John 1:19-29

09/07/08
John 1:19-28
Hudson UMC

This morning, we move on to a new passage in the Gospel of John. After a month spent on a single passage, building up a foundation, considering the richness of the Scriptures, we move on and we begin to encounter a character that was only briefly mentioned earlier. Today we begin to look at the ministry of John the Baptist, the forerunner to the ministry of Christ. There is a lot of information to unpack, so we’ll dive right in, but I need to let you know that we could spend another month on just this passage, but we will limit our discussion dramatically to just the bare essentials.

John the Baptist had a ministry of preaching and baptism in the wilderness across the Jordan River south-east of Jerusalem. He was an interesting figure, clothing himself with camel skins and eating locusts. When we look at his ministry, we might wonder how he made an impact on anyone, because he seemed to break all the rules of ministry. He didn’t have a building but was in the middle of nowhere, the only thing around was a river to baptize in. He wasn’t a good looking or well-dressed man. His message of repentance was not pleasing to the ear and even less so to the soul. He did not offer a wide variety of spiritual goods and services (though we might call them ministries) for the people to consume, nor did he rely on his own perceived “friendliness” to attract listeners. In fact, he was so far from being what we might call “friendly” that he calls the religious leaders of his day a “brood of vipers”, which would be a very poor church growth move by today’s standards.

But you know, this in itself is not particularly interesting because we see people on the street corners that have many of these very same characteristics in their ministry. The thing that is interesting about the ministry of John the Baptist is that people came. They not only came, but flocked to him; people from all walks of life. We read about crowds, tax collectors and soldiers, as different as different could be at the time, asking John what they should do, how they should live their lives. The responses they received were not easy to hear. The crowds were told that the person who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and the same is true for those who have food. The tax collectors were told to collect no more than they were ordered to. This would mean that they were not to engage in the corruption that “everyone else” was doing. The soldiers were instructed to not accuse anyone falsely and to be content with their wages. John’s message was simple. No matter who you were, you did not need more material things; in fact, John claimed that, regardless of how little you might have, someone else has less and anything you have beyond what you absolutely need to survive belongs to them, not you. John’s message said that, no matter who you were, you not only could give up some of your money and possessions, but that you would be far better off if you did give them up.

It seems amazing to us, but this was the message that drew huge crowds out of Jerusalem and the surrounding areas to come and listen to this man who they regarded as a prophet. As you might imagine, because he had such a high profile, controversy soon followed him. Soon, priests and Levites were sent by the Jerusalem Pharisees to investigate this preacher in the wilderness. Why was he doing what he was doing? Who gave him the authority to do it? They very likely also may have seen his ministry as undermining their own. Further still, they might have thought that John would be pretty full of himself, not because of the message he preached, but because they were full of themselves. If the people of the time were anything like us today, they might have assumed that he was a hypocrite. After all, how many of the politicians and religious leaders who have taken a strong stand against a particular sin have been later discovered to be guilty of that same sin? The priests and Levites needed to find out if this guy was the real deal. They needed to know if they should be worried about him.

So, in this rather tense interaction between John and those interrogating him, the priests and Levites ask him three very direct questions. They ask him if he is the Messiah, Elijah or the Prophet mentioned by Moses so long ago. The questions are very interesting, mostly because, though they are so quick to attribute lofty titles to this messenger of God, they seem to be completely ignorant when the actual Son of God, the Messiah they have been waiting for, finally appears. Without taking too long, I want to touch on the three questions and what they mean.

The people ask John if he is the Messiah. We read that, “he confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah’”. Put yourselves into John’s shoes. Here are some of the most influential religious leaders who at least seem like they are ready to give this man their allegiance if he is really the Messiah. It would have been extremely easy to say, “Yes, I am the Messiah”. If he had done this, how different would the story have been? He willingly renounced the glory and acclamation that would have accompanied his recognition as Messiah because he had a deep conviction that it simply wasn’t true. He also denies that he is Elijah. This seems funny to us because in a different gospel, we read that Jesus does consider him to be Elijah. While it is true that John exhibited the spirit and power of Elijah, he was not actually the old prophet reincarnated. He was also asked if he was the Prophet. This Prophet was the one that Moses said would come who would radically change the way God’s people related to Him. A few weeks ago, we talked about the fact that this Prophet was none other than Christ Himself, so it was absolutely true that John was not this Prophet. John’s answers show us that he was truly a faithful servant of God. Servants reject their master’s honor, they do not take credit for something that their master has done.

