Everyone was 'filled with expectation' (Complete Gospels, ad loc.) because of the justice the Big Dipper demanded from the ordinary people (v.11), those in the public sector (v.12), & the armed forces (those with physical force on their side, v.14). Except in the Law & the Prophets, no-one had heard such things before. Unless justice is done in this world, what is the point of it being done in a next one. It's too late! Jesus no doubt heard JB's plea when he was baptized with 'John's baptism', even if being who he was gave him inside information on what God expects. Our own baptism into Him is a baptism into a world-view with God's love & justice at its centre. One of the many great weaknesses of indiscriminate infant baptism is that it leaves our induction to the good(?) intentions of someone else rather than the one being baptized accepting personal responsibility for living a life of 'doing justice, loving mercy, & walking humbly with our God'. The justice angle is every bit as important as getting our theology right. Without it, theology skews away from its Centre & goes out of orbit in the process!
Do we have an expectation in our churches that God not only will act but does act to bring justice & all his other good gifts of grace to bear in / on our lives? In the church circles in which I move I don't sense much of that kind of expectation. Just like those who come to hear JB & then Jesus, I emerge out of the same old hopelessness. Except for an occasional prophetic & servant voice crying in the wilderness, I sense little inward & see little outward expectation that God will ever do anything! By doing something I mean God doing it through us! God won't do for anyone what we won't do for them.
Rather than simply bemoaning such a state of affairs, what strategies is God's Spirit moving us to adopt? (The last strategy of a dying & doomed church is usually a setting up of committees to make sure nothing ever gets done!) Even a committee can't wear down God's eternal demand for loving justice!
As we celebrate Our Lord's Baptism & the Justice integral to his Rule, one starting point would be to 'value-add' to baptism. Move from watering baptism down to distilling its grace. Central to such a 'distilling' would be a focus on the demand for God's justice to prevail, if only in us. If we began to take God's justice (we're not talking about legal systems, far from it!) seriously, & actually DO IT, one by-product that might surprise us would be that the need for 'extremists' to wage a 'war of terror' would lessen. Perceived injustice is at the heart of terrorism. After all, isn't God pretty much an Extremist when it comes to Justice?
