(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “J the B”, originally shared on December 6, 2023. It was the 288th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
How would you feel if a member of your
family was homeless, living in the desert, wearing the skin of a dead animal,
and eating bugs? Jesus was fine with that. Today, we’re going to find out why.
Two weeks ago, we
talked about C the K: Christ the King. This week, we are going to talk about J
the B: John the Baptist.
What do Atilla the Hun, Winnie the Pooh, and
John the Baptist all have in common?
Same middle name. OK. I know that’s bad.
Today we’re going to take a look at the last
of that named group. In fact, he was the last of another named group: Old
Testament Prophets.
John and Jesus were related, though we don’t
know in what way. Close enough, though, that this was revealed, when the Angel
Gabriel spoke to Mary in Luke 1:35-37,
35 The
angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the
Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. 36 And
now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this
is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. 37 For
nothing will be impossible with God.”
And
then this happened, in Luke 1:39-41a,
39 In
those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill
country, 40 where
she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When
Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb.
That baby, Elizabeth’s baby, was named John
(Luke 1:59-64). John was a few months older than Jesus. He leaped in his mother’s
womb when he came near to Jesus in Mary’s womb. He had an unexpected birth. He
preached the gospel of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. He was a prophet
who was killed for what he taught.
I wonder if he knew what was coming.
There is a new movie on the life of composer
and conductor Leonard Bernstein now being promoted. Leonard Bernstein once
said, "To achieve great
things, two things are needed: a plan and
not quite enough time." I wonder if God
revealed to John that his time would be short. John preached with urgency, as
did all the prophets of Israel.
Prophets,
people who spoke to the people for God, had been at the center of the formative
life of the people of Israel.
Prophets had warned the people that they
had broken their covenant with God and things were going to get bad if they
didn’t repent. Mostly, they didn’t listen, like you and like me.
Things had gotten bad for Israel after the
reign of King David and had completely fallen apart by the end of the reign of
his son King Solomon.
The united kingdom split in two in around 975
BC, into a norther kingdom, Israel, and a southern kingdom, Judah.
Prophets warned the northern kingdom about the
consequences of their unfaithfulness until they were conquered by the Assyrian
Empire in 722 B.C. and forcefully assimilated into the Assyrians’ larger
empire.
Prophets warned the southern kingdom about their
unfaithfulness, but they felt safe with Jerusalem as their capital, and the
Temple in Jerusalem, and the Ark of the Covenant in the Temple. Until the
Babylonians wiped out the Assyrians and then, in 586 B.C., took the people of
Judah into captivity for 50 years.
Then the Persians came and wiped out the Babylonians
and allowed the Jews to return. Then the Greeks wiped out the Persians and
occupied the territory. Then the Romans came and wiped out the Greeks and
occupied the territory.
And the Romans were still occupying Israel
when Jesus was born.
And there had been no word from God
through the prophets for 300 years before Jesus was born. God had gone radio
silent.
Then came John the Baptist, the last of the Old
Testament prophets, the bridge between the end of the Old Testament and the
beginning of the New Testament.
Mark describes it in this way, in Mark
1:1-8,
1 The
beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
2 As
it is written in the prophet Isaiah,
“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of
you,
who
will prepare your way;
3 the
voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare
the way of the Lord,
make
his paths straight,’ ”
4 John
the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of
repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5 And
people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were
going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing
their sins. 6 Now
John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and
he ate locusts and wild honey. 7 He
proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not
worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. 8 I
have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy
Spirit.”
John was the messenger foretold through the prophet
Isaiah. John appeared in the wilderness to announce that the Messiah was
coming. After a wait of 1,000 years, 50 generations, the Messiah was
coming!
Can you imagine the questions, the controversy,
and the confusion that that message brought?
And then, in what the Bible calls “the
fullness of time”, Jesus was born, reminding us that God always keeps his
promises even if it takes, by our measuring, a very long time.
Advent means “coming”. Today we are living between the two big advents:
the first coming of Jesus as the Messiah, to save the world, and the second
coming of Jesus as Christ the King, to judge the world.
We have been waiting for Jesus’s second
coming for around 2,000 years. Also, a very long time.
But if you figure that salvation history
begins with the faith of Abraham, about 2,000 years before Christ, and that we
are now at about 2,000 years after Christ, there is a certain balance there. But
only God knows the day or the hour.
What did John do?
John called people to get prepared for the
first advent.
What did Jesus do? Jesus called people to
stay awake and be prepared for the second advent.
“Preppers” are people who are getting ready
for a secular doomsday, a breakdown of civil society, sometimes euphemistically
called “the zombie apocalypse”.