The next question that they ask him and the discussion that follows is incredibly important and tells us a lot, not only about how John the Baptist saw himself, but how we ought to see ourselves. They ask him, “What do you say about yourself?” He does not answer with biographical facts, nor does he talk about how good he is or point to himself as a brilliant preacher. He says, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord’ as the prophet Isaiah said”. John found his identity, not in what he knew, or what he did, or the success of his ministry, but defined himself in the words of someone else. What made him special was not really what he was doing, but the fact that he was a fulfillment of a prophecy given by someone greater than he was. Related to this is the particular prophecy he talks about. He calls himself a voice. Most people would have known him by the things that were unusual about the way he looked. They would identify him by seeing his unkempt hair and clothes, or by his camel hair shirts or by his habit of eating locusts. John himself believed that the single most important thing about him was the message that he had for the world. His message was not fancy, but it was something that no one else was saying. He had the audacity to declare that things were not as they should be, that the Lord was coming and that preparation needed to be made before He showed up, that the status quo will be overturned and that when God appears to people, absolutely everything must change. He was a captivating but incredibly convicting preacher. Eventually he would be executed, but he had fulfilled his calling as a voice crying in the wilderness.

The people who were listening to him did not seem to like this response. The very people who were willing to listen to him if he claimed to be the Messiah or Elijah or the Prophet, begin to turn on him. They imply that he is leading a sinful ministry, not because he was violating any command of God, but because he simply wasn’t the right person. John was not taken by surprise by this attack on his character. He knew, better than anyone else, that he wasn’t the right person. He knew that, though the people flocked to him, he did not hold the answers. There was no hope to be had in John the Baptist, nothing inherently life-giving in his words. This is a lesson that we in the church often need to learn. We, simply as people who attend church are not made the right people because of our attendance. We do not hold the answers apart from our submission to God. There is no hope to be had in the institution of the church, nothing inherently life-giving in the words of a sermon or in the liturgy, however, that does not mean that we stop doing what we are doing, because, though we do not hold the hope of humanity, we worship the one who does. John the Baptist baptized, not because he was so good, but because the God of the universe had sent him and given him a task. That is precisely what we in the church are called to be. People come to church to meet God and it is very easy for us to get distracted by the bells and whistles of our worship service, to confuse our earthly ministry with the glory of the good news and to lose sight of why we are really here. John existed to point to the one who is greater than himself and we are called to do the same. We are also voices crying out in the wilderness of modern culture. We have a message to be heard and, if nobody notices us, but they hear our message and encounter the living God, we will have fulfilled our calling.

Here, at the end of our passage, John lays it all down, he sets forth what he is really all about. He says, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thing of his sandal.” John was the epitome of humility. He drove himself into the dust and abased himself publicly. The priests and the Levites must have thought that John was crazy. He wouldn’t accept honor or praise from the people, he would not join ranks with the spiritual elite, and, probably the most frustrating of all, he would not bend under their critique. The crowds who followed John had never seen anything like this before. Many of them were devoting their lives to following this mysterious preacher from the wilderness; and yet, this man who taught with more authority and was far more influential than any other human being in Judea at the time bowed low before another. His humility was not false; it was not meant to make everyone think he was humble. Though everyone else saw a great preacher and prophet, when he saw his reflection in the Jordan River, he saw the truth: a weak and broken sinner who was nothing without God. That is what made him so good at reaching out to sinners, he was so aware of his own need for God that he was able to help others see their need for Him.

I want to take just a minute or two and think about how often we who claim the name of Christ see our relationship with Him. All too often, we do the church thing because it is the “right thing to do”. We have intellectually understood that people ought to go to church and that we ought to find ourselves there at least once in a while. How often do we ask God, “What are you going to do for me?” It isn’t just us, but we can see it in congregations across America. Now, each of us, when we are at our best, see God as one to serve, not one to serve us, but I find myself all too often treating my salvation, my relationship with God, my promise of eternal life, as if I deserved it. What a far cry this is from John’s testimony. “I am not worthy to untie his sandal”. Removing the shoes from an eminent person was something only the lowest servants did. John, this great man, this glorious example for how the people of God should adore their Lord, did not claim the right to do even this. Later, in just a few chapters, John will declare that he must decrease and that Christ must increase. God deserves our worship, He deserves the best we can bring Him, He deserves our very lives.

There are some conversations being had about what the future holds for this church. Jaymee Glenn-Burns, our Field Outreach Minister is going to help us discern where God is calling us in the months and years ahead. At this moment, I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know if God is calling us to reach out to the trailer courts outside of town, I don’t know if He is calling us to sponsor free community meals to show the love of Christ to others and promote unity in Hudson, I don’t know if He is calling us to investigate contemporary worship, and I don’t know if He is calling us to take a more comprehensive and active congregational involvement with the elementary school. I don’t know any of these things; we might be called to all of them, or we might be called to none of them and in another direction altogether. What I do know, however, is that we are not called to develop of a bunch of spiritual goods and services for people to consume and have their hearts and lives unchanged. What I know is that every motion toward growth will begin with our aligning ourselves with the attitude and humility of John the Baptist. The moment we believe that we can get the job done on our own, we will fall on our faces. The instant we take our eyes off the cross, we will fail.

So, as we begin to investigate what the future holds, I hope that each of us would understand in a deep way that, no matter what our culture would have us believe, we do indeed live in the wilderness. The world around us is crying out for God, they are yearning for spiritual fulfillment and they will seek it out wherever they can. Let us, individually and as a church, be a voice crying out in this wilderness; let us be burning and shining lamps in this dark world that the Light of Christ might shine in all people. Let us pray.

AMEN