John the Baptist — Andy James

Loving and Troubling Waters

January 10, 2016 By Andy James

a sermon on Isaiah 43:1-7 and Luke 3:1-21
preached on January 10, 2016, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

You’ve gotta love John the Baptist. He bucks every trend in the book. His parents had so given up on having a child that his father directly questioned the messenger of God who brought this news and ended up mute for nine months. John himself took an old Jewish tradition of ritual washing and put new meaning on it by inviting people to venture out into the wilderness to repent and find forgiveness for their sins. He offered a message compelling enough to draw people out of the villages and cities to come hear him preach in the wilderness. And he managed to amass such a large group of followers that he still had a pretty big group left after calling them all a “brood of vipers” and suggesting that they were trees who would be cut down if they did not bear good fruit.

The people left behind took his words seriously and asked him what this repentance would look like in their lives. First, the told the general crowds that they should share from their abundance with those who are in need. Then, he instructed the tax collectors to be fair in their collections. Finally, when soldiers came, John told them to end extortion, treat people fairly, and be satisfied with their wages. People clearly thought that John was something important—they were “filled with expectation” and “questioning in their hearts concerning John”—but they couldn’t tell what he was really up to. Had he come to offer a new prophecy for their new time and their new challenges as a people under Roman rule? Had he come to lead a political rebellion against these strange overlords? Or had he come to be the Messiah, blending these political and religious roles to guide them out of this terrible morass and save them from all the difficulty that was before them?

According to Luke, John did not see himself as the Messiah. In his view, his baptism and his message were surely important, but there was something more coming up ahead:

I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.

John’s message was unmistakable—the old way of doing things that benefited only a few had to be set aside, and a new way of living had to emerge. Some would find hope in this new day, especially those who had little hope in the present, but others would find this new path far more challenging, with their power and privilege drawn into question along the way. This message had immediate and real consequences for John. There were some who were truly threatened by this way of life, and so the puppet king Herod threw John into prison because he had condemned several of Herod’s actions.

But somewhere along the way, it seems that John the Baptist had encountered Jesus. While all four gospels record an encounter between these two figures of renewal, our reading from Luke this morning is very vague about exactly what happened. “When all the people were baptized,” Jesus also “had been baptized.” Somehow Jesus was brought into John’s tradition, following in the footsteps of this one who had come “crying out in the wilderness” preparing the way of the Lord, offering himself to receive this baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and claiming this connection with John and his troubling words at the beginning of his own ministry.

But we don’t usually think of baptism as in any way troubling. The brutal honesty of John the Baptist at the Jordan River in this reading is usually eclipsed at our modern-day baptismal font by a beautiful baby and smiling parents. These are generally not people that we would think of as a brood of vipers! Based on my conversations with them over the years, parents presenting their children for baptism are usually not concerned that their child needs to flee from any wrath ahead. And when approach baptism, we generally do not worry that we must bear good fruit or face the threat of being thrown into the fire. The troubling words of John the Baptist at the Jordan are likely replaced with something more like the gentle and hopeful words of the prophet Isaiah when we gather at the font:

Thus says the Lord,
he who created you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel:

Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name,
you are mine.

When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you;

and through the rivers,
they shall not overwhelm you;

when you walk through fire
you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.

Surprisingly, in this case it is the Old Testament that gives us comfort and the New Testament that strikes fear into our bones!

But this strange mix of loving and troubling words is probably the most faithful thing we can carry when we come to the waters of baptism. There is great love revealed to us in these waters, the love of one who welcomes us no matter who we are, the love of one who stays with us when we feel like we are being overwhelmed, the love of one who gathers us in to show us the pathway to new life. But this great love also shows us that we have responsibility, too—responsibility to set aside the things that might get in the way of us embracing the fullness of this love, responsibility to care for those others who journey with us on this way, even if they do not venture into these waters themselves, even responsibility to examine ourselves to find ways that we can bear greater fruit as we follow the example of Jesus through these waters into new life.

Every time we approach these waters, we must carry all these words with us. Whether we come to the font to be baptized or to reaffirm the promises of the baptismal covenant, we are asked to reject sin, profess our faith in Christ Jesus, and confess the faith of the church, to honor John’s challenging words as we embrace his call to repentance and new life. But then we are even more reminded that these waters are a gift to us, a place that shows us how we are created for God’s glory, an opportunity to experience everything that we need to go forth in justice, love, and peace. These loving and troubling waters remind us of the depth and breadth of God’s care for us and presence with us and the real call and challenge that God gives us as we respond to all that we have received. And these loving and troubling waters express the deep wonder of God’s gifts to us, gifts that remind us that God loves us so much that God is not satisfied with the way things are now, gifts that invite us to respond to God’s love in our lives by joining in the transformation of our troubled world.

