Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne
Isaiah 11. 1-10; Matthew 3.1-12
“The wolf shall live with the lamb… and a little child shall lead them.”
For the results of a school exam; for the results of a medical exam. For the interminable process of buying and selling a house to be completed. For the rhubarb to be ripe enough to pick. For the text message from you daughter telling you she’s safely home. Waiting is an unavoidable part of all of our lives.
Far off in the South Pacific, just over a thousand miles east of Australia, lies the island nation of Vanuatu, home to around 300,000 people. In the 1930s, the John Frum movement emerged on the islands, then known as the New Hebrides. It prophesied that an era of prosperity would soon arrive, thanks to American assistance, along with the removal of the European colonial rulers and the Christianity they promoted. Just a few years later, in 1942, the prophecies seemed to come true, when the New Hebrides became an enormous rear base area for America’s island-hopping war against Japan. Briefly, American troops outnumbered islanders, and gave them copious supplies of tents, clothing, and spam.
The John Frum movement, said to be a corruption of the phrase ‘John from America’, is the most famous of the Pacific islands’ cargo cults. After the war, followers of John Frum built symbolic landing strips to encourage American aeroplanes to return and bring them more ‘cargo’. While Vanuatu is nowadays an overwhelmingly Christian country, several hundred Ni-Vanuatu still await the return of John Frum after eighty years. When asked why, a village headman told a foreign journalist, “Eighty years? You Christians have been waiting for your Jesus to return for 2,000 years.”