Text: John 1:6-8, 19-28 Revised Standard Version (RSV)
6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came for testimony, to bear witness to the light, that all might believe through him.8 He was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light.
The Testimony of John the Baptist
19 And this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” 20 He confessed, he did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.” 21 And they asked him, “What then? Are you Eli′jah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” And he answered, “No.” 22 They said to him then, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” 23 He said, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.”
24 Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. 25 They asked him, “Then why are you baptizing, if you are neither the Christ, nor Eli′jah, nor the prophet?”26 John answered them, “I baptize with water; but among you stands one whom you do not know, 27 even he who comes after me, the thong of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.” 28 This took place in Bethany beyond the Jordan, where John was baptizing.
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
How the Great Guest Came
by
Edwin Markham
(1852-1940)
Before the cathedral in grandeur rose
At Ingelburg where the Danube goes;
Before its forest of silver spire
Went airily up to the clouds and fires;
Before the oak had ready a beam,
While yet the arch was stone and dream –
There where the altar was later laid,
Conrad the cobbler, plied his trade.
It happened one day at the year’s white end –
Two neighbors called in on their old-time friend;
And they found the shop, so meager and mean,
Made gay with a hundred boughs of green.
Conrad was stitching with face ashine.
But suddenly stopped as he twitched a twine:
“Old friends, good news! At dawn today,
As the cocks were scaring the night away,
The Lord appeared in a dream to me.
And said, ‘I am coming your Guest to be!’
So I’ve been busy with feet astir,
Strewing the floor with branches of fir.
The wall is washed and the shelf is shined,
And over the rafter the holly twined.
He comes today, and the table is spread
With milk and honey and wheaten bread.”
His friends went home; and his face grew still
As he watched for the shadow across the sill.
He lived all the moments o’er and o’er,
When the Lord should enter the lowly door
The knock, the call, the latch pulled up,
The lighted face, the offered cup.
He would wash the feet where the spikes had been,
He would kiss the hands where the nails went in,
And then at the last would sit with Him
And break the bread as the day grew dim.
While the cobbler mused there passed his pane
A beggar drenched by the driving rain.
He called him in from the stony street
And gave him shoes for his bruised feet.
The beggar went and there came a crone,
Her face with wrinkles of sorrow sown.
A bundle of faggots bowed her back,
And she was spent with the wrench and rack.
He gave her his loaf and steadied her load
As she took her way on the weary road.
Then to his door came a little child,
Lost and afraid in the world so wild,
In the big, dark world. Catching it up,
He gave it the milk in the waiting cup,
And led it home to its mother’s arms,
Out of reach of the world’s alarms.
The day went down in the crimson west
And with it the hope of the blessed Guest,
And Conrad sighed as the world turned gray:
“Why is it, Lord, that your feet delay?
Did you forget that this was the day?”
Then soft in the silence a Voice he heard:
“Lift up your heart, for I have kept my word.
Three times I came to your friendly door;
Three times my shadow was on your floor.
I was the beggar with the bruised feet;
I was the woman you gave to eat;
I was the child on the homeless street!”
Jesus says: “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” Matthew 25:40
The point of Advent is to prepare. It is to prepare our hearts and make them ready for the coming of Jesus into our midst. And as we prepare our hearts and purge them – if for a time – of all the things that weigh them down, we get a glimpse into the very heart of God.
That is what John did. We know nothing about his early life except that his mother, Elizabeth, was a cousin of Jesus’ mother, Mary. We don’t know anything about his upbringing – although we can probably assume that it was a very religious one – we don’t know anything about his education or what his job or trade might have been before he heard God’s call to go out into the desert and bear witness to the light. But one thing we do know: John was a leader of his people, a man whose influence was far-reaching – otherwise the Pharisees wouldn’t have bothered to trek so far out of town to talk to him in the first place.
Maybe even more important, though, is this: As great and as influential a leader as he was, John knew his place. He knew who he was, and he knew who he was not.
True leadership is always in service to someone or something greater. And so you might say that John’s words to the Pharisees can be summed up by the phrase “It’s not about me.”
This caused the brains of these Pharisees to blow a breaker. They’d heard about this really strange man out in the desert, a man who was preaching and baptizing and warning people to straighten up and fly right – doing, in other words, all the things you’d expect the Messiah to do. And they expected that, when they asked him point-blank just who he was, he would tell them that he was the Messiah.
