John the Baptist

SERMON FOR THE THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT
TEXTS: ISA. 35:1-10; JAMES 5:7-10; MATT. 11:2-11, NRSV

GRACE AND PEACE TO YOU FROM GOD OUR FATHER, AND OUR LORD AND SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST, AMEN
Our Gospel opens today with John the Baptizer in prison, probably a dungeon-like cell in Herod’s own palace. John was popular (for lack of a better term) with the common people around Judea and Jerusalem, but he had managed from the outset to antagonize the religious elites of the Jewish establishment. The historical record shows that John and the “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” that he administered in the Jordan were embraced by large numbers of people. This was because John was proclaiming that the time was at hand to repent, and to prepare for judgment and the coming of the Kingdom of God. And the key to his message was that he announced that God’s long-promised Messiah, the Savior, was coming soon. This was in fact the central way that John understood himself and his calling to ministry, to be “a voice crying out in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight the way before Him!” Of course, this appealed to the common people, and especially to the poor and the powerless, who had no real stake in the status quo, and everything to gain; whereas the fiery preaching of John, and even the anticipation of the Messiah, was rather threatening to the ruling elites, who had a very large stake indeed in the way things were, and everything to lose.
So what specifically happened for John to wind up in prison? After all, religious and political elites are generally willing to allow what they consider the petty concerns of popular religious revival to take place, even if they do consider them a nuisance. But there’s usually an unspoken but rather well-defined “line in the sand” that the preachers and their listeners had better not cross over, because then the power structure that maintains the elites as elites begins to be undermined. Herod expressed a genuine fascination with John, even though they inhabited two radically different spiritual worlds. But when Herod sensed that his political power was being eroded because of John, he acted swiftly to have him arrested and imprisoned. What was John’s “offense”? It was eerily similar to the events that, tragically and painfully, assault us from all sides in our very own time. John the Baptist had publicly denounced King Herod for his “private” sexual behavior. But John rebuked Herod, not on the basis of the Roman legal code or the provincial Judean “law of the land,” but on the basis of God’s holy Word, on the basis of the eternal and unchangeable Law of God, on the basis of absolute moral standards laid down by the Almighty; on the basis of one of the Ten Commandments itself which cannot be “finessed” by any scribe or Jewish Scriptural lawyer, let alone be brazenly broken and ignored by someone on the basis of raw political power. How fascinating to note that, precisely for the sanctity of marriage and the godly use of the gift of sexuality, John was willing to face imprisonment rather than water down or explain away the clear teaching of God’s Word. In a time when we are being bombarded every day by all the media and all the social elites of our crumbling society, with the message that all matters of morality — especially sexual morality — are relative and up for grabs, it is good for us, as the Church of Jesus Christ, to be reminded forcefully that God has indeed set standards, that some behaviors are sinful and other behaviors are not, and it is not we who decide which is which, or who set the parameters for moral or immoral behavior, but God does that, through His holy Word.
But clearly, this rebuke of the Roman’s puppet king, Herod the Tetrarch, was not the core or the center of John’s message. The center was the coming of the Messiah, of Christ the Lord. And John himself was the very one who had baptized Jesus in the Jordan, and saw the Holy Spirit visibly descend upon Jesus. John clearly knew that Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Messiah.
Then why the question sent to Jesus with one of John’s disciples from the imprisoned prophet? “Are You the One Who is to come, or shall we wait for another?”
Some commentators think that John, sitting there in the isolation of prison, awaiting who knew what fate, began to grow depressed and filled with self-doubt and with haunting doubts about Jesus, too, the very One John himself had openly declared to be the Messiah and “the lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world.” But I strongly doubt that John was thinking that way. John had his question sent to Jesus, our text says, “when John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing…” What John’s question indicates is a tremendous impatience with the Lord. He was saying, in effect, “Look, when are You going to really get down to the business that a Messiah ought to be doing?” John’s preaching had been full of fire and fury, hurling thunderbolts of divine judgment and predicting the radical upheaval of Jewish society. The vision and grasp of events God gave to John were partial, and did not include a deep insight into the way Jesus would conduct His ministry, let alone into the Cross and Resurrection. Much of what John said concerning judgment, Jesus later explained, the Church should anticipate at the end of history, at the Second Coming of the Messiah.
So the message Jesus sent back, “Go and tell John what you hear and see; the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them,” was designed to reassure John, certainly, but also to gently correct John’s point of view. It was the same process Jesus had to engage in repeatedly with His disciples, teaching them: “The Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” This mediated encounter between John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth signals the passing of the torch from the old era to the radically new. John was the final prophet of the Old Testament, the covenant of Law; Jesus came to bring the Good News of the Kingdom of God to all, and to inaugurate a New Covenant of love, sealed eventually with the sacrifice of His own Body and Blood. As we read in St. John’s Gospel, ch. 1, “For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”
