ORDER OF WORSHIP

“Who John the Baptist Wasn’t”

John 1:6-8, 19-28

This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.

Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

Now that I have your attention it’s time to focus on what letting our little light shine is all about. Today’s text is a good place to start. The starting point will be a series of quotes about John the Baptist from various sources. But first a note concerning John the Baptist. In today’s text, indeed throughout St. John’s Gospel, he is referred to as John, period: no titles are given for him. The emphasis is on the message he spoke and the role he played. Titles are not important.

First quote, from Gary Charles: “[John] arrived not to get everything decorated and everyone ready for Christmas, but to ‘prepare the way of the Lord’. He came to ‘bear witness’ to the coming of the Light of God, reminding all who would listen that the darkest forces in the world are not finally as powerful as they appear. He came to bear witness that the most enchanting words spoken by forces of darkness lose their charm when measured against the ‘Word [who] became flesh and lived among us… full of grace and truth’.”

Karl Barth: “John the Baptist is no independent figure. He belongs entirely to Christ… he is only there to collect and give back the light that falls upon him from the figure of the one and only Christ. Thus standing there, being totally dependent, being totally man and sinner, totally serving.”

Marcia Riggs: “… we are not the Christ but witnesses to him. Our role in our time is, like John’s role in his time, to confess who we are not and proclaim the One in whose name we testify.”

David Bartlett: “We point to [Christ]; we serve [Christ]; we stand entirely under [Christ’s] judgment.”

And David Bartlett again: “The truly evangelical Christian is not ashamed to talk about faith. The claim that religion is an entirely private matter, never proclaimed and seldom mentioned, is far from the convictions of John’s Gospel. But the truly evangelical Christian does not seek to manipulate, coerce, con, or charm another into faith. Truly evangelical Christians and evangelical churches keep pointing to Jesus, saying, ‘Here he is’. Evangelism borrows other language from John’s Gospel. We proclaim not ‘Believe or perish,’ but ‘Come and see.’”

John the Baptizer (as opposed to St. John the Gospel writer) knew who he was and who he was not. He was not the Messiah. More than that he was neither Elijah nor the Moses-like prophet some anticipated. Luke’s Gospel tells us he was a relative of Jesus. The Gospels of Matthew and Mark call him the Baptist or the Baptizer. In John’s Gospel he does baptize, the implication being that he also proclaims a message of repentance.

As today’s text makes clear he was not the Light but the one sent to testify to the Light. His was the voice crying in the wilderness about this great thing that God was doing. He himself said, “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.” Just call me John, plain old John: the opening act preparing the crowd for the star, the undercard on the boxing match, the consolation game of the basketball tournament.

During my first summer of seminary field work I met another John, John Teeny to be specific. Not realizing that he was mentally challenged I asked him who he was and where he lived. His answers were simple: John and home. He knew who he was and where he belonged. That’s some basic information each of us should know about our self: who we are and where we belong. Conversely it’s important to know who we’re not and where we don’t belong. Related to all that is our need to know what our primary role is and what it is not.

John the Baptist was not the Messiah, the Christ, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He was his servant. He was not the One foretold but the one whose role was to announce that One’s coming. He would not usher in the Kingdom of God. He would lay the groundwork. His job was to set the stage and then fade into the background.

The church is Christ’s body. Christ is this body’s head. The church is not the Kingdom fulfilled. It is the body that longs for and works toward its fulfillment. The church is not the Gospel, the Good News, but the bearer and proclaimer of it. The church is not the Light, but a reflector of it. No individual Christian is ever to be confused with his or her Lord, to be perceived by self or others as the Messiah. The church and every member of it is a servant of Christ. It is not our task to point to ourselves. It is to point to Christ and say, “Come and see.”

There is a bit of a paradox in all that, however. We are not Christ but we are called to embody him in the world. We are not the Word of God incarnate but we are called to make incarnate the love of Jesus in our daily lives. We are not the Light of God in the ultimate sense that Jesus is but we are directed by Jesus to let our lights shine in the world, our lights, of course, being a reflection of his. We are not Christ but those around us should be able to see Christ in us.

Even as we play the role of John the Baptist, the role of pointing people to Christ, we must also be Christ’s ambassadors, those who take upon themselves the role of the one they represent. We are the ones who speak for and model Jesus to today’s world. As we do this we are to take seriously what one of the commentators on today’s text suggested. The question, wrote said commentator, that we ought to be asking is not “What would Jesus do?” but “What would Jesus have us do?” as we point him out to the world and represent him in our surrounding culture. We do not have to be Jesus, which is good because we can’t. We do have to seek his will and then carry it out.

One of the buzz words floating around the church these days is countercultural. We are called to be countercultural, to stand over against our culture rather than blindly blending into it. John the Baptist was countercultural and then some: living in the wilderness, wearing animal hides, surviving on bugs and honey, and most of all telling people things they didn’t want to hear. He was especially blunt with the religious establishment of Jerusalem. SOMETHING IMPORTANT TO NOTE HERE: When John’s Gospel speaks of the Jews it is speaking about that religious establishment – not all people of Jewish descent.

Moving on: How are we to embrace this counter-culturalism in 21^st Century America? First of all we have to remember who we are, quoting I Peter: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”

We are no longer sinners but saints, no longer dead in our sins but alive in Christ, no longer the lost but those who have been found, no longer the blind but those who see - who have opened the eyes of their hearts, no longer people walking in darkness but those living in the marvelous light that came into the world as Jesus, the Word made flesh. We are in the world. We are not to be of it.

We’re supposed to be different, and obviously so. One of the ways we can act out that difference is in the way we deal with Advent and Christmas, not trivializing the former and not romanticizing the latter. In her commentary on today’s text the aforementioned Marcia Riggs wrote:

“… in the context of the Advent season, [today’s] verses remind us of our identity and our role as witnesses who must testify to Jesus’ birth in the midst of the ever-encroaching consumerist claims regarding the meaning of Christmas. Like John we are to witness to the light of Christ as a voice in the wilderness of twenty-first century consumerism. As voices in the wilderness, we must make a countercultural claim that dislocates the consumption of things, even when we offer these things as Christmas gifts. An example of such a counterclaim might focus on the buying and wearing of brand-name items that have become markers of our identities. The countercultural claim is that being fully human means the quest for our identity must be grounded upon the relationship we have to Jesus. Just as John knew who he was in relation to who Christ was, we must claim our identity, especially remembering that [and here I’ll be repeating an earlier quote] we are not the Christ but witnesses to him. Our role in our time is, like John’s role in his time, to confess who we are not and proclaim the One to whom we testify.”

We are defined by our relationship to Christ not by the brand names we buy, wear, drive, and use. We are defined by our role of pointing others to Christ and away from the world, by letting his light that is reflected in us shine in the darkness around us.

This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.

Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine. Amen