Look at John. Look to where he is pointing. Follow his gaze and his finger to that solitary figure coming toward him. Hear his voice, that prophetic Voice calling in the wilderness. “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” He’s the One. He’s the One who is greater than John, the greatest born of woman. He outranks John because He was before him even though He was born after him. The younger precedes the elder.
Jesus was baptized. Had John been running the show it might never have happened. When Jesus came to John to be baptized, John tried to stop Him. “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” It seemed upside down to John. The lesser should be baptized by the greater. The servant should be baptized by the master. The sinner should be baptized by the Sinless One. John is correct, at least in that way of looking at things. But that’s a Law way of looking at it, not the Gospel way. In the Gospel, the Sinless One is baptized as a sinner. The Lord of all becomes the Servant of all. The greater is baptized by the lesser. The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world is prepared for His sacrifice, washed on the way to the altar.
Wisdom. We usually associate “wisdom” with people who are older. The young are quick with the facts but tend to be a bit short on experience, knowledge, and general common sense. Wisdom comes with experience, gray hair, the school of “hard knocks.” The last thing you expect is wisdom from a twelve year old. And that’s what this morning’s Gospel delivers to us - the Wisdom of the universe, Holy Wisdom, packaged in the form of a twelve year old kid from Nazareth who is in the temple to be examined by the teachers on the eve of His becoming a man.
The fullness of time had come. Chronos was bursting at the seams with the Promise of God. Nothing that happens concerning Jesus - His conception by a Virgin, His birth in Bethlehem, His flight to Egypt, the baby boys who were killed because they resembled Him, His return and residency in Nazareth - none of this was accidental. The word of the prophets had to be fulfilled. The mouth of the Lord had spoken, and it was going to happen at just the right time, in the fullness of time. This is how the Word of the Lord works. It is spoken and it is done. Maybe not right away. In fact, rarely right away. But the Word spoken is already the event, shaping history, ordering all things toward the fullness of time.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.
We long to understand the universe and our existence. We want to understand where everything came from and how it was made. We want to know what lay behind the “Big Bang,” what came “before” the beginning. We want to understand not only how things exist but why they exist. Science, our reason, our senses can tell us only so much, but they cannot take us back to the beginning. Our reason and our senses can tell us that there is “something” there, but they can’t help us put our finger on it much less shake its hand.
Virgins don’t conceive. At least ordinarily. It’s a biological fact, a basic fact of life. This isn’t some modern discovery of which ancient people were unaware. Joseph was not dumb. He was a businessman, a builder from Nazareth. Businessmen, as a rule, are common sense, practical people. They may chase a dream or two, but only so far as it proves successful. Joseph was quite aware of how babies were conceived, and when Mary, to whom he was betrothed, turned up pregnant, he assumed the logical thing. And he resolved to do the just and reasonable thing, to let her out of the marriage contract so that she would be free to quietly go off and marry the father of her child without prejudice.
John doubted. The greatest born of woman, the one who walked in the prophetic footsteps of Elijah, the prophetic Voice in the wilderness doubted. Who could blame him, really? There was the big build-up. A coming one who was so great John was not worthy to untie his sandals, coming with an axe ready to swing at the root of the faithless and the fruitless. He’s coming with a winnowing fork to thresh the wheat and burn the chaff with unquenchable fire. He’s coming with Baptism of not simply water but the fiery wind of the Spirit.
You know it’s Advent when John the Baptist shows up. He’s going to be our Advent preacher for the next two Sundays. But I need to warn you in advance, you may not like him. Religious people generally didn’t care for John. He called them a bunch of snakes, so I guess you could hardly blame them. You probably wouldn’t care for the way he looked. We tend to want our preachers to be civilized and respectable looking. A nice suit, decent haircut, clean shaven, polished shoes, gentle and polite manners. John was, to put it bluntly, rather rough to look at.
There is that moment in the early hours of the morning. You’re awakened by something. A sound, or the residue of a dream. You open one, sleepy eye and glance at the clock. It’s only a few minutes before the alarm is set to go off. You glance outside through the window. It’s still dark. The sun has not yet risen, but there are faint colors appearing in the eastern sky. The signs are all there. You don’t have to think too hard about it. The night is nearly over, the day is almost here. It’s time to wake up from sleep and rise.
Colossians 1:13-20 / Last Sunday (Proper 26C) / 24 November 2013
In Nomine Iesu
The end has come. The last Sunday of the church year. It’s a little artificial, perhaps. A little liturgically“geeky” to be celebrating the end of the year a month before the end of the calendar year, but that’s the way it goes with the Church that always has her eye fixed on the horizon, waiting for the dawning Day, waiting for the Bridegroom to make His appearance, waiting and watching for the Day no man can know when the Son of Man comes as a thief in the night.