People preparing for the actual apocalypse,
the end of history and the coming of Christ to judge the world and begin the
new heaven and the new earth are called “Christians”. It’s central to who we are,
and it began with the prophetic work of John the Baptist.
John was like the Federal Emergency Alert
System that puts those banner messages on TV with the same raspy squawking
noise that we hear on the radio saying that this is what a real emergency alert
would sound like.
Or like the MyShakeApp in California that is
designed to, hopefully, give us a little time to at least get under a table
before a coming earthquake.
John the Baptist wasn’t kidding around, but
he wasn’t the main event. He was the one who prepared the way for the main
event.
He was kind of like my favorite Lakers
basketball player, Derek Fisher.
Derek Fisher played during the “Showtime” era
of Kobe and Shaq.
He wasn’t flashy. He wasn’t a superstar. His
name wasn’t synonymous with the franchise. He was just the guy you called in
when you wanted to get the job done. In other words, he was the most Lutheran
of all the Lakers. 😊
I once shared that observation in a sermon
with the church I served in San Dimas. A man who had been coming to worship
with his wife, but who wasn’t yet a member of the congregation, later attended
our pre-membership classes and became a member. He later became a part of a
stewardship effort and gave a stewardship talk during worship. He said, “I used
to come to worship regularly with my wife, but I wasn’t a member. One Sunday I
heard the pastor talk about Derek Fisher and I realized that I have been a Lutheran
all my life and I didn’t know it!” 😊
But he had been a member of the Body of
Christ for many years before that. His faith came as a gift from God.
That gift of faith came because of the gift
of the baptism of the Holy Spirit that came with Jesus. John came to tell
people to get ready for who was coming, and people listened even though John
was a wild man. John proclaimed repentance for the forgiveness of sins. John’s
message was a start.
Today, December 6th, is St. Nicholas
Day in the Church Year calendar. Some homes will have set out shoes at bedtime
the night before so that St. Nicholas can fill them with small gifts. St.
Nicholas was a historical figure who was known for gift-giving and is also
known in many cultures as Santa Claus. Santa wears a red robe and a pointed cap
because St. Nicholas was a bishop. He was present when the Nicene Creed was
being written at the First Council of Nicaea in 325. The essence of the
Christian faith was being decided, and things got so heated that good old Santa
Clause, St. Nicholas, is alleged to have slugged another bishop, Arius, over Arius’
heretical beliefs regarding the Holy Trinity.
One of my synod’s previous bishops sent a
meme one year that said, ominously, “My name is Nicholas of Myra. I’m known for
giving gifts and smacking heretics. And I’m all out of gifts!” 😊
People also listened to John, even though he
was a wild man, living in the desert, way outside of towns. Because God was
speaking through him.
How do we get ready for what we know is
coming?
John spoke of repentance. Jesus began his
public ministry with a call to repentance.
We speak of repentance, turning around,
receiving an entirely new life in Jesus Christ.
Have you ever made popcorn?
My mom used to make it by pouring the hard
popcorn kernels into a pan, then covering the kernels with oil, then covering
the pan and putting it on the stove. Now we pull out a package and put it into
a microwave oven. Some microwaves even come with a “Popcorn” preset.
Popcorn turns inside out under heat. Heat
causes moisture in the hard kernel to expand and then explode, transforming the
kernel into something that can bring nourishment.
The Holy Spirit is the fire that transforms
the hardened hearts of human beings.
Author and theologian Leonard Sweet
describes the popping process as completely transforming the kernel’s purpose.
What was hard becomes soft. What appeared lifeless explodes into something that
can feed people.
That is what it means to repent. We turn around, and we are made a new creation
by God. We just receive the gift.
That is our best preparation to celebrate
the first coming, or advent, of Jesus and to be ready for his second advent to
judge the world.
John’s parents, Elizabeth and Zechariah,
might have imagined a life of glory for their son when he was conceived, given
their encounters with the divine early on. But his greatness didn’t turn out
that way.
John wore roadkill, skin from the carcass of
what he found dead in the desert. He foraged for what edible things were
available in the wilderness just to help him survive.
Can you imagine what it was like for John’s
mother when she gathered with the other women at the public well to draw water?
When she was asked how John was doing, I wonder if she dropped her head and
said, “He’s living in the desert, wearing skin from dead camels. He’s eating
bugs! We’re so worried!”
Yet Jesus, speaking of John, said in Matthew
11:11,
11 Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
This season we prepare to celebrate the
coming of the King. And we long to celebrate His second coming.
Prepare the way.
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