John the Baptist and the Way of Christ – Br. Curtis Almquist

Advent II (C)
Luke 3:1-6

There was a man sent from God whose name was John.  He came to be called the Messiah’s forerunner.  He was also Jesus’ cousin, just six months or so older than Jesus.  What would it have been like for these two cousins to grow up around each other? 

John, the miracle son of Zechariah and Elizabeth, who were old enough to be his great grandparents.  Jesus, the miracle son of Mary and of Joseph (Joseph, sort of).  Their lives were predicted to be great.  Jesus was rumored to be the Messiah… but how could this be, given how normal he otherwise seemed.  And supposedly John’s destiny was to prepare the way for the Messiah, but how could this be?

The stories of these two cousins’ miraculous conceptions, announced, so some said, by angels, are the kinds of things you can read about in supermarket check-out lines.  And I would guess that in back-water Judea, there must have been a fair amount of gossip and derisive humor about about these angel stories and these two first-century bionic boys.  What would it have been like for these two cousins to grow up in each other’s shadows, to live side-by-side for maybe 30 years, their lives shrouded with such mystery and expectation and speculation about their iden­tities and their destinies.  Neither of them married.  Neither of them were all-that-special, really, at least for boys who were supposed to become so great.  What did they know about each other?  What did they think about each other?  How did they talk to one another?  We don’t know.

All we do know is that one day John left home and, it seems, left Jesus, at least left Jesus on his own.  John began living out own his destiny, preaching repentance, baptizing those who came to confess their sins, preparing the way for the Messiah.  And then the day comes that Jesus appears on the horizon, asking John to be baptized with all the other sinners.  I can imagine this was something of a crisis for John.  “What is Jesus doing here?”  John silently screams with his eyes.  Either Jesus, his cousin, was the Messiah, or Jesus was not the Messiah after all.  In my mind’s eye I can see John lunging after Jesus, seizing Jesus by the arm and marching him out into the sea, far enough so they could be alone, where John demands, almost in desperation, “What in the world are you doing here!?”  I suspect that Jesus is not, himself, completely clear why he has come.

But Jesus soon has something of an answer.  There’s the sight of a dove and the sound of a voice from heaven saying, “This is my well-beloved son.”  John, it seems, never completely hears this answer, not in this life.  John does baptize Jesus, on Jesus’ insistence, and Jesus leaves for the wilderness and beyond.  John labors on, baptizing, and, I bet, wondering, too.  The only thing he’s sure of is that something greater is to come.  “Prepare the way for it,” John preached.  Would this happen through Jesus or not?  John knew from where Jesus had come – his clan and his culture – which probably left John wondering, “What good could come out of that?”  You may even remember the early reports in the Gospels about Jesus’ coming to his home town to teach the people.  People were astounded, not because they had never met and seen someone like Jesus.  Quite to the contrary, they did know him and had heard him because he grew up there.  And so we hear that the people were astounded: “Where did this man get this wisdom and these deeds of power?   Is not this the carpenter’s son?  Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?   And are not all his sisters with us?  Where then did this man get all this?”  I don’t think they were impressed or taken with Jesus.  Quite to the contrary.  The Gospel account says that they took offence at him.  And Jesus says (maybe under his breath), “Prophets are not without honor… except in their own country and in their own house.”i John the Baptist was from the same country, same house, same clan.  According to the Gospel accounts in Matthew and Luke, even at the end of his life (when he was in prison), John might not have been altogether sure that Jesus actually was the Messiah.  John now is in prison facing execution, summons two of his own disciples and sent them to Jesus.  They are to say to Jesus that “John the Baptist had sent them.”  John told them to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” And Jesus answers them,  “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me” (which maybe even needs to apply to John).ii

I actually take enormous comfort in what I read to be John’s uncertainty, maybe confusion about Jesus’ identity and his own.  I take comfort in this for several reasons, and this may speak to you.

For one, Jesus had his own issues growing into his own identity as the Messiah.  It took the church three centuries following Jesus’ death and resurrection to arrive at the theological formula that Jesus was truly God and truly human (the very thing we will attest to in the Nicene Creed, momentarily).  I wonder how that was with Jesus, in his own lifetime?   As we hear in the Gospel record, people asking, “What good can come out of someone from somewhere like Jesus?”  I’m sure Jesus was asking those questions of himself long before anyone else was.  We even know of Jesus struggle, up to the last moment of his crucifixion, when he felt abandoned by the God whom he called “Father”: “Why, O why have you forsaken me,” Jesus cries out.  I find enormous comfort in this struggle to know and claim their own identity and their certainty.  Some mornings I wake up and I’m not completely sure about a lot of things – either about my own identity or about Jesus’.  What I am sure about I draw from memory: of God having been with me, miraculously, in so many ways in life.  Maybe so for you, too?  I draw on my past memory and I draw on my present need… which brings me to an altar such as this with my hands cupped, almost begging to know God’s presence and God’s provision.

