40 years in the wilderness

This is the subject matter of the 5 th Advent Antiphon: O Morning star, splendour od light eternal and the Sun of righteousness. Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death. According to the historical book of Numbers this star will arise in Israel with a sceptre top rule over God’s ancient people. According to the Gospel of Mathew priests of an alternative religion saw a star in the night sky and followed it to Jerusalem. There they enquired of the then King, Herod, where the child had been born who would be King of the Jews. In Bethlehem, was the answer, which means the house of bread, the gift of wisdom to her people. According to the prophet Isaiah there is a sense in which we are all living in darkness and need enlightenment. Whilst the Psalmist can lament that too often our experience is like the shadow of death. Leonard Cohen has a song in which he remarks that it is only through the cracks in the pot that the light can get in. M

Jesus came proclaiming and Incarnating an alternative empire to Rome. It was an Empire characterised by service and love rather than by domination and cruelty. He came to his own people, largely, and incurred the wrath of the authorities by threatening the establishment. Not only did he reject their interpretation of their own scriptures but he established an alternative purity system. At that time there was a very narrowly defined set of conditions of and for those that were deemed acceptable. Acceptable to the power brokers who controlled the means of access to God, namely the Temple. Those who were untouchables, sinners, women, tax collectors ie agents of Rome, Samaritans and so forth. It should be clear that this was a patriarchal structure, defined in terms of gender and race that was intended to exclude. Similarly it should be clear that in word and deed Jesus exploded such exclusivity and inequality. Indeed at one point Jesus suggested that were the Temple to