SERMON PREACHED AT HOLY TRINITY, RINGWOOD EAST
FEAST OF JOHN THE BAPTIST (June 25th[1])
1989
READINGS
Isaiah 49:1–6,
Psalm 139:1–3, 13–15,
Luke 1:57–66, 80
You will go before the Lord to prepare a way
for him,
to give his people knowledge of salvation
through the forgiveness of their sins
(Luke 1:76-77)
A man came, sent by God. His name was John.
He came as a witness, to bear witness to the
light,
so that everyone might believe through him.
He was not the light.
He was to bear witness to the light.
(John
1: 6-8)
So
John, the Fourth Evangelist, introduces us to this dark and shadowy forerunner
of the Messiah, John the Baptist, whose life and death we celebrate today. Luke,
from whom we read before, is careful to make the same statement, albeit more
prosaically. For Luke Jesus is announced to Mary as “Son of the Most High,”
a name, as is sung in some choruses, that is above all names. He goes on in our
reading today to describe John in similar terms. But in John, the son of Zechariah
and Elizabeth, we have not the Son, but the “Prophet of the Most High.”
John
the Evangelist is more poetic: He was not the light. He was to bear witness
to the light. Indeed, the fact that both authors so laboriously peg back
the significance of this wild man of the desert, this wild and woolly cousin of
Jesus, must alert us to something important. For both authors the task and the
significance of John the Baptist is in his role as the signpost to Jesus, the
Jesus who pronounces a message of forgiveness of sins.
But
the fact that they stress this so much suggests that early in Christian history
the gospel came into contact with a group or groups who believed that John, not
Jesus, was the chosen Messiah of God.
Luke
is also setting the scene for the public ministry of Jesus. We have seen that
Luke places emphasis on Jesus’ ministry as one of pronouncement of good news to
the poor – the radical, upside down message that the poor are the image of God.
But at the heart of the gospel is the pronouncement by Jesus that in him sins
are forgiven. We saw in last week’s gospel reading that it is when Jesus says
to the woman, “Your sins are forgiven” that the onlookers become particularly
toey. “Who is this man, that even forgives sin?” Small wonder: forgiveness of
sins is the prerogative of God alone.
So
John the Baptist, foreshadowing this Jesus, the one whose sandal straps the
Baptist is not worthy to undo, is to spend his life “baptising for the
forgiveness of sins,” a dangerous ministry that was to lead to his being
murdered by Herod the tetrarch. But, as John the Evangelist tells us, it was
the ministry of John the Baptist to decrease in stature, while Jesus the Christ
increased.
John
and Jesus alike pronounce the forgiveness of sins. So too has Christianity
since. It will be my task shortly, as a mouthpiece of God, to remind you of the
forgiveness won for us by Jesus:
Almighty God …
… have mercy on you,
pardon you from all
your sins,
and
strengthen you to eternal life.
It
is our corporate task to pronounce to the world that same message. Not merely
the snide message beloved of some Christian bumper stickers, that “Christians
aren’t perfect, just forgiven,” but the more radical message that Jesus is the
Saviour of the World, the one in whom alone the sins of the world are forgiven.
Even the sins of Hitler’s Auschwitz, the sins of Stalinist Georgia, the sins of
Tiananmen Square. The sins of British – or English – Tasmania.
We
must pronounce that message with our lives far more than with our words. We
must proclaim it by our love of our neighbours, by our compassion for the hard-to-love,
and, like John the Baptist, by our lives decreasing so that our Saviour’s life
of love may increase within us.
In
that way we may one day claim “it is no longer I that live, but Christ who
lives in me” in solidarity with Paul. Then and only then will we be able
genuinely to sing the chorus, “they’ll know we are Christians by our love, “and
then and only then will our message of love – of God’s love – be audible.
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