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The day after Thanksgiving in Advents past, the Rev. Billy could be found at 5:30 a.m. in front of Macy’s flagship store in midtown Manhattan. “Stop shopping!” he shouts at the bundled figures pushing past him in the dark carrying their full shopping bags. “Stop shopping.”

He is not an ordained minister or even a practicing Christian, but he is a true believer. He’s an actor, Billy Talen, a native of Northfield whose ministry is based in New York. He is warning the crowds of “Shopocalypse.” He’s been preaching against consumerism since 1997.

He was described this way by Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann in a 2007 article in The Washington Post: “Rev. Billy is a faithful prophetic figure who stands in direct continuity with the ancient prophets of Israel and the great prophetic figures of U.S. history who have incessantly called our society back to its core human passions of justice and compassion.” But at sunup that day, as on most days, the newspaper reported, Billy had not a single convert. One shopper, rushing into a Toys R Us store, said: “He’s right, but we like it.”

“In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberias Caesar … the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the desert.” Who? Johanan ben Zechariah, AKA, “the Dipper.” Who? A nobody, really. The word of God came not to the mighty Caesar, who thought himself divine or hoped that the Roman Senate would declare him so. It came not to the priests in the holy temple in Jerusalem; not to the local rulers, the client kings of Rome. The word of God didn’t come to the wealthy or the powerful, to none of these, but to this strange, enigmatic, marginal character, living in the desert of Judea. This prophet announces that God is acting once more, as he did of old, to deliver once again the people from the land of slavery. Once again God will lead them through the desert home to the land of promise. Wow! What a message! Now what?

“John went through the whole region of the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” That’s it? That’s all? A ritual washing in the Jordan? Surely, there must be more to it than that. The people respond to the ministry of the Baptist, to his preaching. They do undergo John’s baptism. But then the multitudes want to know what practical effect that baptism is to have in the way they live. They ask simply: “What are we to do? How must we live now that we have heard the word of God?” We will hear John’s full answer in the Gospel next Sunday.

John answers each class of people in stunningly simple terms. Care for the poor and disadvantaged through individual sharing; proper collection of taxes; no extortion from a position of power and privilege; contentment with wages. We might have expected a more fundamental, more difficult, more demanding code of moral behavior in light of the stupendous announcement that God’s Kingdom was at hand. But there really was no change: What God expected of people in the time of John the Baptizer in the way they lived is no different from what God expected in Israel’s ancient past: conversion of heart, return to the covenant, obedience to the requirements of that covenant, especially in the way they took care of the orphan and the widow. That’s the Old Testament way of speaking of the poor, hungry, powerless, homeless, those at the edges of society, at the margins of church and of state.

What the prophets wanted, what John preached, what Jesus called for, what the Church has announced since is conversion of heart. That’s where every far-reaching reform has to begin. It’s the hope that we can change — if not our fundamental character, then at least our behavior and our attitudes. This change in turn can have an enormous impact on the world, and incidentally on our eternal destiny.

I’ve got this button, a leftover from years past that says, “I celebrate Christmas.” You’ve seen them. We are urged to use the greeting “Merry Christmas,” to resist the “war on Christmas.” But if Christmas isn’t the occasion for the word of God to become incarnate again in our lives, in our behavior, in the way we treat our fellow travelers on the road, especially the poor, what does it matter what we call it?

These are the words of a third century theologian, words I like to repeat at least once every Advent: “My brothers and sisters, what does it avail you that Christ once took flesh, if he does not come into your soul also? Let us pray that that coming, which was once the taking on of flesh, may be daily repeated in our lives, so that we, too, can say, ‘I live not now I, but Christ lives in me.’” When that happens, then, and only then, is it really Christmas.

Father Rask is the pastor of St. Odilia in Shoreview. He can be reached at [email protected]

Sunday, Dec. 6
Second Sunday of Advent?