HTC 0930, 11 December 2011
John 1:6-8 and 19-28
This sermon is brought to you by the letter W.
The points will be summarized by three words or phrases, all
beginning with the letter W.
A very necessary shower – “Washing”
About
33 years ago, my first job was in Kingston-upon-Hull (apologies to
all Coventry fans …). One of my earliest Hull friends was Jeremy,
who worked at the local BP chemical plant as a chemical engineer. He
offered to show me round the plant. I'd never visited a chemical
plant before, so I jumped at the chance. It was a most fascinating
place; something like a child's chemistry set scaled up 2000 times in
every way, and you could navigate around the plant blindfold, simply
working by smell alone. Pungent!
But
then I noticed a curious and out-of-place feature; hanging off a wall
was a full-size shower. Why the shower? I asked Jeremy; is it some
whimsical employee benefit? No, he said, this part of the plant makes
a dangerous corrosive (I think it was phenol). If you are caught in a
spillage then you have 10 seconds in which to dash over to the
shower, pull the handle, and let the shower drench you for 15 minutes
with enormous quantities of tepid water. Any delay, and you may die.
Horribly.
For
old times' sake, I googled “chemical plant shower” on the web
yesterday. It's a big business, with rigorous specifications. For
example, “ANSI notes that the average person can walk 16 to 17
metres (55 feet) in 10 seconds, but this does not account for the
physical and emotional state of the person”. Good point.
I
think the people of John the Baptist's time would have instantly
grasped the nature of these showers. Mark
1:5 speaks of the whole Judean countryside and all
the people of Jerusalem going out to be baptised by John. When we
read the early part of the New Testament, it is clear that the people
then felt nervous, unhappy, oppressed. True, they were back in the
land God had promised, but only as subjects of the cruel and
frightening pagan Roman Empire. They were expecting God's judgement.
And, it seems clear, they felt much of the fault was somehow their
own; they had been caught in a corrosive spillage of national failure
and ungodliness. They were waiting, waiting, waiting for the terrible
lightning of God's anger to strike. John was offering baptism, a sign
of drenching, of cleaning, of washing clean, of repentance; and they
didn't want to delay for a moment. They wanted to make sure they had
clearly chosen the right side, soon as possible, before it was too
late.
I
don't think we find it easy to grasp the enormity of what John was
doing. There seem to have been many different practices of ritual
washings at that time. But a one-time drenching baptism; that was
reserved for the rare occasions when pagan gentiles converted. And
now John was offering it to God's people – good as saying, they
themselves were no better than pagans who needed to be converted! An
absolutely extraordinary phenomenon amongst a people so conscious of
their special status as God's people. So: Washing.
That's what John the Baptist does,
on an industrial scale – the whole countryside, the whole city, all
drenched, converted, shockingly washed.
Baptism
is a hot-button issue for some of us. Believer's baptism, or the sign
of belonging? A sign of our unity in Christ, or something which
divides? Do we baptize all who ask, or do we require strict rules,
clear evidence of a changed life? I can't give
you answers
to these questions. Actually
yesterday I read a top Anglican evangelical theologian who said,
perhaps God doesn't want
us to agree a simple straightforward answer, because the truth about
belonging to God is more complicated than that. But it all begins
here, with John's Washing.
What's more, as we read in the other Gospel accounts, shockingly,
unexpectedly, Jesus, God's chosen Messiah, who needed absolutely no
baptism or conversion, He Himself insists on being baptised by John.
Jesus, who needed no conversion and so needed no baptism, is baptised
to show He is one with us. So we get baptised to show we are one with
Him (Galatians
3:26-29). There's
much more say about baptism, but it all begins here.
Of
course there were other aspects which intensified the situation.
Every part of what John did, all of it, would have been clearly and
obviously seen as part of the national story. John came from the
wilderness (John
1:23), not from the city, baptising on the far side
of the Jordan (John
1:28) from where Joshua had first led the children
of Israel into the Promised Land. John spoke of himself as on a
mission from God to be a witness or herald (John
1:6-8). People would have immediately thought of
the great leader Moses, leading people through the Red Sea from
slavery to nationhood; or of Elijah, the super-prophet, who told the
foreign general Naaman to drench himself in the Jordan seven times (added later: it was in fact Elisha not Elijah who dealt with Naaman. Sorry!);
or of the prophet for the end-times foretold in Deuteronomy
18:15-18, or the promised Messiah who would fix
everything, kick the Romans out, and become God's truly anointed
King. John's actions very deliberately tuned in to these
expectations, and all would have been abuzz with speculation. Was
John the One? When would he make his move? What action would be first
on his agenda?
