Family Business

Scripture: The Second Sunday of Advent, A.D. 2014 B

Sermon:

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN.

Jesus Christ did not work alone. Rather, He went into the family business.

Most of us, I think, have this image of Jesus, around age 30 or so, just dropping whatever He was doing at home and setting off by Himself to start an exciting new career in ministry. He shows up in strange towns, like a missionary in the wild west, and sets up tent meetings to attract curious strangers. He builds His new Church from the ground up, and the whole thing pretty much functions as a one-man show. But that’s not how it worked at all. Long before God became Man in the womb of the Virgin Mary, faithful men and women, led by the Holy Spirit, had been laying the groundwork for the Incarnation centuries in advance.

Jesus was born in a time and a place that was expecting Him, that was looking for the Messiah. And He was born into an extended family who knew very well what our Lord’s mission in this world would be—and how they could aid Him in it. Nowhere is this clearer than in the life and ministry of John the Baptist. We often overlook John, or downplay His role in the Gospel. But very truly, I tell you, John the Baptist and Jesus Christ were no strangers. They were business partners.

John’s story, like all our stories, begins not with himself but with his parents. Zechariah and Elizabeth were priests of God’s one true Temple in Jerusalem, direct descendants of Moses’ brother Aaron, the great High Priest of the Exodus. More importantly, according to the Gospels, Zechariah and Elizabeth were “righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments”. Let me tell you, that’s pretty high praise, coming from the Bible.

Now Zechariah has read the prophets of old. He knows Isaiah’s prophecy of God’s Suffering Servant, Ezekiel’s prophecy of a Resurrection, and Daniel’s prophecy of a divine Messiah come to earth as the Son of Man. Like all faithful and righteous Israelites, Zechariah awaits the coming of the Christ. And he knows from reading the prophet Malachi that the Christ will be preceded by a forerunner, a new and mighty prophet, who will prepare the way of the Lord.

Late one night, while ministering in the Temple, Zechariah encounters the angel Gabriel, and is understandably terrified. But Gabriel tells him, “Be not afraid,” for just like Abraham and Sarah thousands of years before them, Zechariah and Elizabeth will have a child in their old age. This child will be given the spirit and power of Elijah, Israel’s greatest prophet from of old, and he will be the forerunner of the coming Christ, preparing the way for the Lord and making His paths straight. The Holy Spirit, Gabriel proclaims, will fill Elizabeth and Zechariah’s son even before he is born. And his name will be John.

Six months later, the same angel Gabriel appears again, this time to Elizabeth’s cousin: a young girl named Mary. She has been chosen, Gabriel tells her, to be none other than the Mother of God. And the Child in her womb shall be the Messiah, the Incarnation of God on earth, divine Savior for the entire world. Mary consents to the will of God—and then immediately runs off to visit Elizabeth. As soon as she enters the house of Zechariah, the child in Elizabeth’s womb leaps for joy in recognition of the Child in Mary’s womb, and Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit. This, miraculously, is the calling of John the Baptist. The Holy Spirit flows from Mary and Jesus into Elizabeth and John, from womb to womb—just as the angel foretold.

Three months later, the baby John is born, accompanied by miraculous signs, and all the people who witness this ask, “What then will this child become?” And the Holy Spirit suddenly fills Zechariah, who prophesies the arrival of the Christ and the fulfilment of all God’s promises to Israel. Then he turns to his newborn son. “And you, child,” prophesies Zechariah to John, “you will be called prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare His ways, to give knowledge of salvation to His people by the forgiveness of their sins. By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

And so here the Gospel of Jesus Christ is preached to the people of God, by the father of John the Baptist, even before Jesus Himself is born.

When Mary gives birth on that blessed Christmas morn, the Son of God enters the world surrounded by a family who already knows what His mission will be: His Mother Mary, Blessed Virgin; his earthly father Joseph, most loving of fathers; His Mother’s kinsmen Zechariah and Elizabeth, priests and prophets of the Most High God; and John the Baptist, cousin of Jesus Christ, called in the womb to be the forerunner of our Lord.

John does everything Jesus does before Jesus does it. John preaches the coming Kingdom of God in the wilderness before Jesus begins His own ministry. John gathers disciples, many of whom, including Peter and Andrew, will later become Jesus’ closest Apostles. They come to Jesus through John the Baptist. John baptizes people as a sign of their turning towards the coming Messiah, even while preaching that the baptism the Messiah brings will be infinitely greater than his own. John is the first to point out Jesus, and to publically proclaim Him as the Lamb of God Who comes to take away the sins of the world. And it is John who baptizes Jesus in the River Jordan, despite John’s own admission that he is not fit to undo the thong of Jesus’ sandal. You see how closely they work together.

When John is imprisoned, it is Jesus to whom he reaches out for comfort. When the Apostles set out to establish churches in distant towns, they find that John’s disciples have been there before them, laying the foundation for the Gospel. And when John dies unjustly at the hands of a tyrant, Jesus retreats to the mountains to weep and to mourn the loss of His beloved forerunner, cousin, and friend.

“Of all men born of women,” Jesus states, “none was greater than John the Baptist. Yet even the least in the Kingdom of God shall be greater than he”—for whereas John preached that the Kingdom was soon to come in Christ Jesus, Jesus preached the fulfilment of John’s message, that the Kingdom had now drawn near in Him.

John preceded Jesus in everything, even in a death that foretold Jesus’ own. They shared one mission, one Gospel, one family, one faith. Indeed, the only difference in their ministries was that John proclaimed, “I am not the Messiah! Jesus is!” while Jesus preached, “John is not the Messiah. I AM.”

Here’s the point. God could have entered into our world in any way that He saw fit. He could have descended from Heaven on a cloud in the prime of Manhood, riding a fiery steed and leading armies into battle. But He didn’t. He could have teleported into the middle of the desert and built up the Church as a one-man show, without any help from anyone. But He didn’t do that either. God chose to enter this world by becoming part of a family, and by sharing His mission with them. He chose a Mother to nurse Him, a father to protect and provide for Him, aunts and uncles to proclaim His message even before His birth. And He chose a cousin, a lifelong friend, to blaze the path before Him, to cry out in the wilderness, to make straight the paths of the Lord. John did everything that Jesus did—and he could do that because Jesus chose to work through him. You can do what Jesus did because Jesus chooses to work through you.

Having a family is no easy thing. It means that you have to be vulnerable. It means that you will at some point suffer terrible loss. It means that every day you will have to pour out yourself, your very life, for those whom you love. But it also means that you are called in love to participate in a reality far greater than the sum of its parts. Families are united by a shared story, a shared mission, a shared faith, that sees us through the darkness, that gives life when we are weary unto death. That’s what a family does. And now God calls us to be a part of His family.

He could still save the world any way that He sees fit. He could still come on a cloud or make the Church into a one-man show. But He doesn’t, and that should tell us something. God chooses to do His work, to renew His Creation, to save His people, through you. Not because you’re so righteous or blameless before the Lord. None of us is. But because we are all His family. We share in His mission, we share in His story, we share in his faith. And in this family, we are never alone. Thank God.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN.