“The Finger of John”
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Canon Peter Walker
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Text: John 1:29-42
A few weeks ago Jesus was a baby. We went to Bethlehem to marvel at his birth, to remind ourselves of the great gift given to us, to witness that Jesus is the revelation of God's light. Without that light, Christmas is a cold, hopeless holiday. But already Jesus has grown up. Already we find ourselves invited to follow him. Bethlehem was the launching-pad. Jesus took a human body at Bethlehem so that He should always have a Body on earth. His body in the cradle was the start of His much greater body - His Mystical Body - in which we learn to be sons and daughters of Our Father, and learn how to keep his love alive.
It is a joy to worship with this part of Christ's Mystical Body, “the blessed company of all faithful people” as the Anglican Book of Common Prayer puts it. And I thank Andrew Stirling for his invitation and warm welcome. I bring greetings from Grace Church on-the-hill and congratulate you on reaching your Centenary milestone.
At the start of a Stratford play often a character appears alone on stage. This actor comes to introduce the main character to the audience. He or she presents a brief prologue then vanishes, often for good, and the drama unfolds. Sometimes though this messenger returns during the course of the action to update the theatre-goers on some vital clue or piece of information. This messenger may have only a few lines, but his or her role is crucial. Though they may appear first on stage, the play is not about them. Theirs is a subordinate, supporting role. The drama which is about to begin, they tell us, is about someone else, someone far greater.
In the epic drama, which is the Christian story, the role of the messenger is played by John the Baptist. The fiery uncompromising John usually shows up each Advent, urging us to get ready for the judgment to come. But here he is again today, this wild desert prophet and preacher. John is back on stage, pointing at the grown-up Jesus, saying, “Behold, the lamb of God” - almost as if he knew Jesus' destiny, almost as if he knew that Jesus' first baptism in the murky Jordan foreshadowed another baptism, a bitter baptism, a baptism of bloody sweat in the life-and-death decision of the garden of Gethsemene, almost as if John senses Jesus had come not to condemn but to save.
At the start of the play John shows up to deliver the prologue.
Now to grasp the meaning of this performance, let us remember that ancient Israel had been expecting a leading man for centuries. The Jews expected a new Moses, a mighty Messiah, who would liberate them and set things right. Israel was a tiny insignificant nation, the doormat of the ancient middle-east. Israel had suffered constantly under foreign occupation and the humiliation of occupying armies. The great empires wiped their feet on these people. But Israel had a hope, and Israel had a story: a story of exodus.
John takes up that story. He announces a new exodus from servitude - this time from Rome. John's voice, crying in the wilderness, says much about preparing the path for the One to come, whose person and baptism are superior to his own. In the very first scene of Mark's gospel, for example, John appears on stage to introduce the leading man. In just a few lines John explains who this Jesus character is. If you know his true identity, announces John, you will understand the unfolding story.
Remember: at the early stage of this play the rest of the performers - the relatives, the disciples, fellow Jews - are still ignorant of who Jesus is. So there is dramatic tension: we are aware, but they aren't. Yet hasn't John already performed his Advent role? Hasn't he already pointed to Jesus as the play's leading man, the one to watch? The secret of who Jesus is, John has revealed: this is God's Word who became flesh and dwelt among us. But today John is back on stage to insert a vital clue: “Look, the lamb of God.”
From that point John more or less disappears from the stage. So who is this biblical bit-player, this prophet of the prologue?
John is an enigmatic, unconventional figure; a prophet of the Judean wilderness. History would never have remembered John or even recorded his name had it not been for history's leading man. John merits mention only because he heralds Jesus as Messiah. For John, the message is paramount, the messenger is not.
