The Word of John

John the Baptist Receiving Instructions, by David LaChapelle

   

Lections: The Second Sunday of Advent, AD 2025 A

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

John the Baptist is the first prophet to appear in over 400 years. And he arises precisely when his people most need to hear the Word of the Lord.

A thousand years before John, Israel had been a mighty kingdom at the crossroad of empires, pugnacious under David, magnanimous under Solomon. But division and corruption and endless foreign wars brought about the nation’s collapse; first in the north to the Assyrians; then in the south to the Babylonians. The people of Israel thus lost their temple, their monarchy, their very land, carted off into Exile as strangers in a strange land. By rights, that should’ve been the end of them.

It was then the Prophets who sustained them, who assured the Exiles that God had not abandoned them, even as they had abandoned their God. The Prophets lavished the people with promises, of a new and cosmic King, of a restored homeland, of a rebuilt Temple, of even the resurrection of the dead. They compiled the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, and gathered in synagogues under learned rabbis. The Judeans became People of the Book.

And, just as the Prophets had promised, the Exile came to an end. The Israelites could now return in order to rebuild, a blest and holy quest. Yet many stayed behind, in Babylon and Persia, where they had put down roots and raised their families. Upon their Return from the Exile, prophecy ceased, which is really rather peculiar. In the time of the davidic kingdom, the tripartite structure of king, priests, and prophets governed the nation. When the king and priests were lost, the Prophets led them home.

Yet then the line had ended, and no-one quite knew why. Was it because of the sins of the people, because so many had not returned? Regardless, there was now no voice of God, save for that within their books. Without the verbal Word, people turned unto the written.

The 400 years to follow proved no less tumultuous than the 400 that had gone before. Empires rose and empires fell. In came the Greeks, then the Romans. Israel became independent for a time, under a new dynasty who claimed both the throne and the High Priesthood. War followed war, with pretenders usurping the crown—Hasmoneans and Herods—until Rome took the entire kit and caboodle for herself. Now the Jews were in a bind: fragmented both politically and religiously, occupied by foreign armies, paying taxes unto Caesar.

What would the future hold? What did God want for His people? Should they fight the Romans, or join them? Should they embrace Greek culture, or resist it? Was the rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem truly the House of God on the Earth, or was it hopelessly corrupt? People were lost without a prophet, not knowing where to turn. Many, if not most, had lost faith in their government, in their religious institutions, in their identity as the people of God.

Reform movements arose: that’s what the Pharisees were. Separatists washed their hands of the whole affair and set up communes in the desert: those were the Essenes. The Sadducees embraced power under their Roman overlords, while Zealots and Sicarii resisted, rebelled, and fought for freedom, often hungrier for blood than for honor. And on top of all of this, throwing sparks atop a powder keg, hovered the promise of the Prophets that the Christ would soon arrive.

He wouldn’t be like the kings and priests of old, mind you. This Christ, this Messiah, would be a heaven-sent Savior, fulfillment of all God’s many promises to His people through His Prophets. Most expected a warrior, some an angel or a god. But Daniel had set the countdown: a prophecy about “a week of weeks,” 490 years, leading right to the time of John, the time of Jesus Christ. And there would be signs: a star in the heavens, foreign wise men bearing gifts.

Most importantly of all, Elijah would return; so said Malachi, last of the Prophets of old. This would be a sign indeed, for people held Elijah as the greatest of all of the prophets, a wonderworker from before the time of the Exile. He had been a second Moses, calling people back to God, back to the Covenant, in a time of faithlessness and evil. But at the end of his ministry, as we are told, Elijah did not die. Rather, he had been taken bodily up into Heaven by chariots of fire.

This meant he sat on the bench, as it were; he could come back into the game. With the return of Elijah, the Messiah surely must be on His way.

Enter, then, John the Baptist, in our Scriptures for this morning. John emerges in the wilderness, wearing a shirt of camel’s hair, living off locusts and wild honey, condemning corrupted powers while calling the people of God to repentance. In other words, he does everything short of wearing a nametag that reads, “Hello, my name is Elijah.” He checks all the boxes. The spirit of Elijah lives in him.

And we can tell that people understood this, because they came to John in droves: Pharisees, Sadducees, tax collectors, soldiers. To this day, half a dozen religions recognize John the Baptist as a prophet. That’s saying something, considering that he’s the first guy to come out and credibly claim this mantle after 400 years of apparent divine silence. This wasn’t some zany streetcorner preacher ignored by the masses. His oratory, his message, his ethos captured everyone’s attention, such that they set out to find him in the desert.

And what does John the Baptist say once he has their attention? “I am not the Messiah!” John never claims to be the Christ, but the Forerunner of the Lord, of whom the Prophet Isaiah wrote: “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord!’” But most remarkable of all, to me at least, for this last and latest prophet, this living voice of God, is the fact that he does not offer anything new, nothing of his own. His is no fresh book, no brilliant new revelation. That is not his job.

Yes, he calls people back to God, back to the Covenant, but this is more return than revelation. What is it that John has to offer? What is the Word he has come to proclaim? “I baptize you with water for repentance,” he tells the crowds, “but the One who is coming after me is more powerful than I; I am not worthy to carry His sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire!”

John does not come with a new written word. John does not come with a new oral word. John comes to proclaim the Word made flesh, the single spoken Word of God incarnate as a Man. His job is to point, ever to point, to Jesus Christ our Lord. Jesus is the one Word from whom all words must derive, the visible Image of the invisible God, the eternal Son of the Father, who is Prophet, Priest, and King. “Behold,” cries John when Jesus comes, “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”

Jesus calls John the Baptist the greatest of those born of women, the culmination and termination of all the Prophets of old, because John does not come to proclaim a book. John does not come to declaim a speech. John comes to cry out to those in the wilderness, “Look to Christ! Listen to Christ! Behold the Word of the Lord!” Jesus is His message, the living and breathing Messiah, the Creator and the Archetype of everything God has made.

John prophesies not a text but a life, the life of Christ; and he does so not merely by what he speaks but in the whole of his own life. John is Jesus’ Forerunner in all things: in his birth, in his ministry, and especially in his death. John prepares the Way; Jesus is the Way. And if we ever wish to see our God, to hear our God, to touch and taste and eat our God, we must look to Jesus. We must follow the Baptist’s finger, for John exists, prophecy exists, to point us all to Christ.

“You brood of vipers! I have baptized you with water for repentance. He will baptize you with the fire of forgiveness. When He puts His Spirit in you, every soul shall prophesy! Look to the east. Look to the Christ. And know that salvation has arrived.”

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

Pertinent Links

RDG Stout

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