Advent 4
Jn
1:19-28
12/23/18
We live at a time when humility is
not valued by society. Instead, quite the opposite, the emergence of social
media has fostered a culture in which the way to get ahead is to call attention to yourself. The level of attention can now be easily
discerned. In fact, this has been called
the “quantification of attention.” A
person can see how many friends they have on Facebook, and how many likes and
comments their posts receive. Twitter
tells you how many followers you have and how many lists you are on. YouTube tells you have many times your video
has been viewed and how many subscribers you have.
In order to gain and maintain
attention, a person needs to do, say, and post pictures that continually call
attention to him or herself. The “I” needs to be placed constantly before the
public so that it will notice – so that it will pay attention. Humility is a
recipe for failure in the social media era.
In our text this morning, the
priests and Levites who had been sent to John the Baptist find him to be a
frustrating mix. On the one hand, there
was no ignoring the fact that John was doing things that attracted tremendous
attention. John showed up in the
wilderness of Judea. Dressed in a manner
that evoked the prophet Elijah, he called people to repentance as he announced
that the kingdom of God – his reign – was imminent.
Yet as I mentioned last week, the
thing that really stood out and caught people’s attention was the fact that he
applied a washing to others. He baptized
them. Jewish ritual washings were very
common, but they were self-administered.
A person applied the water on him or herself. But John was different. Instead, he applied the water to others. For this reason, John became known as “the
Baptizer.” He definitely attracted attention as crowds from all over flocked to
him.
John attracted so much attention
that it was impossible for the Jewish religious leadership to ignore him. When we hear the questions they ask him at
the beginning of our text, it is not hard to understand why. John tells us that Jews sent priests and Levites from
Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?”
John knew what they were wondering, and so he confessed, “I am not the
Christ.” Then they followed up by asking
him whether he was Elijah or the Prophet.
To each of these, John responded, “No.”
False christs
and people claiming to be end time prophets had appeared among the Jews and
would continue to do so. These
individuals attracted a following, and then at some point the Romans took
notice. The message of these figures
always seemed to include ideas that came from the exodus – the notion of God
acting to free the Jews. The Roman
rulers were not about to let such ideas take hold, and so they slaughtered
these groups and killed the leader.
Agitators like this posed a threat to the peace and order of the
land. It was never a good idea to give
the Romans a reason to start killing people.
In frustration the priests and Levites asked,
“Who are you? We need to give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say
about yourself?” John replied, “I am the
voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’
as the prophet Isaiah said.” John used Isaiah’s words that we heard in last week’s
Old Testament lesson to describe himself.
However,
John’s interlocutors didn’t find this very helpful. So they asked him, “Then
why are you baptizing, if you are neither the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the
Prophet?” They asked John what justified his baptizing ministry.
There was
no denying that John’s unique ministry was drawing great attention. But when questioned by the religious leaders,
John refused to put the focus on himself.
First, he denied that he was the Christ, or Elijah, or the Prophet. And now he said, “I baptize with water, but
among you stands one you do not know, even he who comes after me, the strap of
whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.”
John contrasted himself with someone coming after him who was utterly
and completely superior to him.
For the
reader of the Gospel of John, this humility - this refusal to focus upon
himself and instead determination to point to the One coming after him – is not
surprising. In the prologue the apostle John
had just said: “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He
came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe
through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.
The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.”
The Gospel
describes John the Baptist as a “witness.”
The exact same word is used at the beginning of our text as it says,
“This is the witness of John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from
Jerusalem.” He doesn’t claim any credit
for himself. Instead, he speaks of the
One coming after him. John says that this One is far greater than he. John may have baptized with water, but later he
goes on to say about the coming One, “For he whom God has sent utters the words
of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure.”
John the
Baptist acts and speaks in our text with humility. He makes it clear that he is there to serve. He prepares the way. He is a witness. This is very different from the way we often
conduct ourselves. We don’t act with
humility, but instead are boastful and self-centered. We don’t want to serve, but instead try to
get out of having to do anything. We are
not a witness. Instead we often act like Jesus Christ is the secret we are
trying to keep from others.
In our
Gospel lesson this morning we hear John the Baptist say, “I am the voice of one
crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the
prophet Isaiah said.” These are the same
words that we heard in our Old Testament lesson last Sunday. During this season of Advent we are again
reminded about how John went before Jesus Christ.
Yet rather
than emphasizing how John the Baptist called people to repentance, the Gospel
of John describes John the Baptist as a witness to Jesus. Immediately after our
text, John tells us that the next day John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward
him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” John came to be a witness to Jesus Christ and
his saving ministry. He pointed to Jesus
who came to be the sacrifice on the cross.
In his
first epistle the apostle John writes, “But if we walk in the light, as he is
in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his
Son cleanses us from all sin.” In and of
itself, blood of course is not something we consider to be clean. It stains clothes. It is something we have to wash off our skin.
But the
description of Jesus’ blood here is grounded in the Old Testament sacrifices
through which God gave forgiveness and cleansed the tabernacle of Israel’s
sins. These sacrifices were a type –
something in the Old Testament that pointed forward to what God would do in the
New Testament. They have found their
fulfillment in Jesus. He is the Lamb of God who has taken away the sin of the
world.
We prepare
to celebrate Jesus’ birth – his presence as a baby in a manger. Yet because of our sin, the Son of God became
flesh to be a sacrifice. The apostle
John went on to say in his letter, “My little children, I am writing these
things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an
advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation
for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.”
John tells
us that our faith leads us to live in ways that seek to avoid sin. But when we
stumble, we have the comfort of knowing that Jesus Christ is the risen and
ascended Lord who speaks for us. He says
that no accusation can be raised against us about sin because he is the
propitiation for our sins. By his
sacrifice sin has been judged. It has
been atoned for and removed as something that separates us from God. By his sacrifice the wrath of God has been
answered. Yet it was God the Father who
did this Himself by giving the incarnate Son in our place. He sent Jesus to be
the Lamb that has taken away our sin.
In this we
see the love of God. We see the love of
the Father for us, that he sent his Son to be the sacrifice for our sin. We see the love of the Son for the Father, as
he carried out his will. We see the love
of Jesus for us, as he offered himself to be the sacrifice for sin – as he
offered himself to receive God’s judgment for our sin.
Born again
of water and the Spirit we are taken up by this love in our lives. Jesus said, “A
new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved
you, you also are to love one another.” Through the Spirit’s work, the love we
have received from Jesus is now shared with others. The apostle John writes later in his letter,
“By this we know love, that he laid
down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” The
love of Jesus for us was an action. And so now, our sharing of Jesus’ love with
others is also action. John said, “Little
children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.”
In our
Gospel lesson today, John the Baptist says, “I baptize with water, but among
you stands one you do not know, even he who comes after me, the strap of whose
sandal I am not worthy to untie.” As we
prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ we see that he is the mighty One
who followed John the Baptist. Yet the
humility of his birth reminds us that the mighty One came to be the Lamb of God
– the sacrifice that has taken away our sin.
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