But they were profoundly disappointed. John says, no, he’s not the Messiah, he’s not Elijah, he’s not a prophet – he’s not anything that they expect. He tells them instead “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness.” The Pharisees just shake their heads. They have no idea what to do with this man.
The greatest leaders throughout history have all had one basic thing in common – they point to someone or something else that’s greater than they are. Martin Luther King, Jr., was a great leader because he became the focal point of the civil rights movement – he pointed to that new possible reality where all people are known “by the content of their character,” and not the pigmentation of their skin. Abraham Lincoln was a great leader because he symbolized the indivisible union of all the states. Equal rights for all Americans and the strong union of all the States were concepts and goals far beyond King and Lincoln as individuals. They were the greater good which they served. And we remember their efforts and their sacrifices to this day, even as we live in the world they help create.
By contrast, you have leaders like Herod, who had no concept of serving the greater good. As far as he was concerned, he was the greater good, and everyone around him existed solely to serve him. And I think many of the religious leaders of the day, like these Pharisees, harbored that same idea – they were the leaders, and so people had to serve them, notwithstanding that they supposedly served God! Pride of place had cause their service to God to be mere lip service, and not service done from the heart. This may have been what made John so alarming to them – people knew the real deal when they saw it, and they saw it in John, but not in them. When people came out from town to hear John and be with him, and be baptized by him, they went away changed. They went away excited. They went away relieved. They went away with a sense that something enormously important had just happened to them and that something even more important was about to happen to this tired old world. This had not happened for many a long year under the Pharisees.
“It’s not about me.” John reflected the Light; he wasn’t himself the source of the Light. Today, too, there are many who would like us to believe that they are the source of the light. Much of the pain and suffering of the world come from such people, who imagine that they are the light themselves. If you have an attitude like that, you miss a lot. If the people around you become nothing more than props in your personal play, life begins to lose its color and those all-important connections you have with others begin to fray. You begin to believe that all of the good things that happen to you are solely due to your efforts, your brains, your talents – you don’t need anyone else. And all the bad things that happen to you are clearly someone else’s fault.
If John had been a person like that, he might have knuckled under to the interrogations of the Pharisees. He might have ceased to bear witness to the Light. And today we would still be in the dark.
But John was faithful to his calling. He was faithful because he knew God had called him to his mission. And he knew, as Lincoln did, that God would give him the strength to complete it.
He gave his all for the Light.
The worst thing that happens to us when we, like those Pharisees, turn inward is that we lose the capacity to “interfere for good,” as Charles Dickens puts it in his story “A Christmas Carol.” We don’t even begin to act like Conrad the cobbler in the poem, because the thought of exerting ourselves even slightly for another human being simply doesn’t even occur to us. And not only does that begin to kill our humanity, it begins to stunt and eventually kill our souls.
I think that one of the most important human traits, maybe the one most important human trait, is to have compassion for others. Every one of us is here today because someone – actually, many someones – parents, teachers, friends, church members – gave us a hand when we needed it most. Without their help and intervention, where would we be today? Conrad the cobbler has helped us on our way, too.
And when the role is reversed, and we are the ones giving the help, doesn’t that just give us the feeling of being truly blessed?
In Poland in the late 18th Century, the forces of the Tsar were rampaging throughout the countryside, burning Jewish villages. In one of those villages, where nothing was left standing, an elderly gentleman found a few unburned boards, nailed them together to form a crude seller’s stall, and opened up for business.
A young man walking by stopped in disbelief. “Whatever are you doing? What are you selling among these ruins?”
“I am selling hope,” the old man replied. “The best place to sell water is in the desert, so the best place to sell hope is on an ash heap.”
That’s our job, too. God wants us to give hope to this world. God wants us to be people of hope. God wants us to be people who see, not just beyond ourselves and our momentary wants and needs, but beyond the brokenness of this world to his promise of grace brought to this world as the Babe born in a manger on Christmas Eve. We are called to be voices crying out in the wilderness of our world, not so that people see us, but that they see Christ, the Baby King.
Let’s be witnesses to the Light! Let ours be that friendly door!
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.