“A Voice in the Wilderness” John 1: 19-34

 This is the Sunday that no one knows what to do with - the Sunday after Christmas. Preachers don’t know what to preach on - we are still in the season of Christmas, celebrating that Christ came to dwell amongst us as God in the flesh, but we already said that a few days ago. Lectionaries - the layout for preaching for the calendar year, sometimes flounder as well. What texts do we point to? What Good News do we declare on this day? 

And so, in many ways, I acknowledge the disjointed nature of today’s text. Why is Pastor Michelle going back to John 1? Didn’t we just hear the beginning of this chapter a few weeks ago? And we certainly did. But for the next several months, my friends, we are going to be journeying through the Gospel of John, and so, today, we start back where we left off, at the beginning of the Gospel, as we too, begin our faith journeys with Christ our Lord.

For is this not what the season of Advent has been preparing us for? For us to have an experience with God through Christ that realigns our world! See friends, Christ did not come just as nice thing - no, Christ came to change us! To realign our priorities and our world so that we seek first the Kingdom of God.

And that causes us to do radical things. 

Case in point, John the Baptizer. John has been doing this baptism thing for a while. Calling people to come into the wilderness, to be baptized in the Jordan River. Once again, not as a nice act, but as a sign of a complete change of life. So it’s no wonder that the Jewish religious leaders have started to catch word of what is happening - and they have questions. 

In today’s text we encounter some Levites, ones who serve in the temple and would see themselves as the protectors of the sacredness of worshiping God, come to John with some questions. Chiefly who are you and by what authority are you offering baptism to our people?

But John doesn’t quite answer the question. At least not at first. Instead, he starts out by saying who he is not. He is not the one appointed by God to be the Savior of the people. He is not the one that the people were waiting for. He was not Elijah - who it was believed would come before the Messiah. He was not even a prophet, coming with a word from the Lord. 

But once John had spent time fielding their questions, which laid bear where their heads and hearts were at, he was finally able to answer who he was. And John lifted up a text that those who came to question him would have known. A text from the prophet Messiah. Stating that he was a voice crying out in the wilderness, prepare the way for the Lord.

If the Levites showed up that day thinking that they would get a simple answer that they could take back to those in the temple, they were sorely disappointed. 

And the questioning did not stop. For now there are some Pharisees, those that are the keeper of the law, who want to know what makes John think that he has any right to offer baptism. 

To which John gave a very plain answer - he is just baptizing with water. But there was one that was here, right now, that they did not see or recognize who was about to do a whole new thing. Because he had came to baptize with the Holy Spirit. And John wasn’t even worthy to be his lowly servant. 

I have to think that John was just as bewildering to those who first encountered him as he is to us as we read about him the accounts of the Gospels. Here is this man who dresses funny, eats differently then everyone else, has these words of challenge to offer to the people, and is doing what doesn’t make sense to the religious leaders. All because he had received a call from God. 

A call that started with the story of his birth. That was rooted in the fact that his parents were well past the age of being able to bear any children, yet the Angel of the Lord showed up at his dad’s work one day and turned their lives upside down. John would have heard the story of his father being silenced until he spoke forth his name, “John”. He would have heard about how he leapt for joy in his mother’s womb when he encountered Jesus when he was still within Mary. If we are honest, John’s story may not even made sense fully to John. But he knew who he was and what he was about - even without having all of the details worked out. 

How about us, brothers and sisters? Who are we? And what makes our celebrate over the past few weeks any different than the world around us? Because if its just that we came to worship to hear the Good News - we may not be fully living into our identities as children of God. 

It’s not just about coming here, my friends. It’s about going out. Being sent out into the world to proclaim that Jesus came to work amongst and redeem even our broken world. We may not have all of the answers. We may have moments when we fail to recognize what God is doing in and through Jesus as well, this Jesus who was born in a manger as King, but that does not mean that we stop bearing witness.

If you ask well-meaning Christians some of the reasons why they don’t evangelize you get a whole list. Things like, I’m afraid that I will alienate people. I’m afraid that I won’t know the answers to the questions that people ask. I’m shy. That just isn’t for me. But friends, those reasons point to a lack of Biblical understanding around evangelism. It’s about simply helping me to see the work of God in their lives and the world. To bear witness to what we know. It doesn’t mean that we need to know all of the answers, because we won’t. But like John, we are called to bear witness to the Light of Jesus Christ. We bear wises to Jesus in our lives, my friends, and that is for every single one of us. 

John the Baptist stood their answering the questions of the religious leaders with a sense of humility and in a way that was completely opposed to the “me-focused” culture of his time and ours. He didn’t want to talk about who he was - he wanted to talk about the one who was greater. He didn’t want the attention to be on his calling - he wanted to lift up the one whom he had came to proclaim. 

Because he recognized glimpses of what God was doing. And those glimpses became the passionate cry of his heart.

What about us? Do we recognize the glimpses of God’s glory, here and now today? Do we tell the story of how Jesus came and changed it all? And does that swell in our hearts because it is the passion of our lives? Because friends, that is what this season is all about. 

On Christmas Eve I started to share with you a brief lyric from from “In Christ Alone” that had captured the attention of my heart leading up to that day. Now I want to share a bit more of that song with you as well: “In Christ alone my hope is found, He is my light, my strength, my song.” Is that true for you, brothers and sisters? As we stand on the precipice of a New Year, is Christ your light, strength and song? If so, how are you willing to proclaim it in the days, weeks, and years to come? Amen.