Prepare

Advent 3B, 12/14/14
John 1:6-8; 19-28
Isaiah 61:1-4; 8-11
1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; Psalm 126

Lord God, you have done great things for us. Restore our fortunes like water in the desert. Sanctify us and keep us blameless until the day of Christ’s coming. Amen.

When we meet a new person, there’s a series of questions we tend to ask them.

What’s your name?

What do you do?

Where are you from?

How do you know the person who invited us both to this event?

All of these questions are just slightly less subtle ways to figure out the answer to the one question that’s really driving our conversation: Who are you?

The priests and Levites were not subtle at all when they approached John in the Gospel reading today. They just came right out and asked, “Who are you?”

Instead of answering their question directly, John started off by telling them who he was not.

That would probably drive most of us crazy.

Who are you?

Well, I’m not that guy’s sister.

I’m not your boss.

I’m not the next candidate for president.

Those answers don’t actually have a lot of meaning. I could still be just about anyone – stating who I am not doesn’t really narrow down the field a whole lot.

But John the Baptist was smart. He knew what the priests and Levites were really after. By asking this question of John, the leaders were showing their hands. Their question was actually, are you going to cause us trouble?

To the political and religious authorities, any leader who can attract crowds of followers in the wilderness poses a real threat. The leaders were afraid that John was planning a coup. That’s why they asked him who he was – they were afraid he might be the Messiah.

According to traditional Jewish beliefs at the time, the Messiah would be a political leader who would overthrow the occupying government and create a new Israel like the one from the glory days of David and Solomon. Anyone holding a leadership position under the existing regime would be at risk, unless they joined forces with the Messiah and helped him achieve this vision of a new world.

John understood the fears of the priests and the Levites, so he answered their unasked question: No, I am not the Messiah.

The messengers from the Pharisees press John further, asking specific questions about other religious figures John might be.

They are very blunt – kind of like the get-to-know-you questions the nurse asks when you go in to see the doctor. How much do you weigh? Do you smoke or drink? Tell me about your sex life? If anyone other than a nurse were asking us these questions, we’d probably have a very rude response for them.

But John takes the blunt questions in stride and answers them honestly.

He replies, “no, I am not any of these things.”

But – before you get too excited about this fact, current religious and political leaders, listen to the rest of what John has to say. He might not be the Messiah, but the Messiah is on the way. The Messiah is coming soon, no doubt about it.

If you think that John is causing trouble now, just you wait until the real Messiah arrives. John isn’t even worthy to untie the thong of his sandal. The real trouble hasn’t even started yet.

Today’s Gospel lesson reminds us that Jesus was not just a warm fuzzy teacher who affirmed the way things were in the world and made people feel good about themselves.

Jesus challenged authority and promoted change and in general turned the world around him upside down.

Actually, more to the point, Jesus came into our upside-down world and made every effort possible to turn it right-side-up. For people who were used to the world as it was, Jesus’ coming was not very pleasant.

Jesus was God in human form. The very fact of his existence was revolutionary and rule-breaking, so it shouldn’t surprise us that his ministry was too.

We, on the other hand, are not God in human form.

We are more like John.

John is depicted in Christian art as pointing at Jesus.

There are certain signature elements that tell us who the characters are in religious paintings or sculptures or stained glass windows. Peter, for example, tends to be holding a set of keys, representing the keys to the kingdom. Paul is often holding a book because of all the writing he did.

John the Baptist is sometimes shown in Christian art looking wild and unwashed and wearing camel skin. But that’s not the telltale sign of a portrait of John. The artistic signature of John the Baptist is that he points to Jesus.

You’ll sometimes find paintings of a very young John standing next to Mary and the baby Jesus, and the only way to tell who that toddler is, is that he’s pointing at Jesus.

John was not the light of God coming into the world, but he was a witness to that light.

And so are we.

As followers of the Messiah, our job is to live lives that witness to the work of Jesus. We are to speak testimony on Jesus’ behalf, just like John.  

What would John the Baptist do?

That’s the question, or the challenge, for the life of a Christian who is anxiously awaiting the coming of the Messiah – and, of course, we all are awaiting the coming of the Messiah.

That’s what Advent is all about. It’s about waiting for the birth of a baby in a stable, but it’s also about waiting for the return of Christ at the end of time.

Our faith challenges us to prepare the way for Jesus    not just to be born on Christmas, but also to return again, next week or next year or in a thousand years.

Jesus is coming to the world again, and that is good news, but until he returns, we have our work cut out for us.

We ourselves are not the light, but we can point others to the light that is coming into the world.

The other piece of good news is that we have it easier than John did.

We don’t have to prepare the way for Jesus alone, or without guidance.

We’ve got a great example of how to prepare the way for Christ in the person of John the Baptist.

And we also have some instructions from the prophets in the Old Testament.

Look to the book of Isaiah.

This is the prophet who John cites when the priests and Levites ask him who he is.

The book of Isaiah gives us a lot of information about what the promised Messiah will be like, and also what will happen leading up to his arrival.

Often, in the Bible, when promises are being made, it’s God who’s making them.

That’s logical. The Bible is the Word of God for the people of God.

But the pages of the Bible also include promises that faithful people throughout history have made to God, of things that they will do or ways they will behave – basically, describing how they are going to put their faith into practice.

Today’s reading from Isaiah is one of these passages. The prophet is promising that, in response to God’s action in his life, he’ll do a whole bunch of things on God’s behalf. This is a description of the prophet being commissioned to go out into the world – not commanded. There is no negative if the prophet fails to follow through on any of these actions, except that he’ll feel bad about it.

So today, we are in the place of John the Baptist, and we are in the place of the prophet Isaiah.

Our role, as followers of Christ, is to prepare the way for his coming.

I know it sounds counter-intuitive – if we’re following Jesus, he’s already gone before us, so how can we prepare his way?

That’s the whole purpose of celebrating the birth of Jesus every year. We need to remember just how earth-shattering it was for God to enter the world as a human baby. And we need to remember that Jesus promised to return to earth again at the end of time.

         So we follow Jesus by preparing his way.

And we can do that by taking the advice of the prophet Isaiah.

bring good news to the oppressed,

bind up the brokenhearted,

proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners,

comfort all who mourn.

Some of those instructions are easy – comfort all who mourn? That comes naturally to most of us.

But the prophet’s promise to bring good news to the oppressed? That can be a lot harder to do. There often isn’t any good news for people who are oppressed. So do we lie? Or do we work to change the world so that people are no longer oppressed? What is the best way for us to follow the advice of Isaiah?

It’s not easy to be a prophet, and it’s not easy to prepare the way for Jesus. But that’s what our faith calls us to do. So we look to the example of John the Baptist.

There was a man sent by God whose name was John.

There was a congregation sent by God, the community of Cooksville Lutheran Church.

John was not the light, but he came as a witness to testify to the light.

We are not God, we don’t have a monopoly on the truth, we are not the savior of the world – but we can witness to what we know about God, and tell others about the work of Christ. When we do this, we prepare the way for Jesus.

The messengers asked John why he was doing ministry, anyway.

His answer is the same as ours. “Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.”

Jesus is coming, so let’s light his way. 

Amen.