So as we reaffirm the promises of the baptismal covenant and remember our baptism today, may we experience God’s grace and mercy in these loving and troubling waters as we are assured of God’s love for us and empowered to join in God’s transformation of our broken and fearful world until Christ comes to make all things new. Lord, come quickly! Alleluia! Amen.

John, the Unexpected Advent Guest

December 14, 2014 By Andy James

a sermon on John 1:6-8, 19-28
preached on December 14, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

A week or so ago, I lamented to myself a bit that it seemed like the usual flow of Christmas cards just hadn’t started yet this year. Even with a shorter-than-usual time between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, people—me included!—hadn’t done a particularly great job of getting out their Christmas cards yet. But this week they started coming in, filled with fun pictures of recent events and the quick updates on life and living that come with the now-ubiquitous Christmas letter.

In this era of Facebook and Twitter, with near-immediate reports and photographs from our friends, the Christmas letter sometimes seems like a dying tradition, but there’s still something wonderful in hearing a more complete perspective from those friends who haven’t been in as close touch in recent months for one reason or another, even when it is all written in the strangest third-person perspective ever! One Christmas letter this year, though, stood out to me as I journeyed through this week. One friend, in writing about his three-and-a-half-year-old son, reported a bit of confusion that seems familiar amidst our gospel reading for this week:

Don’t correct him when he brings home a picture of John the Baptist, because he sees God in that picture!

My friend’s son was not the first to get John all mixed up. Most scholars think that there was a sizable group of people in or around the early church who remembered and celebrated John the Baptist and his teaching more than we do today, so the gospel writers and others seemingly felt that it was important to include him in the story somehow. There are by my informal count more clear and direct references to him in the gospels than to Jesus’ own mother!

Yet John is a pretty unexpected guest for this season of Advent. His rugged appearance and harsh message aren’t exactly the best fit for this season when we expect to be talking about peace, joy, and hope. Yet here we are, eleven days before Christmas, faced with a gospel reading about a man who insisted that he was not who people thought he ought to be. In our reading from the gospel according to John today, John the Baptist—no relation to the gospel writer John—puts the major focus on describing who he is not.

John the Baptist clearly was regularly being mistaken for the Messiah, and in everything attributed to him in our tradition he refutes this. Even though he could clearly express who he was not, finding the words to say who he was was a little more difficult for him. When the religious leaders of Jerusalem sent messengers to try to get some answers about John, they engaged him in conversation about who he was. He acknowledged who he was, but that was not enough for them, so he told them directly, “I am not the Messiah.” They thought he might be Elijah, but again he told them that they were mistaken. Finally, when they asked him again who he was, John, like Jesus after him, answered with something of a roundabout answer, quoting scripture to say,

I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’

John the Baptist, then, was the one who called on the people to get ready for the days ahead, to prepare their hearts and minds to receive this one who was coming, to clear the old, tired pathway to make a way for something new. His message of repentance, so prominent in the other gospels, is missing here, so the gospel of John’s message about John the Baptist is perhaps less clear than some of the others. We are told that John baptized the people with water, which raised plenty of questions along the way, but that’s about it.

Yet the author of the gospel summarizes John the Baptist’s work by calling him “a witness to testify to the light” in Jesus Christ, though not the light himself. Throughout it all, John pointed beyond himself to someone greater, to one who was already emerging among them, to one who was far greater than John could ever be, for John was “not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.” Yet as my friend’s son so well recognized, there was something beyond special—maybe even strangely divine—about our unexpected Advent guest.

In our day and age, in a season when we are so easily consumed by all the consumption around us, John’s message of preparation easily falls on deaf ears. We are too busy to stop and slow down to prepare the way of the Lord. We are so interested in fixing our own problems and saving ourselves that we neglect to pay attention when others show us a better way. And we are even a bit afraid of anything that emerges from the wilderness, of anything that is different and new, even if it is a voice crying out for justice and righteousness that will transform us and our world.

