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Advent 3 – Year B

Preached on December 11, 2011

At St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brookline, MA

The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello

Isaiah 61:1—4, 8—11, Psalm 126, John 1:6—8, 19--28

When the religious authorities asked John “Who are you?”, John replied “I am not the Messiah.”

What an odd man, this John character continues to be. Though the Gospel of John does not clothe him in camel’s hair, and it does not tell us of his diet of locusts and wild honey, John continues to confound us by his behavior.

The question seems so easy. The authorities are more than a bit curious about this man baptizing crowds in the river, and so they come and ask him who he is. The question behind this question is really, by what authority is John acting.  

John could have simply said, “Well, my name is John.” But he doesn’t. He answers first by telling the authorities only what he is not. He looks back at them and says, “I am not the Messiah.”

John continues on to tell them who he is, but even then he does not use his name. He only tells them that he is the voice of one in the wilderness. Before he does that, though, he wants to make it perfectly clear who he is not. He is not Elijah. He is not the Prophet for whom they are waiting. He is not the Messiah.

During Advent and Christmas, we are given lots of Characters; Joseph, Mary, the shepherds and Magi, the innkeepers and the angels. And each of them has something to teach us about our lives of faith. How are we to be like Joseph, or Mary? How do we act like the innkeepers, or the Magi?

John the Baptist is one of those figures. John sets the scene as one whose whole purpose is to point the way to Jesus. And one of the first things John teaches us is that, in order to do that, in order to see God in the world, we must first remember that we are not God.

John says, “I am not the Messiah”, and neither are we.

It sounds like an easy enough thing to remember, until we stop for a moment and think about all the many ways we do attempt to be our own Messiahs, at least Messiahs in our own little corners of the world. It’s incredible how much we pile on our own shoulders in the belief that we can, and must, be the saviors of our own little world.

If we are busy enough, we can do it all. If we worry enough, nothing bad can happen. If we refuse to let go, we can remain in control and save ourselves and those around us. If we only try hard enough, we can get someone else to change their destructive behavior.

There are plenty of opportunities in life to attempt to be Messiahs – either our own, or our families’, even the country’s and the world’s, lots of opportunities to play Messiah, and very few stories of that working out particularly well.

Here we sit at the halfway point in Advent, getting ready for Jesus to appear on the scene. A very basic question we must ask ourselves is whether there is a role for Jesus to fill when he does come into our lives. John the Baptist knew that, in order for there to be room for Jesus to come into his community and do the work of the Messiah that was Jesus’ work to do, he needed to make it clear, to the crowd, to the authorities, and to himself, that the job hadn’t already been taken.

I am not the Messiah, says John.

While the Messiah Complex is one many of us can identify with, it is particularly rampant in the helping professions. And it’s a trap many clergy fall into, particularly rectors of parishes. We look around at the work to be done, or the potential for the Gospel to be heard, or the possibilities for God’s work to get done in the world, and we convince ourselves that it is all up to us to make it happen.

But I know that no matter how many hours I put in, no matter how many sermons I prepare or meetings I attend, there will always be someone who has yet to hear the Good News of God’s love for them. So I remind myself, as often as I possibly can, that the work to be done in this place and from this place is not my work alone. It is our work. And I remind myself that the real Savior of this place doesn’t sit in a pew or a chair on Sunday mornings.

John the Baptist’s reply to the religious authorities is there to remind us that we are not called to be Savior or Messiah. That job’s been taken.

Once we remember that, once we stop trying to be the saviors and redeemers of our worlds, we open up the needed space for Jesus to enter in and do that work for us, and with us, as he so desperately wants to.

Our job, as was the Baptist John’s, is to see the work of God happening in the world, and to tell others about it. That is, the Gospel of John tells us, how the darkness of the world is kept at bay. That is how a light can come into the world in the midst of darkness and that darkness will not overcome it.

The evil in the world depends on the absence of hope. When evil does its work, and despair settles in, we become less and less able to fight against the darkness until we are convinced there is no hope for anything to change; we become convinced there is no chance of light, no chance of life, and the darkness overcomes us, swallowing us whole.

Our job, the one for which John leads the way, is to point out the light, to witness to even the tiniest bits of light, wherever we see them in the world.

The more we point to the ways in which God’s work is getting done in the world, the more we are able to keep the darkness at bay. What tiny specks of light are we able to see in a world that seems at times as though the darkness might win? Who in our lives needs us to point the way to those specks of light, so that their hope might be restored?

If the salvation of the world depends on any one of us, I fear we might be in a bit of trouble. But if we follow John’s example, if we make room for Jesus to arrive on the scene, if we testify to the Light; if we point the way to the Messiah, Jesus will arrive, that Light will shine, our Messiah will come to us again and again.

Come soon, Lord, Come and be among us in the midst of our darkness as the Light of our World.

AMEN.

© 2011 The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello