Intro
Many
folks like to talk about themselves, whether they will admit it or not. Such
talk can even be a sign of our fallen
nature having its way in our lives. Such
talk reveals that life is about me--not others, not God, or not even about God
for me.
Main Body
But
John the Baptizer acted differently. He
didn’t like talking about himself. We
can see that in the way he answered questions.
Not only did his answers come across as abrupt, but when he did speak,
he referred to himself by who he was not.
How
did that go? It went like this: John was
not the long-prophesied Messiah. He was
not Elijah. He was not the prophet. (Our Old-Testament reading spoke of that
prophet,
someone like Moses, who would mediate between God and the people.)
Frustrated,
those information gatherers from Jerusalem demanded more. “Give us an answer
for those who sent us. What do you have to say about yourself?” But John
acted in such a way, as if saying,
“I have nothing to say about myself.”
But
that irritated his interrogators. They had
to have something to give to those who sent them. But John still refused to
reveal his identity.
So, they pressed him all the more,
unwilling to take “no” for an answer. Finally,
John confessed: “Call me a voice. I’m a
voice crying out in the wilderness as Isaiah had foretold: ‘Make straight the
way of the Lord!’ Are you
satisfied? That’s me. I’m that voice!”
He’s
a voice? How odd. But there it is: He’s a voice calling for people
to prepare themselves for the coming of the Lord, the Messiah. He was that
voice.
But even that answer didn’t satisfy. Because if John wasn’t the Messiah, if he
wasn’t Elijah, and if wasn’t the Prophet, then why was he baptizing? Who gave
him the authority to plunge people
under the wave and raise them from the waters, as was then done to Gentiles who
became Jews, as a people waiting for the Lord?
Why was he doing that?
John
then answers why he is baptizing. But even
that answer isn’t much of a reply--at least, it seems that way. He says: “I
baptize with water, but among you
stands someone whom you do not know. He
is coming after me, whose sandal straps I am not worthy to untie.” That’s
John’s answer.
Someone
among them, whom they don’t know or recognize, is the One who certified John to
call people to repent and give them such a baptism. That someone wanted John
to call people away
from their works righteousness. They
were to leave their sinful self-sufficiency and pride behind, embracing the new
life that depends on the mercy and grace of God.
“Someone whom you do not know”: so much is packed in so
few words. This was more than people not
recognizing Jesus as the Messiah. John’s
statement was packed with theology AND politics! For it’s easy to miss the
Messiah who looks
like an ordinary man. Jesus didn’t look
spectacularly messianic. After all, they
were looking for a powerful, earthly leader.
They wanted a Messiah, who would come to throw off the yoke of Rome,
where Israel would become an independent nation once more.
But Jesus wasn’t that Messiah. He looked like a commonplace laborer, a
carpenter, not a political king or military leader. “He had no beauty or
majesty to attract us to
him, nothing in his appearance that we should want to follow him,” said the
prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 53:2). Jesus
looked like an ordinary Joe in a crowd of ordinary Joes.
That’s why John was baptizing. He came to reveal who the Messiah was--because
you wouldn’t figure that out by looking at Him!
Even John confessed: “I didn’t know him, but I came to baptize with
water that he might be revealed” (John 1:31).
When John baptized Jesus, God unveiled Him as the Messiah. Jesus is the Son in
whom the Father delights,
the One on whom the Spirit descends, and the One who will give the Spirit
without measure. He is the second Person
of the divine, holy Trinity in human flesh and blood, fully man and fully
God.
John saw that at the baptismal waters. But it was only a glimpse. Then Jesus
looked the same as always--an
ordinary looking Joe, once more. God was
training His people to trust their ears and not their eyes, to walk by faith
and not by sight.
John’s calling, His whole ministry, was pointing people
away from himself to Jesus. For the One
he baptized was the Messiah, who once stood with him in the water, whom God
declared
to be His one-and-only Son.
The One to whom John pointed didn’t look like what people
expected their Messiah to be. But that’s
how it is with Jesus. When He was born,
the angels burst forth from heaven, telling and singing to shepherds that the
Savior, the Messiah, was born. But when
the shepherds went to Bethlehem to see the Savior, all they saw was an ordinary
infant, with no kingly trappings.
