December 13, 2020

The Third Sunday of Advent: Year B

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 |Psalm 126| John 1:6-8, 19-28

The Rev. Bradley Varnell

Priests and Levites leave Jerusalem and come to the wilderness by the Jordan to see John and investigate what he’s up to. They wonder who he is and why he’s doing what he’s doing. Could he be the messiah? Maybe Elijah? Maybe the prophet? In other words, could John be the hope of Israel? John, however, is not the hope of Israel. John is simply a witness, testifying to the light which was breaking over the whole world. John is simply the voice calling out in the wilderness: make straight the way of the Lord!

To better appreciate what John is doing I think we have to pay attention to what comes just a few verses after our lesson, starting at verse 29. John sees Jesus, he looks and he says “behold here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is he of whom I said, ‘after me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me. I myself did not know him, but I came baptizing with water for this reason - that he might be revealed to Israel.’” John did not know Jesus was the light he was bearing witness to. John knew that someone was coming, that a Messiah was on his way but John didn't know the who, the what, or the when and still John was in the wilderness baptizing and preaching calling the people of Israel to lives of repentance, calling the people of Israel to turn back to God, to make a space for God's salvation to arrive in the person of the Messiah.

John was in the wilderness, in this place where God had acted again and again in Israel’s history. John was there preparing for God to act once more, but John himself didn't know the details.  John was called to be the forerunner, to remind the people of the promises of God, promises to never forsake them, promises to be with them, promises to liberate them. So, John is out here preaching and baptizing and the pharisees send Levites and priests to go out and see John. They ask, “who are you? Are you the one we're waiting on? are you the one who we’re waiting on?” And all John can do is point away from himself and say “no, I am not the one, but one is coming after me.” And I imagine the priests and the Levites saying, “Well, who?” and John saying, “I don't know.” And then they say, “Well, when?” and john saying, “I don't know.” And then they say, “Well, where?”  and John saying, “I don't know.”

John doesn't know the details John simply knows that God will act. John was undoubtedly raised in the synagogue and in the temple where he heard the stories that the Jewish people told again and again, stories of heroes, stories of salvation, stories of deliverances large and small. John grew up knowing that the God he worshiped was a God who promised to save and who made good on those promises. So, John could look forward and know how God would save again.

John the Baptist figures prominently in the advent season. He gets two out of the four weeks of advent devoted to him. We kind of think of advent as this season of preparation for Christmas but we spend a lot more time on John the Baptist than we do on any kind of christmassy theme. We spend so much time because John reminds us of where we are in our history. Advent is a season in which we remember that God came once, and that God will come again. It’s a season in which we remember how God has delivered his people once before and will deliver them again. In advent we look to John the Baptist because he is the embodiment of what it means to live as an advent person, and whether we are in the season of advent or not, we are called to live as advent people.

John shows us that we are to be a people who proclaim the coming of God, who proclaim the mighty acts of God for our salvation and our restoration and our fullness. We, like John, are called to be a people preparing the way of the Lord, preparing for the coming again of Christ in glory to judge the world and to set all things right. That's why week after week, year after year, in pandemic and out of pandemic the church worships. We worship in order to remind ourselves of the God who has acted and the God who will act.  Week after week we come and we hear the story of Scripture so that we will remember what God has done, so we can claim the promise and the hope that what God has done for others God will do for us and for those who come after us.

  John was nurtured by the faith of Israel and it was that faith that allowed him to proclaim even when he didn't know the fullness of the story that God was going to act. We too must ground ourselves in our own story, the story of scripture and the story of the Saints. Our job as Christians is to live lives that proclaim what God is going to do. We are to proclaim justice, to practice forgiveness, to dispense grace.  We are to look boldly to the coming again of Jesus Christ, to await with hope the day when God will act to bring to fullness every work of justice, every cause of joy, every gesture of mercy, the day when God’s salvation will flow over our world like a rushing river, when God will be all in all, and when death and suffering and sin will be more. That is the hope of advent. That is the hope of Jesus. That is the hope of our faith. Amen