 is triggered, and that after that, there is expected to be a period of negotiation before the UK actually leaves the EU. We are in a time of waiting.

Similarly, 2016 was the year when the citizens of the United States voted to send Donald Trump to the White House. Though once again, Americans – and the rest of us – are in a period of waiting. In the US system, the election winner starts as Presidentelect. Americans will have to wait until January next year to see Donald Trump inaugurated as President, and then discover how he will act as President. They are in a time of waiting – and as the USA affects us all, we are also in a time of waiting.

And 2,000 years ago, people were also in a time of waiting – not because of a vote but a voice, the voice of prophecy. To be sure, the prophets of Israel had spoken ‘at many times and in various ways’ as the biblical book of Hebrews sweepingly put it, sometimes offering a word of challenge or comfort to their own times, sometimes declaring God’s word of warning or of promise for the future, often saying both. But now that voice was heard again, ‘the voice of one calling in the desert, “Make straight the way for the Lord”.’

They were in a time of waiting – but not passive waiting. They were waiting for the Messiah, but not simply waiting. As John the Baptist was to prepare the way for the Lord, so they too were to prepare for him, by repenting of their sins, making a change in what they actually did with their lives, and being baptised as the prophetic symbol that they were serious about this.

2017 has not happened yet. But during that year we shall see various changes, some expected, some surprising. When Jesus appeared, John proclaimed he was the Messiah, but was then surprised by Jesus, with his radical, unexpected forgiveness. And Jesus surprised the top politicians of his day, Caiaphas, Herod and Pilate, baffled by Jesus’ message, spoken and lived, that sees real change, not by exercising power, but by expressing love.