One of the achievements of modern biblical scholarship has been to provide a possible background for John. The main illumination came from Qumran, the site of the discovered Dead Sea scrolls. Qumran was a recluse community, well known for the frequency of their baptisms. John may have been a member of that desert commune. He had the same interest in the Hebrew scriptures, the same earnest asceticism, the same stern morality, the same expectation of an immediate arrival of Israel's Messiah. The great difference seems that he was a solitary, while Qumran was a community. The eccentric John may well have broken from that company in order to follow his own path, and exploit his own gifts of oratory and leadership. Clearly John had a following. Qumran was remote, isolated. But John's aim was not to remain in obscurity. He hoped to rouse the multitude, proclaiming to fellow-Jews that the avenging Messiah was coming now. So get ready! John's baptism was unique. Whereas the Qumran washings were often repeated, John's baptism happened once. John's washing was for the truly penitent, symbolizing the forgiveness of sins. Yet John knew this was not enough. His baptism would provide the initiation; it would mark people once for all, yes; but when the Messiah came mere water would never suffice. For God's Messiah would baptise with the energizing, oxygenating, breath of the Spirit.
Is all this speculation? Perhaps. John left no autobiography, he wrote no book, established no organization. We know so few details. The truth may be otherwise. “The man has yet to be born who could write the truth about himself” wrote Mark Twain in his recently published unblushing memoir. Throwing up his hands, the famous American author says:
“What a wee little part of person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself….His acts and his words are merely the visible thin crust of his world….and they are so trifling a part of his bulk! A mere skin enveloping it. The mass of him is hidden - it and its volcanic fires that toss and boil, and never rest, night or day. These are his life, and they are not written, and cannot be written…..Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man…”
Well, we may have the clothes and buttons of the man, but maybe not the volcanic John. The mass of him is hidden. He's too buttoned-up. John was a man of the wilderness. And for this reason he still speaks. John may be a bit-player in the biblical drama. But one thing still resonates. We too are beset by the wilderness, deserts outside us and deserts within.
In his inauguration address in 2005, Pope Benedict XVI reflected on the widespread sense of desolation so many feel living in the urbanized wilderness of a world without meaning, without direction. Benedict said:
So many people are living in the desert. And there are so many kinds of desert. There is the desert of poverty, the desert of hunger and thirst, the desert of abandonment, of loneliness, of destroyed love. There is the desert of God's darkness, the emptiness of souls no longer aware of their dignity or the goal of human life. The external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast.
Many have wandered into a wasteland, a trackless desert where life is aimless, and death merely the last pointless occurrence in a chain of pointless events. For many, the world is a threatening and uncertain place, a fallen disenchanted place. All of us journey through this wilderness: that is our human condition. Faith brings no immunity from the pain of being human. But John testifies that through the wilderness of this world there runs a highway (of hope), a way to walk, a direction to follow. And John points the way.
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start, wrote W. H Auden.
The good news, the remedy, is that there is a path through the wilderness, through the “deserts of the heart. The way of Christ, running for all to see, in the faith and practice of the church, His Mystical Body, the blessed company of all faithful people.”
“Let the healing fountain start.”It starts with baptism, with the gift of the Holy Spirit. From that source the “healing fountain” bubbles up.
John is not simply a figure of the past. His voice resonates, the witness of his life resonates. He is the embodiment of a recurrent reality - one well known in our experience. For we know this “desert of the heart.” We all live with questions and doubts before the mystery of life, the mystery of God. We too are travellers on the desert highway with the wilderness all around us. It remains with us, within us, to our journey's end. Christians travel this highway in hope, not in certainty. But John points at the One to follow in faith, the One who has gone on ahead, leading the way.
Though we may only have John's clothes and buttons, though the mass of the man is hidden, across t.h ages this self-effacing prophet does speak. One thing he says is “I am not the Messiah”. But didn't John attract disciples? To hear him you had to seek him purposefully. Didn't John attract the attention of the Jerusalem authorities who sent investigators into the wilderness, asking “Are you the Messiah?” John must have had appeal, stature, influence, but no messianic delusions. John seems content to have been the 'best man' not the groom.
