A Homily for Advent IV
Who are you? One wouldn't have thought it was so difficult of a
question. But John's answers shows that he is not the least bit
interested in talking about himself. He's got another he wants to
talk about, and so he says: "I am not the Christ, not Elijah, not the
Prophet."
This leaves his questioners unsatisfied. They HAVE to have something
to say to those who sent them. John simply has to fess up to who he
is. They press him more and so he says: "Fine. Call me a voice. A
voice crying out in the wilderness, just like Isaiah foretold: Make
straight the way of the Lord! Are you satisfied? That's me. I'm that
voice!"
But no, they are NOT satisfied with that answer. Because if he's not
Messiah, not Elijah, and not the Prophet, then why is he baptizing?
By what right does he plunge people under the wave and lift them out
again as a people prepared and waiting for the Lord? Why is he doing
this?
John's answer to that question is very interesting. "I baptize you
with water." We expect him to go on and talk about the One who is
coming who will baptize with the Spirit and with fire. That's what we
expect. But it's not what we get. Instead, John takes off in another
direction: "But there is one among you whom you do not know."
Was Jesus standing in crowd watching the whole thing unfold? Did
John's eyes twinkle a bit as He said it, and glance toward the Lord
as he spoke? The Jesus whom the Jews missed is his theme. John the
Evangelist put it like this: "He was in the world and the world was
made by him, and the world did not know him."
How easy it was to miss the man who looked just like any other man.
Nothing special in his outward appearance. "He had no beauty that we
should desire him" the prophet Isaiah had said. An ordinary Joe in a
crowd of ordinary Joes.
But you see, that IS why John came baptizing. Because the One who
sent John to baptize told him: "The one on whom you see the Spirit
descend and remain, He it is who will baptize with the Spirit." John
himself confesses: "I did not know Him; but that He might be revealed
to Israel, I came baptizing."
The baptism of Jesus by St. John the Baptist is the great Theophany
and revelation of who Jesus is: the Beloved Son of the Father, the
One on whom the Spirit rests and who gives the Spirit without
measure. The divine Second Person of the ever-blessed Trinity in
human flesh and blood, true man and true God. This John would see as
he baptized Jesus. But it was only a momentary glimpse and then Jesus
looked the same as always. Just an ordinary Joe again.
But John, having had that momentary unveiling of this One, knew that
His calling, His whole ministry consisted in pointing people away
from Himself and to this One who stood once with him in the water and
was declared God's only-begotten Son. His testimony to Christ by and
large flew in the face of what people actually saw. That's how it
always was with Jesus. Shepherds see the heavens opened and hear
angels singing and are told that the Savior Christ is born, but when
they arrive in Bethlehem to worship Him all they see is a poor baby,
wrapped in swaddling clothes, reposing in a manger in the stable-
cave. When they crept in and knelt before Him and looked at Him,
there was nothing visibly divine about the little One. He was just a
baby. Oh, every baby is a miracle. But this baby who was God in the
flesh was very much your ordinary Joe of a baby. And yet he had been
revealed to them as the Son of God.
The wise men, with their gifts, must surely have marveled that the
one honored by a star as the newborn King should look so, well, plain
and peasant like. They had come to Jerusalem to find a King and ended
up worshipping before a beggar child on his poor mother's lap. This
is the King so long awaited? But the star did not lie. It revealed
the truth that they couldn't see.
"There is one among you whom you know not." John's ministry was to
make him known. To invite us to look beyond what we see and to
believe what we hear. John, greatest prophet of all, confesses
himself utterly unworthy to get down on knees and unloose that One's
sandals; the job of menial slave was far too great for the greatest
of the prophets to perform on the likes of Him.
"He who coming after me was before me." For though he was born in the
flesh after John, by some six months, in His divine nature He was
before John, before Zechariah and Elizabeth, before David, before
Moses, before Abraham, before Noah, before Adam, before time itself.
Of the Father's love begotten ere the worlds began to be. After John
and yet before John. As our Lord would later say: "Before Abraham
was, I am."
He is the One John witnesses to: we are not worthy to serve Him in
the least way, and yet, miracle of miracles, He who was before time
came into our flesh that He might serve us. He came to off-load our
sins and to carry them all with Him to His cross, to die there the
death that was ours, and so to break the bondage of sin and destroy
the dominion of death. He came to rise again to open the way into the
Kingdom of heaven for all believers. To restore us to the glorious
destiny God had planned for us all along: to be His children and to
share in His divine glory as heirs of the Kingdom.
Until the Last Day, He comes among us in His humble and hidden way:
the same One who was laid in the manger, worshipped by Shepherds and
wisemen, who stood among the crowds, unmarked by any but His prophet
and fore-runner, He is among us in ordinary-looking bread and wine
that are His body and blood, in His usual humility and tenderness, to
give us forgiveness to lift us to the life that never ends.
So, you see, it's not about John. It's not about me. It's not about
you. It's not about who we are. It is all about who He is and what He
does, our Jesus, the One who is among us, Emmanuel. Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
Amen.
