‘This holy script comes from the Gospel of John, chapter 1, verses 19-27. “And this is the record of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who art thou? And he confessed, and denied not; but confessed, I am not the Christ. And they asked him, What then? Art thou Elias? And he saith, I am not. Art thou that prophet? And he answered, No. Then said they unto him, Who art thou? that we may give an answer to them that sent us. What sayest thou of thyself? He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Esaias. And they which were sent were of the Pharisees. And they asked him, and said unto him, Why baptisest thou then, if thou be not that Christ, nor Elias, neither that prophet? John answered them, saying, I baptise with water: but there standeth one among you, whom ye know not; He it is, who coming after me is preferred before me, whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to unloose.” These are the words of the Lord.’

Without raising her eyes Sissel sat back down beside her mother.

After the liturgical ritual was over, Berge Brevik stood in the pulpit, surveying the sparsely populated benches, his face twitching, as though he was aware that he was such a voice, calling in the wilderness, and the wilderness was the decrepit, age-ridden souls who had found their way to the church on this, the last Sunday before Christmas in a country with, on paper, the most Christians in the world, relative to its population.

‘We all know what John the Apostle says, what John the Baptist prophesies in this text. We are all sitting here with the 339same air of expectation, in church today, on the fourth Sunday of Advent, nineteen hundred and eighty-six years after the most important birth in human history. It was Jesus he prophesied. The coming of Jesus.’

He ran his eyes over us, located my face and lingered there. ‘But we must not forget the vow he made before he left us. He will come again! And also today we can hear, if we listen carefully, voices calling in the wilderness. Mine is one of them. My colleagues the whole world over belong to the same family. We are all John the Baptist’s descendants on earth, and you would be wise to listen to what we tell you. For tomorrow it may be too late.’

His eyes bored into my face and, apparently in a strictly personal warning, he repeated: ‘Tomorrow it may be too late.’

Then he relinquished my face and moved on. ‘When you walk through Bergen during this pre-Christmas period, what is the music that you hear? Is it the singing of angels in the firmament – or is it the ringing of a thousand cash tills? When you open your post boxes, what is it that falls out? Hundreds of coloured advertising brochures telling you what to spend your last money on or a message proclaiming the return of Jesus? Is there not an unimaginable racket around us? So loud that it can be difficult to hear the solitary voice proclaiming his message in the market square, our John the Baptist saying: “There standeth one among you, whom ye know not.”’