John the Baptist is the focus for this, the 3rd Sunday in Advent. Today is also Gaudate Sunday – the Sunday in the penitential season of Advent when we’re allowed to take a break and celebrate a little. This year it’s felt as if the whole year has been Lent and Advent with nothing in between – we could do with a break from the hardships life has thrown at us. So today, maybe you could purposefully do something that will bring cheer and happiness to yourself and others. What will that be? I challenge you to finish reading this with an idea!
And so to John the Baptist. Who was he? Where did he come from? We know a little – locusts and wild honey to eat, camels’ hair clothing, preaching repentance, and sometimes pointing the finger at specific people, prophesying that the Messiah would come, baptising and recognising Jesus, and being beheaded, perhaps a cousin of Jesus. We know he had disciples – followers.
One thing we do know about John is that he purposefully made himself invisible, because he knew it wasn’t about him – he was more like a signpost than a destination. His life’s task was to herald the coming of the Messiah and to make sure people were ready to receive him. That’s why we remember him especially in Advent as we too prepare ourselves for our annual celebration of the coming of Jesus.
John knew it wasn’t about him and so he got out of the way. His job was to wait, to remind people to get ready and to point the way. He must have been a bold and courageous man – a man who’s relationship with God was strong and sure – he knew what God wanted him to do and he just got on with it. He was a martyr in two senses – first of all in the sense that he bore witness – he told us that the Messiah was coming (martyr simply means ‘witness’) and also in the sense that he was killed for his faith – beheaded by Herod for failing to keep his mouth shut about the morals and behaviour of the day.
It’s very easy for Christians, living out their faith in the word, to get it wrong by getting in the way. A friend of mine went to church whilst away on holiday and told me that it was a lovely service, but that they couldn’t see God for the Vicar – a good example of an easy mistake. It’s all too easy for Christians to be so keen to present themselves as good, decent, upright people, pillars of the community that we put people off. It’s also very easy for us to judge others, seeing them as immoral or deficient in some way and thereby bolster our self image – the denigration of others makes us feel better about ourselves. Or, as the Church of England is doing at the moment, to present ourselves as normal – how people should be – and others as abnormal, deficient in some way. Or how busy we are, thereby suggesting that others are slackers. My gran used to talk about people who made martyrs of themselves – the whole point being that if they were truly martyrs – no one would notice because people would be looking at what they were witnessing to, not at the witness. Our egos get in the way. This is where we can learn from John who always pointed to Jesus, never to himself.
This isn’t an easy path to tread. It requires self examination, confession and amendment of life. We have to ask ourselves, what do I get out of being busy, or upright or a good example? What do I get out of condemning others? Once we can see how what we do is a choice we make and have to own, not something to make others feel guilty, or that judging others makes us feel better about ourselves, how seeing others as abnormal makes us feel good about ourselves, then we are able to point to Jesus not to ourselves – we, like John can get out of the way.
Conversely, when we know what God wants of us we’re less likely to be drawn into other people’s ‘busy-ness’.
None of this is easy, but it’s definitely something to consider when we encounter John. I think he had greater clarity than most of us – he sets us a pattern that we can try to emulate. And Advent is a good time for the kind of ruthless self examination that helps us to become witnesses – not to ourselves, but to Jesus. If you think about Jesus’ life and teaching, the only people who he really had a go at were the very people who, unlike John the Baptist, held themselves up as holy and righteous and used this high moral ground to look down their noses at others.
Or think of Mary and Martha – the problem wasn’t that Martha was busy cooking the tea, it was that she was banging the pots and pans in the kitchen and pointing out how busy she was – looking for praise, seeking to feel better about herself in comparison to her sister who was sitting at Jesus’ feet, listening. Look at me, Martha was saying.
Like John, our task is not to say ‘Look at me’ but rather ‘Look at Jesus’. May God give the courage and honesty to do this, this Advent and onward in our lives.
Amen
Rev’d Dr. Anne Morris
Vicar St. Oswald’s, Knuzden, Blackburn