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Years ago at the height of the Swinging Sixties, I saw a production of Samuel Beckett's play, "Waiting For Godot", for the first and only time in my life. It was an amateur production, staged in French, remarkably, at the College of Saint Mark and Saint John which was at that time situated in the King's Road, Chelsea.
Beckett's plays are certainly distinctive, to say the least, and Waiting For Godot rather chimed in with the spirit of the theatrical and philosophical times – Les Temps Modernes, as Jean-Paul Sartre's philosophical journal was entitled. On the one hand, on the West End at the time were such productions as Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar – but also Hair [this is the dawning of the age of Aquarius!] – whilst on the other, I was watching Waiting For Godot and was reading Jean-Paul Sartre's play whose title in English is usually rendered, "In Camera". Both these two plays are very bleak, and the only line most people remember from the Sartre play is, "L'Enfer, c'est les autres"… Hell is other people. After chairing some Church Councils in previous circuits, I know what he was getting at.
Now, I am going to spoil the plot of Waiting For Godot for you – Godot never turns up in the end. There is this bleak, but somehow inevitable conclusion – yes, we are alone after all. But that is not what the prophecy of the prophet, Malachi, promises: The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. Not only is there a power in the universe beyond yourself, but that power is going to send you a messenger to convey his intentions. Not only that – that power himself – call him God… everybody else does – is going to come to you in person, although not necessarily in the form, or at the time, that you may be expecting: the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple…
Make your choice… faites vos jeux… either, as Sartre and the Existentialists said, there is nothing else, only you and me in a bleak and godless universe, or, as the Bible promises, there is a God who actually seeks personal relationships with the sentient creatures in the universe that he has made, and who is even willing to visit those creatures in a form that they can understand – even in a form that they could choose to reject.
Well, think positively. Let's go for the second choice, shall we? There is a God and he is coming to his people. What are the down-sides of that choice? If he does come, it is going to interrupt your life's chosen routine rather. I have a fridge magnet on my filing cabinet to remind me of that. It says: Jesus is coming… look busy. God present with his people will expect a move towards a lifestyle more in tune with his holiness of nature rather than with their selfishness of their natures. God's messengers, who announce his coming, will constantly niggle away at that message for you. That is the burden of the message of the Old Testament prophets… live more like God wants you to live… remember the commandments… remember the covenant. The last of the prophets, in the tradition of Old Testament prophecy, was John the Baptist. There was none other, because after him, God himself came to us in human form.
So much for the theory. Do you understand it? Well, if you are like me, your honest reply to that question would be: on one level, yes, but on another, no – I do not understand all the depths and subtleties of it. For a start, the Old Testament prophets don't always make godliness sound like fun, do they? There always seems to me to be a lot more Thou Shalt Not rather than Thou Shalt. And you struggle to find many references where it says and thou shalt also get a tremendous buzz out of doing the right thing. For the most part, the prophets' favourite tactic was to tell you how miserable you would be if you did the wrong thing. My favourite cartoon based on the Old Testament depicts a very miserable looking prophet with somebody saying to him, "Cheer up, Jeremiah. It may never happen." Humour can sometimes cut through a lack of understanding or appreciation but, even so, the message of the Old Testament prophets in relation to the true nature of God is often difficult to understand – and, in understanding, to relate that to your own living today. Not everything in Old Testament culture and ethics crosses two and a half thousand years without some sort of evolution. So, what can we do about it to attain a clearer understanding?
Go back to the image of me as a young undergraduate considering an obscure and impenetrable French play. What is the first thing that I would do? Well obviously, I would try to read it. If that was difficult, and I couldn't picture what the play was trying to get at, what is the next course of action open to me? If I could find a current production, I would go and see it acted on the stage, by real actors, doing it for me, there before my very eyes – the mind of the author of the play brought to life by members of the acting profession, representing the author's ideas to me. But if that was still too difficult to understand, what would be the ultimate, although most unlikely, way of having the plot explained to me? Surely, that would be if the author himself came and led a master-class on the plot of the play and the motivation behind it?
From the beginning of the ancient society that was to become Israel, the people lived by the Ten Commandments and the detailed regulations of the Law of Moses. They didn't find it easy to do so. It was easier to make the excuse that codified Law was inaccessible to the ordinary man in the street. So God sent the prophets as his representatives and messengers to explain more clearly the implications of the Law and the cultic regulations of their society. The trouble was that the prophets always seemed to be telling you off rather than encouraging you in what you managed to achieve and in what you did well. The messengers of the covenant were rarely a delight to the people who were trying, but largely failing, to live by it.
And so in the very last book of the Old Testament, the prophet Malachi promises you a messenger who will please you greatly: The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. Why will you be so pleased by a prophet this time? Because this prophet is going to tell you that the author of the whole plot is going to come and live out among you how it should be done. The author sends his son to do it, but since the work of the son and the father are, to all intents and purposes, the same, you are going to get the ultimate master-class in what life, death and future hope are all about. Unlike in the play, Waiting For Godot, this character is going to turn up.
There is one further twist to the plot at this point… I send my messenger to prepare the way before me… the last of the old prophets, John the Baptist, stands in the waters of the River Jordan, baptizing all those who want to prepare for the coming of the Lord by renouncing their sinful ways. As with all messengers, John the Baptist both gives the message and anticipates its fulfilment… the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple… Into the river steps a young carpenter from Nazareth.
Suddenly? No, not suddenly. Secretly, perhaps, for he has already been living amongst them for thirty years… living out the master-class. And now he steps forward onto the biggest stage of all. Is that the beginning of a story and a message in which you can delight, in these days which turn towards his birth?