John is just not the guy we want to shape our preparations for Christmas. He’s a bit like that relative who always shows up for Christmas, even when you don’t want him to. He never quite fits in with anyone and he talks so strangely that he often doesn’t make sense, but you can’t tell him not to come because he’s ultimately part of the family just as much as anyone else. So what do we do with John the Baptist in these days of preparation? How do we deal with this unwanted intruder—I mean unexpected guest!—into the joy of our Advent season?

Rather than throw him out or ignore him, I think we are called to embrace John and his strange ways as we prepare to welcome Jesus in our midst. First, John gives us an important message of preparation. The coming of Jesus at Christmas is something that needs real preparation. Just as we can’t host an incredible Christmas feast without lots of preparation around the house, our hearts and minds need some preparation, too. The cobwebs of our past understandings of salvation and justice need to be cleaned up so that we can welcome our God who comes to us in unexpected ways. The dirt and dust of underused spirituality that pile up in our lives need to be swept away. And the longstanding practices and systems of our lives and our world that perpetuate injustice need to be the focus of our repentance.

Beyond this, John reminds us that this season is not about us or our practices. Ultimately the coming of Jesus at Christmas is not about the words of the greetings that we share in this season, the songs that we sing about Christmas, or what we call the symbols that we have developed ourselves for this season. Just as John insisted that none of this was about him, so we are called to make this season not about us or our favorite practices or the people we want but rather about the birth of a baby to an unwed mother in the midst of a troubled empire who ended up being tortured and killed because he insisted that all lives matter. In his actions of pointing the way to Jesus, John insists that we need to stop pointing to ourselves, our churches or institutions, or our traditions or past understandings. Instead, John tells us that we must always point to Jesus, the one who comes to make all things new.

And John finally reminds us to always be reflecting and testifying to the light that has come and is coming. All that we say and do in our lives should point to the light of Christ. Like John, we are not worthy of even reflecting this light or pointing to this gift, but we are nonetheless given this privilege by the power of this one who comes to transform us and our world.

So whatever we do with our unexpected guest John the Baptist, whether we get him a bit mixed up or try to send him away, whether we claim his message of proclamation for ourselves or seek to put him off for another day, may God help us to heed his call to prepare this new way of the Lord, to get ourselves out of the way of it, and to always bear witness to this new light, so that as we watch and wait for the coming of Christ this Advent and in the days to come, we might join in all that God is doing to make all things new in Jesus Christ our Lord. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

Breaking the Silence

December 9, 2012 By Andy James

a sermon on Luke 1:67-79 for the Second Sunday of Advent
preached on December 9, 2012, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Some years ago, back in seminary, I found myself silenced by laryngitis for nearly a week. It started as one of those late spring colds—you know, the gentle tickle in your throat when you wake up a little stuffy in the morning—but pretty soon I knew something else was going on. I kept on going through that day, speaking and singing normally, until that night after choir practice, when I knew something was really wrong. All of the sudden, the pitch of my voice dropped, but I tried not to be worried about it.

The next morning, I had something to worry about. I could not speak at all. Well, yes, I could talk briefly, but speaking for more than a minute was painful, and singing was certainly out of the question. I asked everyone I knew for their magic cures, and within twenty-four hours I had nursed my voice back to a softer version of “normal,” but my disregard for its tender state soon brought me back to silence.

During those four or five days that I had no voice, I was supposed to sing a solo on Saturday and then sing with the choir on Sunday for the last time before leaving for the summer. It was a pretty major inconvenience for me, but about a week later, I could talk without sounding like I was whispering all the time. Thankfully it’s been a long time since I felt like that, but I’m always afraid that I’m only one stuffy nose away from another week of silence.

In our scripture today, Zechariah had one major case of laryngitis. It all started one day when he drew the short straw among the priests and went into the sanctuary to offer incense to God. He took a bit longer than expected in there, and when he finally emerged, he couldn’t answer everyone’s questions about what had happened because he was entirely unable to speak. The people knew that something important had happened, but they had no way of knowing what, because Zechariah could not tell them. Zechariah went home when his term as priest was over—probably a bit earlier than expected because he couldn’t talk—and he and his wife Elizabeth were finally able to conceive a child after years of being barren.

While Zechariah was silenced, Elizabeth could speak about what she knew, for she had had her own visit from the angel Gabriel. She celebrated with her relative Mary who came to visit and share the news of her own miraculous conception and the coming birth of Mary’s son Jesus. They both cried out with great joy and amazement about what God was doing in their midst, about all the things that would soon come into being through the two children that they were carrying. Even through all of this commotion, Zechariah, the priest, the spokesman for God, the proud father, the one who normally would be first to speak, remained silent, watching and waiting in the midst of a moment of great joy, hoping for a moment when he could speak again.