Jesus looked to be a pauper’s child, wrapped in strips of
cloth, sleeping in an animal’s feeding trough.
When they tiptoed in and bowed down before Him, they saw nothing remarkably
God-like about that little One. He was
just a baby, an ordinary Joe of a baby.
And yet God’s angels had told them that He was the Son of God, their
Savior.
It was the same with the Magi, those wise men from the
East. They had come to Jerusalem to find
the King, for that was where kings live, in a palace. But, after leaving
Jerusalem, the star then led
them to a small town, to an ordinary looking boy. There they were, giving
gifts to an everyday looking
child. This is the King we traveled so
far to see? But God’s star didn’t lie. It revealed the truth that their eyes
could
not see.
“Among you stands someone whom you do not know.” John was the last
Old-Testament prophet to point
forward to the Messiah. John also invites
us to look beyond what we see with our eyes and believe what we hear. John,
the greatest prophet of all, confessed that
he was unworthy to get down on his knees and unstrap the Messiah’s sandals.
Even a slave’s job was too exalted for the
greatest of the prophets when it came to Jesus.
For
the One to whom John points is much greater than John. Although Jesus was six
months younger than
John; in His divine nature, Jesus existed before him. Jesus existed before
Zechariah and Elizabeth,
John’s parents. He existed before David,
before Moses, before Abraham, before Noah, before Adam, even before time
itself.
Jesus
is as we sing: “Of the Father’s love begotten ere the worlds began to be, He is
Alpha and Omega, He the source, the ending He” (LSB 384). Jesus was born
when John was six months old, and, yet, He existed before him. As Jesus would
later say, “Before Abraham was,
I am” (John 8:58). He is the Word made
flesh, living among us.
Although
looking routinely ordinary, examine what Jesus came to do! He didn’t come
among us to be served--not even
to have His sandals unlatched. No; He
who was before time came into our flesh that He might serve us. He came to
off-load our sins and carry them
to His cross. There, He went to die the
death that was ours, to break the bondage of sin, destroying the dominion of
death. When He rose from the grave, He opened
the Kingdom of heaven for all believers.
That’s
why John was happy to be nothing, if it meant that he could be a voice. He
would proclaim the One who serves us all,
the One who became the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world. Being
God’s mouthpiece for His entire life, John
didn’t talk about himself. God had sent
him to proclaim the Greater One who is among us, whose sandals we are not
worthy to unstrap, but who still comes to be our Savior.
As
it was with John, so it is with us. Within
our Lord’s Church, the talk is not about you, me, or us. It isn’t about what
you or I may want. In the Church, the talk is always about
Another. It’s about the One whose
sandals we are not worthy to untie. It’s
about the One who is greater than we, because He was before we ever were. As
we are the work of His hands in creation,
so also are we the creatures of His own redeeming.
Jesus
came among us--as one of us--to serve all of us. He carried our sins as He
accepted His cross. For us, He died our death to overcome the
sharpness of death. Jesus comes to serve
and to give His life as a ransom for the many, for all!
It’s
still that way today. As in John’s day,
Jesus comes to us in seemingly unglamorous ways, humbly and hidden. Like back
then, without someone to tell us
otherwise, we wouldn’t know that He was here.
For the God we would expect, wouldn’t be the God we would see. And so, God is
also training us to trust our
ears and not our eyes.
Jesus
still trains us to walk by faith and not by sight. And so He comes to us in
His body and blood,
hidden within ordinary-looking bread and wine.
He comes in His usual unglamorous way, giving us His forgiveness,
bringing us the life that never ends.
The
Church: it’s not about John, it’s not about me, and it’s not about you. It is
all about Jesus--who He is and what He
does--for you! Worship in not our work
for God, but His work for us, among us, humbly coming to us, enlivening and
strengthening our faith. Indeed, Jesus
is among us, our Emmanuel.
Conclusion
And
so, before we greet Him in the manger, that humble feeding trough, on December
25th, we welcome Him one more time as He comes to us at His
Table. Today, Jesus comes bearing the
only Christmas gifts that we need for eternity, gifts without which we cannot
live. To Him alone be all glory and
honor with His Father and the life-giving Spirit, now and even into the ages of
ages! Amen.
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