I also find enormous comfort in the incompleteness of John’s life experience – he was beheaded, you will recall – and Jesus’ life experience – he was abandoned, then crucified, you will recall – because their lives on earth don’t end in perfect completeness.  You may know that Shaker hymn –  “Tis a Gift to be Simple” – which ends with the line about “everything coming round right.”  I believe that to be true, with all my heart.  But I don’t believe that to be true about life on this earth.  For some people, many things do come round right in their own lifetimes: issues with their families and friends, with their health, with their finances, with their reputation and legacy.  Most of the time, as I listen to people’s lives and read the newspapers, people come to the end of their lives incomplete, often times quite broken.  In the vocabulary of the church, there is this wonderful phrase, “the hope of heaven.”  What I look for and pray for – for myself and for people whom I know and love and for people whom I simply read about in the newspapers – my hope and prayer for heaven isn’t about pearly gates and gold-paved streets, but about reconciliation and restoration.  When Jesus says he’s come “to make all things new,” I think he’s speaking heavenward.  I’m not suggesting we live our lives in a kind of masochistic state, nor that we give up enjoying all the good gifts, nor that we cease to struggle and advocate for justice and peace on this earth.  To the contrary, we are the major builders of what Jesus calls his “kingdom,” his coming kingdom.  That’s our job.  That’s our job, to be preparing the highway to God, especially for those who have fallen off the path or never discovered the path to God.  We’re on a mission from God in this life, after last second of our lifetime.  But in the meantime – and sometimes it’s a very mean time – we also embrace the reality that life on this earth is incomplete, it’s a foretaste of what is to come – for ourselves and for others.  If you know someone who died where things did not “come round right” in their own lifetime, pray for them.  Pray for the kind of healing and reconciliation that can come, and may only come in death.  I think we’ve got enormous power here to pray for what Jesus calls the “unbinding of people” on earth and in heaven.  Back to John the Baptist and Jesus.  I think they lived incomplete lives on this earth… and I think there’s a witness of comfort and freedom to us all.

One last word of comfort and encouragement from the life and witness of John the Baptist and Jesus.  The earliest followers of Jesus were not called “Christians.”  They were called “followers of the way.”  Jesus even takes this name himself when he says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”  “I am the way.”  Where did this notion of the “the way” come from ?  Jesus certainly would have heard this in the readings from the prophets and in John’s own language when he says, “Prepare the way of the Lord.” What is this way?  First of all we come to find out how Jesus is the way.  His message is that all of humankind have lost our way and need to be found and rescued, saved, brushed off, patched up, cuddled, fed and lead home.  We need to be rescued; we need to be saved.  God, out of so much love for the world, sends God’s only Son to seek us out and save us.  In English the verbs to save, to salvage, to salve come from the same etymological root.  And it’s true also in the Greek.   Jesus has come to save us, to salvage our lives, to salve our wounds.  Because that’s the way God is.  We hear the prophet Isaiah’s call, “Prepare the way,” but when it comes down to it, in Isaiah’s day it didn’t happen or couldn’t happen, and so Jesus makes it happen by coming to us and living with us and dying for us and rising from the dead.  God provides for what God commands.  God becomes the way to God through Jesus.  I would call this good news, very good news.  Jesus has come to save us, salve us, salvage us.  And I would say that it is Jesus who finds his way to us.  I don’t think we find Jesus; he finds us, who are prone to get lost in life.  That’s the way it is with Jesus.

If this is a season of your life where you are full of clarity and confidence, where all seems right in heaven and on earth, how wonderful.  Enjoy it.  Share it.  Share it generously.  If, however, this is season of your life where you are lost – something about your past or your present or your future – and you’re lost, take enormous comfort.  Jesus will find his way to you, presuming you need to be rescued.  Jesus bridges the way to us and the God whom he calls Father.  Jesus is also God Emmanuel, God with us, God with you, even today.  Even if your only experience just now is longing for God and a feeling of emptiness, God is in the emptiness.  Really.