Sunday December 14, 2008 - Advent 3, Year B (RCL)
John the Baptist
was a strange character.
With his hair grown long, a straggling beard,
rough hairy clothes
and prone to eating bugs,
you’d be more likely to write him off
as a homeless crazy
than the harbinger
of the light of Christ.
He had a strange beginning, too.
His mother was Elizabeth, Mary’s cousin, and his father Zechariah, a small town priest. They were both getting on in age
and all their prayers for a child
had gone unanswered.
And then Zechariah
was summoned
to come and help out at the temple in Jerusalem,
a once-in-a-lifetime honor.
Outside
everyone was praying.
Inside
Zechariah was messing with incense. And then an angel appeared, the same angel
that sixth months later showed up to Mary,
the angel appeared
and promised Zechariah
a son.
But Zechariah
couldn’t believe it. He was old; his wife was old. No way were they going to have a son. And because he wouldn’t believe it,
the angel struck him dumb.
He couldn’t speak, not even to tell his wife
this bizarre things that had occurred.
Time passed, nine months,
and Elizabeth gave birth to a son.
And all that time, Zechariah
had been silent.
But when it came time to name the child, and they all assumed
that he would be named after his father, Zechariah signaled for something to write on, and wrote
“His name
shall be John.” And suddenly
he could speak again, and what he spoke
was a song of praise
to God.
It was no wonder, with that sort of beginning, that John grew up a kind of odd character. No doubt his parents told him about his peculiar birth
time and time again,
and that only increased his oddity.
The neighbors were probably a bit afraid;
his relatives gossiped quietly about how this late-in-life pregnancy had come about;
and his friends . . .
Well, he didn’t have a whole lot of them. They weren’t too keen on his weird clothing
and liking for locusts in place of regular snack food.
John was not the sort of guy
who made you feel comfortable.
In fact,
he made certain people so uncomfortable
that they were after his head.
John the Baptist, wilderness prophet
was put to death by King Herod
on the whim of Herod’s niece,
and his head
was served up on a platter.
It was a horrible end
but not so surprising
given the way John lived
and the things he said.
And in between, between his birth
and his death
John was no less strange.
Living out in the desert,
wearing hairy rough clothes and scavenging insects for food
and calling the people to repentance,
John is a disturbing character.
Maybe that’s why we get him two weeks in a row in our lectionary,
just to make sure
we don’t miss him, blot him out of our memory,
move on too quickly.
Because John has important things to say,
important things
for us to hear.
“Make straight the way of the Lord,”
“repent,”
and
“be baptized.”
And what they boil down to
is “Get ready for the Messiah. Get ready for God.”
John has this image
— which he steals from the prophet Isaiah —
of a wilderness, a desert, a place where there are no roads, no highways, just windings rocky trails.
It’s no place
to take a guest of honor. You need to build a new road,
and building it
means carving out lumps of rock, and building bridges, and filling in hollows
so the road will be straight and smooth and true.
If you want to honor God, John says,
you have to provide him
with the first century equivalent
of a red carpet.
But he’s not talking about a real road, a real red carpet. He’s talking about one
that lies within ourselves.
Making a place, a path inside us
that is ready for God.
And just like the path in the desert, this means carving out lumps of rock
and building bridges and filling in hollows. It means being willing to be changed, to be transformed,
it means work:
making decisions
to rub off the rough parts of us,
to build up the good parts of us.
In practical terms,
it’s about putting aside time to pray and to worship,
it’s about saying sorry when we hurt someone,
it’s about choosing to give to others when we would rather look after ourselves,
it’s about
choosing to be more like Christ
in everything
that we think and say and do.
It’s not always easy; it can even
be painful.
But that’s what John the Baptist
is calling us to do.
And John is calling us
to repent.
Repenting
is about more than just saying sorry.
It’s about looking at ourselves
with brutal honesty,
the good and the bad,
and tell God all about what we see,
and asking God for help
to get rid of the bad, about making a decision
to change our ways, to live differently
from now on.
And finally
John calls us
to be baptized.
To submit ourselves
to the public ritual
where water is poured over us
a symbol
of the washing clean of our hearts and lives
that happens in repentance.
But that’s not all.
Because our baptism
is not just the baptism
that John the Baptist
offered his followers.
He said it himself.
After him would come another person,
and that one
would not just baptize with water
but with the Holy Spirit.
And that one who was coming
was Jesus.
We are baptized in the name of Jesus.
We owe baptism
to John the Baptist.
But ours is not simply
about repentance.
It’s about following Jesus,
welcoming his Spirit
to transform us.
It’s about total
wholehearted
commitment
to Christ.
Those are uncomfortable words. We tend to think of baptism
as a nice ritual
that we do for our children, to somehow bring them to God’s notice and get God’s blessing.
But what it is
is committing them to Christ,
making a decision on their behalf
that they will be followers
of Jesus.
Joining the church, the group of people
who follow Christ
is like joining the military.
Your life is no longer your own. It could cost you
everything.
When we are baptized, we are set apart. The mark of Christ is put on our foreheads. It’s like a tattoo
in invisible ink — and just like a gang tattoo,
this mark
marks us as
belonging to Christ.
Our lives are no longer our own;
they belong to Christ.
And being a Christian
isn’t just about a little bit of water poured on our heads on a cold Sunday morning. It’s about living lives
that are committed, dedicated
to Christ.
It can be tough.
But the rewards
are incredible.
Some of them come here and now. We’ve seen that in the last few weeks, as we’ve come together as a community to support and pray for Ken and Ernie and Margie and Ariel and Marc and their families
as they have health issues,
and as we celebrated last week with Florence on her 90th birthday. We have a loving community that encourages and supports us when times are tough, and celebrates with us when things are good.
We get to experience what it means to make a difference in the world when we provide for those in need through the food pantry.
Our children learn about how to live lives that are truly good, and we have guidance when we have to make difficult decisions.
We have a focus for our thanksgiving and our struggles as we worship and pray to God.
We belong to something that is bigger than us, so that no matter where we go, we can walk into a church and feel at home.
And you can probably add more.
And that’s just here and now.
Because baptism marks as Christ’s own for ever: not just in this life, but for all eternity.
Which most of us don’t want to think about. But at the Christmas lunch on Tuesday, we remembered those who were with us last year, but have died: Kathleen Dexter, Carol Foutz, and Dorothy Conn. And while we miss them, it is a comfort to know
that they are still Christ’s own, even now,
and so are we.
John the Baptist calls us to repent, to honor Christ, and to be baptized.
And as we do, we know
that no matter what, we are Christ's own,
and we are welcomed by God, arms open, for all time.
© Raewynne J. Whiteley 2008