Yet Mark's gospel says Jesus heeded John's preaching. So was Jesus once a disciple of John? We know that John baptized Jesus. In Matthew, John raises the issue and makes it clear that he knows who is greater. “I ought to be baptized by you.” Luke offers another perspective. John is destined from birth to prepare the path for his younger cousin. But the fourth evangelist stands alone. John's gospel depicts no baptism of Jesus per se. Instead, the Baptizer simply attests to Jesus' identity: “I am not the Messiah….He's the Anointed One.”
So the main thing about John is his finger. Indeed it is as a man with a pointing finger that John is portrayed again and again in Western art. John is often depicted as a gaunt, barefoot, wild-eyed mountain man, a taciturn prophet who points to Jesus. This was not merely an insight of the Renaissance. Jesus' contemporaries were alert to this too. They saw that John's rigour and austerity, his back-country ways, made him utterly different to the young Galilean rabbi. John was a rough wilderness figure who avoided the towns, eating and drinking nothing except that awful health-food diet, while Jesus went where the crowds were, in the towns and villages. According to his detractors, Jesus was a glutton and wine-bibber, constantly partying with unsuitable people… like us.
This difference John was also alert to; and he points it out: “He on whom you see the spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” John notices that the spirit remains with Jesus. And because it remains, Jesus will be able to pour the same spirit on others - on us! Once he has passed through the bitter baptism of his death and rising, baptizing us not simply with water but with energizing, empowering spirit, enabling us to be sons and daughters of Our Father, enabling us to belong to His mystical Body, enabling us to witness.
One distinctive theme runs through the Johannine portrait of the baptizer. That theme is witness. “A man named John was sent from God. He came as a witness to testify to the light.” The Greek word for witness is “martyria” from which we derive our word “martyr.” The term evokes a law court where the witness stands up, points a finger, gives testimony, speaks the truth. “I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.” But in witnessing, John refuses to be the centre of attention, he just points. Like John the evangelist, he is sent to testify to the light. And so are we.
Wasn't that the point of our baptism? To point, not just with our finger, but our lives; to testify to the light? One way to describe our calling as Christians is by the term “witness.” That chain of witness begins with John. Can't we also stand up and say what we know to be the God's truth about Jesus? In Canada, that's impolite. We leave it to others to testify vigorously to the arid scepticism of Dawkins or Hitchins. But might we point?
To help recognize Jesus in the wilderness of this world God needs witnesses. Witnesses turn their gaze on Jesus, they point and say: “look, behold.” We witness by the integrity of our lives. And when we do, we stand beside John; and Andrew and his companion who turn from John to Jesus; and Simon and Andrew, one brother leading another to Jesus.
John was a true martyr; he witnessed with his life. So was John finally a failure? Certainly there was no messianic kingdom such as John anticipated. There was no restoration of Jewish monarchy, no “Che Guevara liberation” movement overthrowing the Roman occupying armies, no realization of peace on earth. Then was John just another disillusioned prophet? Was his a tragic life - dying too early like Mozart - leaving his life's work incomplete? No. Like a true witness, John pointed. He gave his life as a witness to the truth as he saw it. And John contributed his own sacrifice of suffering for the sins of the world. What greater love is there than this, writes the fourth evangelist, that a man lay down his life for his friends?
If John were here this morning, no doubt he would make us uncomfortable. That's what prophets do. But with the young Messiah waiting in the wings ready to emerge into a leading role, John would occupy the stage only briefly. This unusual man would point a finger - not at us but at the One far greater, the One born to free us, heal us, love us, and fill us with the life-giving Spirit. John would invite us to focus on Jesus. Why? Because Jesus always makes a quiet unobtrusive appearance in the wilderness of this world. And we might very well pass him by, had there not been this eccentric man to point his formidable finger.
In the acting-out of the gospel-drama John knew his role. Do we know ours? Let the play begin! And prepare to point!