So
here is our second word: Witness.
John is a witness, a herald, he testifies. In the original Greek,
strikingly, ominously in today's language, he is a martyr –
the Greek word for a formal witness.
“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition”
Actually everyone would have been expecting
the next step. Obviously the
bigwigs in Jerusalem were going to investigate. Radical
preachers presented a constant risk of political instability and
consequent violent repression from the Roman authorities. The bigwigs
sent trusted messengers with the instructions, find out exactly who
John thinks he is, so we can decide what to do with him (John
1:19).
If the situation wasn't
so serious, it would have been highly comic. Messengers meet herald;
time for secular authority to confront the divine initiative. How
does the dialogue go?
- John “confesses and does not deny and confesses” (John 1:20)
… that he is not the Messiah. - So they ask if he is the super-prophet. (Handy person to have on your side, is Elijah. He has a track record of calling down fire from heaven to make his point. 1 Kings 18:38)
John says (just 2 words in Greek), “I am not”. (John 1:21a) - Perhaps he is the promised end-time prophet then?
Just 1 word now: “No”. (John 1:21b)
You can sense the
frustration of the messengers, as John says less and less. They've
a report to make,
and at the current rate it's going to be embarrassingly short. They
ask for something a little more positive – come on, tell us a bit
about yourself, John (John
1:22). And
his only response is to quote from the Messianic promise of Isaiah
40.3; all he is is
a voice, crying in the wilderness, telling everyone to get their
local road system sorted out quickly because the King is coming.
John is the
Witness,
the herald, the one who points the way. First the Washing,
then the Witness.
Actually John is something of a
model for us in this. He is absolutely clear about his position in
the scale of things. He is just a voice. He has to point to Jesus
Christ, and that's it, nothing more, that's his whole mission. As
we read later: John knows
that
as Jesus increases, so John must decrease (John
3:30). Are we
prepared to take second place like that? To accept that there will be
times when we must step back from the limelight so that the Gospel
may prosper? And other times when we have to step up to the plate,
even before we feel ready, because Christ's Gospel needs us there?
Not when the church needs us,
not to enable our personal development, but following the Lord Jesus
Christ whether into the obscure background or to the demands of
prominent service, to serve at the pleasure of the Lord of Creation.
“The one who stands among you”
It appears that
amongst the messengers are some with Pharisee affiliations. Looks
like they manage to get more mileage from John, perhaps because they
are closer in spirit to his message. He's still pretty abrasive,
though, telling them that the Messiah is actually right
there under their nose, but they can't see him (John
1:26) –
devastating irony directed at
religious experts.
So there's our
final phrase: Where's
the Messiah?
And that seems to
be a key to John's place in the Bible narrative. He stands at a kind
of pivot, between first and second testaments. Before him, it is
mostly a national story, the tale of God's people, how they were
brought together, how they were formed, given a land, a temple, an
identity, and the constant recurrence of God's people falling away
and then being brought back. But the game changes, and John's
ministry is the crucial signpost. Among the huge crowds which these
Jerusalem messengers would have seen, among the turmoil of people
seeking escape from the impending wrath, desperate
to be washed clean, to use baptism to join up on God's side, there
among the vast crowds there
is one young man Jesus, apparently just like you or me, completely
unnoticed by the political
bigwigs, but actually the person they've all been looking for.
Where's
the Messiah?
Among us, one with us.
And (as is told in the next chapter) John is the one who recognizes
Jesus, John points his own followers to Jesus. John does the work of
a witness, introduces people to Jesus, and then lets Jesus do the
rest.
From now on the
rules are transformed. From now on we have a leader to follow, but
not a super-prophet, not a military general, not a master-politician.
Instead we have a very hands-on Messiah; one who is not ashamed to
come and be one with us, even to be baptized with us, because when He
chooses to become one with us, so we become one with Him, and He can
make us safe (Galatians
3:26-29).
Washed.
Witness. Where's the Messiah?
Standing right alongside us in all our joys and needs, with us right
to the end, and beyond.
Amen
