December 4, 2005
Mark 1:1-8
The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the
Son of God. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger
before thy face, who shall prepare thy way; the voice of one crying in the wilderness:
Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” John the baptizer appeared in
the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And there
went out to him all the country of
Sermon
What does John
the Baptist have to do with Christmas? I’ve
often been asked that question; and it’s a common sense question. This rough looking
man with the camel’s hair clothing and the leather belt; this locust and honey eating
man; what does he have to do with Christmas? Why
are we placing him at the crèche, with Mary and Joseph and the Baby Jesus; with the
shepherds and the wise men and the angels? Why
does he belong in that cast of characters? Like I said it’s an obvious question. There does seem to be an incongruity, a lack of fit
between John the Baptist and the rest of the Christmas cast of characters. There does seem to be a sense that he doesn’t
belong. And yet, surely it was not for nothing
that the Gospel of Luke, in the first chapter, intertwines the birth stories of Jesus and
John the Baptist. They are related by ties of
kinship, they are related by their purpose in life. John
is to prepare the way for Jesus; Jesus is to bring God’s presence and truth into the
world. John and Jesus are related in the
Bible. And it’s not for nothing that
Christians through the years have included John in the season of Advent. If you are a fan of Handel’s Messiah, for
example, you are accustomed to thinking of John the Baptist in connection with the
Christmas season. The voice of one crying in
the wilderness; “Prepare the way of the Lord.”
And then it moves on into “every valley” and all of that.
So this
connection between John the Baptist and Christmas is something that I think we feel on the
level of tradition and emotion and customs. But
people who are being purely rational about it are wondering what the connection is; and
I’m saying that in the Bible, in Christian tradition, we have reason to suppose that
there is a connection. But I would also
add that John the Baptist doesn’t really go to the manger scene. He himself, as one of my church members in my very
first church pointed out, he himself wasn’t present at the manger. He himself was a baby at the time; presumably safe
at his parents’ home. He doesn’t go
with the manger scene even with our way of putting all those figures together. But he does do what the Bible says he does; he
prepares us to go to the manger. He prepares
us to adore the infant Jesus. He prepares us
to open ourselves to the enormity of his coming, and all that means for our lives. John the Baptist is there, not as the equivalent of
the shepherds and the angels and wise men; but as a forerunner of the shepherds and wise
men. As a forerunner of every Christian, as
someone who has gone through a process that we need to go through so that the impact, the
fullness, of Christmas, can hit us and change us in a way that it could if we let it; in a
way that God wants it to. He helps us get
ready for Christmas and his essential message is – brace yourself, he’s coming.
Brace yourself,
he’s coming. Is that something that we
have to brace ourselves for? We think of
Christmas as a sweet and pleasant time. A
little baby in a manger; what is there that you have to brace yourself about for that
baby? And that’s where we’re looking
at the Christmas story in a way that doesn’t take the sins of the world that he came
into; the sin that shows up in ugly aspects of the story that are not usually emphasized
in our readings in church, especially our Christmas programs; such as slaughtering the
innocents like King Herod. The sinfulness of
the world crops up, even in this lovely story. And
it also crops up in our lives. That’s how
we brace ourselves. His coming is going to
challenge that then, and so we ourselves need to engage it, confront it. John the Baptist preached the baptism of repentance
for forgiveness of sins. He told people to be
sorry for their sins; then he baptized them as a token of their repentance. And then he told them that someone was coming who
was even mightier than he was; he did not even deserve to untie his sandals. And that one who was coming was going to baptize
with the Holy Spirit. And in another Gospel,
John said, “… and with fire.” Jesus is not just going to come as a sweet
baby that we can chuck under the chin because he’s so cute. Jesus is coming as the one who purifies, the one
who can cleanse us in a way that no human can ever possibly do. And we begin to be prepared for that impact on our
lives, which we receive, we don’t make it happen, we begin to prepare to receive it
by confronting our sins as John preached to us to do.