The silences in our lives may not be cases of laryngitis—like my springtime affliction—or sudden muteness after encountering God—like Zechariah. We might be so stunned by something happening around us that we do not know how to respond. We might be ordered to remain silent to protect some sort of secret that cannot be revealed. We might be so bound by grief and loss that words cannot emerge from our mouths. We might be so constrained by the limitations of the world that we cannot speak what we really want—and need—to say. We might be called to speak words so dissonant with what we hear around us that they would fall upon deaf ears.

In these moments, sometimes silence may actually be the right thing to do. Sometimes we need to offer quiet space in the uncertainty of the moment. Sometimes we must allow others permission to be quiet so that they can be faithful to their experience and understanding of God. Sometimes we need silence to find safe places to express our deepest feelings. And sometimes we are called to conserve our voices so that they might be heard more completely in another moment. Nonetheless, even all these good silences must eventually be broken, for God calls us all to speak words of joy and praise and hope and love and peace.

After many months, Zechariah broke his forced silence with the words of our scripture today. His words were not his own—it was more than clear by then his words could only come from some other place—but these words came to him from the Holy Spirit. Suddenly, Zechariah moved from complete and utter silence to loud and joyful song:

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel!

He was finally able to speak all the words that he had been wanting to say ever since his encounter with the angel in the temple where he learned that he would be a father. All that had been promised to him had been realized, and since there was no longer any doubt about these things, his imposed silence was ended. Zechariah could finally offer praise to God and express all the ways in which God’s faithfulness would be realized in the world through the birth of his son John the Baptist and the coming Jesus.

When he finally spoke again, Zechariah could only give thanks to God for what he had finally seen—for his dreams of a child that had been realized, for his hopes for Israel’s future that would surely become reality in the life of Jesus, for the ability of the people to serve God faithfully and without fear. In the tradition of the great prophets, Zechariah claimed the promises of God for his own generation, speaking of certain salvation, great mercy, a faithful covenant, and fearless service as grateful response.

Although these words echo the prophets and the psalms, they also move beyond these promises of the past. They are more than fulfilled in the life of this “mighty savior” but also point toward the joyous future that surely lies ahead. No longer must the people sit in darkness or wait for God’s redemption to come. Such glorious redemption has come and can only bring new life to those in darkness and peace to those who remain at the hands of their enemies. Zechariah recognized the great joy of finally having a son, but this personal joy was far surpassed by his gratitude for what God was beginning to do throughout the world that would find expression in these two children.

So at this beginning of the story of Jesus’ life, we see its ending described already. In Zechariah’s song, the promises of God are laid out before us and called fulfilled long before we can even begin to imagine how they might take shape in our midst and form the new creation that is already moving toward us. Zechariah’s prophetic words speak to us out of his silence—and penetrate our own silence—as words of hope and promise of what is to come in this world and the next.

Now, we must ask, can we speak these words today? Can anyone today offer such prophetic calls to recognize God at work in our midst? Can anyone today recover from a case of laryngitis to immediately offer joyous and prophetic song? Can anyone today emerge from silence to claim this sort of God at work in the world today, a world where God seems absent from everyday concerns, a world where God seems simply used to support some political, economic, or religious agenda, a world where God seems inseparable from some people and entirely unavailable to others? Can anyone today hope to move beyond seemingly endless war to see God “[guiding] our feet into the way of peace”?

I believe that Advent is a wonderful time to break the silence around us and speak of the incredible grace and love of God that comes into our world at Christmas and is present with us every day. These are days when it becomes clear that we must break the silence even amidst everything that encourages us to keep quiet, even when it hard to be faithful in changing days, even when things around us make it hard for us to be heard, even when it seems best that we should simply be silent. Silence is probably the easier choice here—the choice Zechariah probably would have made were it all up to him, the choice we too probably would make if we could have it our way—but, just as during Zechariah’s time, the Holy Spirit continues to call us to speak out of our silence, to remember God’s great promises, to celebrate God’s good gifts, and to proclaim the continuing and coming reign of Jesus Christ our Lord in all that we say and do.

So blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
who has looked favorably upon us
and has redeemed us
and has shown us mercy,
that we might serve God without fear,
in holiness and righteousness all our days.

By the tender mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.

Thanks be to God! Amen.