Forerunners

We are all called to be mothers of God,

for God is always waiting to be born.

-Meister Eckhart, medieval German mystic.

John, the Forerunner. How was Christ born? One of the ways, all four gospels tell, was through his baptism by John in the wilderness. Another was through the visions of the prophets. Still another was through the spirit and body of Mary. According to the Gospel of John, he was present from the beginning of time. Each Advent, the cycle of readings lifts up all these ways.

Matthew and Luke tell of John’s prophetic speech in the wilderness, yet they portray him differently. Matthew recalls his fire as white hot and directed toward some who came to hear him. Luke recalls him as steely firm, but tender as he cleansed them by his touch, with cool water; his fury was reserved for the king in distant Jerusalem.

Matthew recalls John zealously hurried, knowing what must be done. Luke recalls John amazed and awed that Jesus is before him. Both write that, in the wilderness, John knew Jesus as the One. But, in prison, alone, with death drawing near, Matthew writes that the shadow of doubt came into John, and he wrote to Jesus, asking: Are you the one? Or shall we wait for another?

Nelson Mandela, whose life was much like John’s, has died in Advent time. Mandela, too, was a Forerunner, of powerful life that has come and is coming. Like John, he left a number of safer paths – tribal kingship, choices for life in other countries, work as a black lawyer in South Africa, for the work of preaching that the Time for freedom was coming to his subjugated people. His speech became a threat to the powerful, who found a pretext to put him in jail as a criminal.

That the police and the politicians did not kill him was: a fluke; a triumph of the people who cherished his name and his teachings; an act of God; his own monumental spiritual survival. The same factors defined John’s life – and death.

Those who recall Mandela now are remembering his joy, his warmth. Also his steely focus. And I believe the throngs who were baptized by John would remember him that way, for it must have been his warmth that drew them to his touch in the river, and there must have been joy for each of them, rising from the water named brothers and sisters by him.

It’s been a joy in my life to have known South African Methodist pastor Theo Kotze, who was briefly Mandela’s chaplain on Robben Island. Theo often told of approaching Mandela’s cell, of Mandela asking him for prayer, of reaching his hand through the bars to take Mandela’s, and praying for him, hand in hand. But then a guard came and roughly shoved Kotze away, saying No Touching! And after that, Kotze was fired for disobeying the rules about touching prisoners. Kotze’s own life was changed by this encounter. He became the Co-Director, with Beyers Naude, of the Christian Institute, which brought blacks and whites together to reflect on apartheid. Kotze eventually was banned, as was Naude. Kotze escaped and lived in exile so that he could tell the story to the world, while Naude stayed to bear witness at home. When Mandela became President, he invited Theo Kotze to return. Mandela’s touch baptized many to new life.

Jesus sent John a message full of joy and warmth in the world, to comfort a man in a cell. Then Jesus spoke to the crowd about John, in questions that seem to address their consternation at John’s arrest. What drew you to him? Fine clothes, or the fire of a prophet? A prophet, I tell you. And there is no finer one than he. Yet, the least in the kingdom is greater than he.

In John’s note there is some despair. Mandela has spoken about this in his 27 years in a cell, the constant work of resisting it, and the ways in which his jailers tormented him with doubts. Mandela names this anguish, this hell of the soul that was his in prison. Yet from that prison he emerged with a huge capacity for joy, not for being delighted by others, which is easy for all of us, but for finding delight in others, which is a spiritual practice not easy to master, for it means ruling yourself so that you can find the better part in everyone.

Mandela included his jailers in his presidential inauguration. President Clinton asked him, Didn’t you hate them?, Mandela said, Yes, but I realized if I hated them I was still their prisoner, and I wanted to be free.

This was the freedom John the Baptist offered at the river – the freedom to break down barriers, in a baptism that makes family of Jew and Greek, male and female, rich and poor, slave and free. This freedom is an experience of the kingdom, not a permanent state of life but a break through in time. W. H. Auden described Kingdom time as existing not in our present and not in our future, but in the Fullness of Time.

Jesus knew that any of us, in Kingdom time, has greatness in us. Somehow Nelson Mandela learned to live in this time always, perhaps through the Holy Spirit, perhaps through the prayers of people during all those years.

Mandela and John had confidence enough to seek that light in everyone they met and never to doubt that it was coming. Mary has the strength to find it in a rather sinister angel, and in rebel motherhood. Jesus, too, lived in this Time. And so they are all Forerunners, waiting for us, the river of spirit-filled people to come flowing to them, soon, soon.

Sometimes our light goes out, but is blown again into instant flame by an encounter with another human being. Each of us owes the deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this inner light.

-Albert Schweitzer

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Illustrations

Altar of the Mystical Lamb, detail: John the Baptist, by Jan van Eyck, 1837, Ghent, Belgium, Vanderbilt Divinity School Library, Art in the Christian Tradition
Nelson Mandela Prison Poster.
Child Demands Release of Mandela, Herb Ritts photo, ANC archives, Gallery for Nelson Mandela Pictures website.
John the Baptist, by Ivanov, Aleksandr, 1837-1857, Moscow, Russia Vanderbilt Divinity School Library, Art in the Christian Tradition.
Nelson Mandela, photo by Herb Ritts. Public Domain Image.