In His reply to John the Baptist, Jesus said that the very ministry He had come to perform on earth was one, not of retribution and wrath and punishment, but of love and compassion and forgiveness. It’s fascinating to note that He offered His miracles as proof of His identity, and, significantly, none of them demonstrated divine vengeance, but all demonstrated the power and lovingkindness of God. It’s the same answer Jesus gave to unbelieving people in the 10th chapter of St. John: “If I am not doing the works of My Father, then do not believe Me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe Me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me and I am in the Father.” (RSV) Those words, together with what Jesus said to John the Baptist, demolish the position of anyone who says or thinks, “I’ll just believe the teachings of Jesus, but I can’t accept what the Bible says about His miracles.” The truth is, His miracles proclaim Who He is; Jesus Himself offers them as substantial proof of His identity as Christ and Son of God, and when He does that, His words are part of His teachings! But again, Jesus also wants John (and us!) to examine the character of His deeds of power. Anyone who was expecting a political Savior or a supernatural Avenger, anyone looking for the pyrotechnics and the angelic clashes of the Last Day, was inevitably going to be disappointed with the real Jesus. The deeds Jesus offered to John were uniformly deeds of compassion — works of obviously divine power, yet not intended to terrify or destroy, but to bring healing and hope and wholeness, both physical and spiritual. The reign of God, he was telling John, consists precisely in divine power that is employed in these ways, and, we might add, for these kinds of people: the ones shunted off to the margins of society (like the lepers); for those who are not only afflicted with disease, but who are unproductive, as society views them; for the poor, the disadvantaged, the rejected, the looked-down-upon; — even the dead are the objects of Christ’s power and mercy! Jesus loved rich and powerful people, too, but it was rare when they loved Him back. The main thrust of His ministry as the Messiah was to the dispossessed and the powerless.
On the other hand, Jesus wasn’t carrying that to the extreme that many people, maybe even John himself, had expected. The Messiah wasn’t blasting buildings and destroying armies, incinerating enemies and leading a revolution. He wasn’t establishing a new human government; all He cared about was the reign of God in the hearts and minds of repentant, humble, faithful people. After the build-up by John the Baptist, in some ways at least Jesus’ ministry was a little anticlimactic. He was even doing it off in the hinterlands of Galilee instead of the very populous and more influential area of Jerusalem.
John sent his message, I believe, not because he doubted Jesus, but because he wanted to urge Him along to do the mighty works of power that everyone expected from the Messiah. Jesus said by His reply, “I am doing works of power. But consider the nature of these works, and then you’ll understand just what kind of Messiah I really am.”
“And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at Me.” Yes, blessed are those who are not scandalized by a Messiah who is meek and humble of heart, Who delights in showing compassion and love. Blessed are those who receive, adore, and serve Christ on His own terms, for Who He is, without trying to refashion Him in their own image, or use Him to support their own interests. Blessed are those who, at Christmas, welcome the true Christ, in all His mystery and humility, His transcendent majesty hidden in the clothing of our own flesh and blood, a divine Gift of infinite Love laid gently in a manger, living quietly in our hearts, and at the very same time, utterly beyond our finite understanding, ruling powerfully in and over the world.
John the Baptist was called by the Son of God, not just the greatest prophet who ever lived, but the greatest man who ever lived. Naturally this reverses all our ordinary conceptions of greatness — something the values of the Kingdom of God always do. And “yet the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he,” Jesus said. John the Baptist definitively closed an era; Jesus our Lord definitively opened a new one. In this Age, on this side of the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, on this side of Pentecost, the least and most humble Christian is greater than the greatest man in all preceding history before Christ. This word is addressed to you and me, so that we might know the incredible worth which God has placed upon every soul redeemed by the blood of Christ. John and all the prophets who preceded him were led and inspired by the Holy Spirit; but every Christian has the Spirit of the living God actually dwelling in his or her heart. How blessed we are to live our earthly lives in the time of fulfillment, when everything has been accomplished for our salvation. When we think of the birth of the Messiah, we look backwards in time. When we think of the Christ, we know Who that is, and we think of Him as being “at the right hand of the Father” and we confess that “His Kingdom will have no end.” We are reminded of His promise after rising from the grave, “And, lo, I am with you, even unto the end of the world.” When we contemplate our Savior we know and trust, as St. Paul said, that “in Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our sins.” And when we think of His coming again, we think of Him with joy and anticipation, not with gloom or despair; and we pray with the early Church, “Marana tha!” — “Our Lord, come!” The Lord Jesus will come back again to judge the living and the dead, but those who have placed their faith in Him have already passed from death into life, as He said; they already have eternal life, and will not come into condemnation.
Nonetheless, I think we all may be tempted from time to time, as we face the difficulties and pain of this present life, to ask of Jesus, “Are You the One Who is to come, or shall I look for another?” The temptation is strongest when the Lord doesn’t fit our preconceptions, doesn’t act the way we think He should, or answer our prayers in precisely the way we think He ought to. In those times of being tempted to renounce or lose our faith, or to try to provoke the Lord into fulfilling our wishes, we need to hear the word of James from today’s Second Lesson: “You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near!” The Lord reminds us through His Word and through the Sacraments of all that He has done for us — as St. John says, “And of His fullness have we all received, grace upon grace.” And we learn afresh that we are to pray and so to live that God’s will, not ours, is done. “And blessed is anyone,” Jesus says to us, “who takes no offense at Me.” AMEN.

LET US PRAY:

Dear heavenly Father, we know that you do not begrudge us the earthly enjoyments of this season — the shopping for gifts, the decorations, and all the secular trappings. But we also know that You desire our interior focus to be on the holy gift of Your Son, and the grace and truth He brought into the world. May we be faithful like John the Baptist in fearlessly pointing the world to the Messiah. And may the Holy Spirit open up for us deeper contemplation of the awesome mystery of the Incarnation of Your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. AMEN.