Confronting our
sins, what does that mean? I usually think of
all the things that I do – the words that I speak, the actions that I do, the
thoughts that I think; and also the negative side of that – the things that I
don’t do, or don’t say, or don’t think but I ought to. I think about all those specific sins, and
it’s good to be aware of them, to be sorry for them.
But sometimes, when I’m sorry for my specific sins, it’s almost like
I’m saying, “Whoops, I noticed that I did that, and I’m going to try real
hard not to do it again.” John the
Baptist wants us to go deeper than that. He
wants us to confront not merely the instance of our brokenness; he wants us to come down
and see what that brokenness really looks like underneath.
He symbolizes
that by putting on the clothing of true self examination.
There’s a symbolic purpose to the leather and the camel’s hair. There’s a symbolic purpose to the food in the
wild – the locusts and the wild honey in his story.
John the Baptist wanted to go back to that moment after the Garden of Eden
– the moment when Adam and Eve, clothed in the skins of animals by God; that moment
when Adam and Eve began the human journey back toward wholeness, back toward union with
God; the journey that was made necessary by the brokenness that happened in the garden. John takes on the clothing of Adam at that stage of
the story so that we too can take on that clothing and confront whatever it is that
underlies the sins we do.
For me, maybe
for everyone, a large part of what is down below the sin is fear. Fear. And
that’s in accord with Adam and Eve’s story as well. Adam and Eve do the thing God told them not to do;
they eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge. And
then, while God is walking in the garden in the cool of the evening, Adam and Eve hide. And God said, “Why are you hiding?” And Adam said, “I heard you walking in the
garden and I was afraid, and so I hid myself.” Fear
is one of the primal results of separation from God. And
once we have that fear, we then have to struggle with it from that point forward. We can’t just go our way back to where
we’re unafraid. Eating the fruits of
knowledge made Adam and Eve afraid. Being in
the human predicament that we are, however you want to describe it – whether
it’s eating the fruits or being ordinary humans who are fallible or whether you want
to use the doctrines like original sin – whatever it is you want to use to describe
the human brokenness that seems to be the universal experience. The result is separation from God and the
consequence of that is that we have to be afraid.
The idea of
primal human nature being the kind of blissful peace with God, that means we don’t
have to be afraid, that idea lingers in our minds as something we wish for and long for
but, also we realize we can’t just grasp it anymore.
We are afraid. We need to
overcome our fears by confronting them, not by wishing them away. John challenges us to do that; and I think
that’s a good thing for us to think about as we prepare to come forward for the
sacrament of bread and wine, the sacrament of the body and blood of Jesus Christ, the
sacrament of Holy Communion. We need to come
not as people who are so perfect we are worthy of coming forward, but as people who
acknowledge that we are so broken that we need to come forward. And that we are so grateful that God reaches out to
us in this way, offering to us something that beneath and above words. The gift of bread and wine, the gift of Holy
Communion, the gift of the body and blood of Christ, it is beneath and beyond words. We are so grateful for him offering that, that we
will readily and happily receive, because like our first parents we experience life and
are afraid.
In this act of
Holy Communion, in this act of confronting our fears, in this act of standing next to John
in his wild beasts clothing, in his wild diet that he lived upon, in our act of connecting
ourselves with Jesus’ wild cousin, in that act we are able to hear the words of God
through our fears. Words that do not tell us
our fears are silly, words that do not tell us our fears are groundless, but words that
tell us “be not afraid”. Don’t
be afraid. Of course God knows fear is a
feeling; we can’t make our feelings come and go.
It’s not what he means, what he means is, move forward with your fears,
I will be with you. That, I think, is why the
Judeans and all of all of Jerusalem flocked to hear the message of John.
And that, I
think, is something that we can hear and
truly be ready for the purifying and powerful impact
of God himself, the eternally begotten Son of God, existing from before the creation of
all things, in the being and person of God himself, coming into the world in a moment in
history much, much later but long before our time, when Jesus was born. We can feel the impact of this universal event
coming into history in Jesus. We can feel that
in our lives here in 2005; by listening to those words, “Be not afraid;” which
is a complement to what John the Baptist says, “Brace yourself, he’s
coming.” Amen.