Sermon For Advent 3 Year B 2008

Advent 3 – John the Baptist Isaiah 61.1–4, 8–11 1

14 December 2008 Thessalonians 5.16–24

John 1.6–8, 19–28

Last week Martin mentioned the perils of punctuating poorly. As a young lawyer I was told that a document was badly drafted if punctuation was needed to make sense of it. Traditionally legal documents were not punctuated. In some old cases, judges have said that the sense of legal writing ought to be gathered from the documents and their context, rather than from the punctuation. Lawyers now do use punctuation, though it is still used sparingly. However, Jewish scrolls were not divided into chapters and verses, as Martin explained. Letters ran together without spaces between words. And so in his home town of Nazareth, in his first recorded sermon, Jesus had to unroll the scroll and find what he wanted to preach about ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour’ This is part of today’s Old Testament reading from Isaiah’s prophecy of the kingdom which God’s Messiah would establish. After Jesus read this, he said ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ The text from Isaiah referred to himself. This was his mission. Jesus was bringing good news to poor people. He was freeing people from bondage, and restoring sight to the blind. Today I am speaking about the Word. The Bible is God’s written revelation to humankind. Compiled by various men under the guidance of the Holy Spirit (2 Pet. 1:21), the Bible is the Word of God. From the very beginning the Word was with God and was truly God. And, with this Word, God created all things. Nothing was made without the Word. God’s Spirit moved over the water and when he spoke, big things happened. God said, ‘I command light to shine!’ and light shone. God spoke his word to Noah, to Moses and to Abraham. When he spoke to Jacob, he gave him a new name, ‘Israel shall be your name.’ God told Solomon that the Temple was the place he would be put his (God’s) name. God had already explained to David, Solomon’s father, that he could not build the Temple, because David was a man of war and had shed blood. A little girl who had heard a bloodthirsty Old Testament story said ‘But that happened before God became a Christian!’ But, in his Gospel, what St John tells us is that the Word was always there. God was always a Christian. God was and is and always will be like Jesus; but men and women were unable to realise that until Jesus came in human form. St John writes that everything that was created, received its life from him, and his life gave light to everyone. The light keeps shining in the dark, and darkness has never put it out. God sent John the Baptist to tell about the light and to lead all people to have faith in Jesus. John the Baptist wasn’t the light but came only to tell about Jesus, the light of the world. John the Baptist did unusual things. He baptised people in the river. He looked and sounded so different that the religious leaders wanted to know who this larger-than-life character was. So they

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sent priests and temple assistants to ask him. They could only think of three things that John the Baptist could be. (i)

The Jews were waiting for the Messiah. There was no one idea of the Messiah. Most expected a warrior prince, a descendant of David, who would lead the armies of the Jews and conquer the world. John the Baptist said, ‘No. I am not the Messiah.’

(ii)

Jews believed that Elijah would return to prepare the world for the Messiah. This belief goes back to the prophet Malachi ‘I, the Lord, promise to send the prophet Elijah before that great and terrible day comes. He will lead children and parents to love each other more, so that when I come, I won’t bring doom to the land.’ (Malachi 4:5) Elijah was expected to resurrect the dead to share in the new kingdom. He would settle who was clean and unclean; who were Jews and who were not Jews; he would bring estranged families together again. And as all kings were anointed, Elijah would anoint the Messiah. Jews had a saying, whenever money and property in dispute or anything found, whose owner was not known, that this would have to wait ‘until Elijah comes.’ John the Baptist said, ‘No. I am not Elijah ‘

(iii)

Moses had told the people, The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your own people; you shall heed such a prophet.’ Deuteronomy 18:15. The Jews were waiting for this prophet who would be the greatest of all prophets. Some believed that the prophet Isaiah or Jeremiah would return when the Messiah came. John the Baptist said ‘No. I am not the Prophet ‘

In Biblical times, roads were unsurfaced tracks. When a king was to visit to his kingdom, or when a conqueror was travelling through his lands, the roads would be repaired. Potholes would be filled in and the roads straightened. Just as Jesus had done when he when he preached in Nazareth, John the Baptist quoted from the prophet Isaiah to answer those who asked who he was, ‘A voice cries out: In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.’ (Isaiah 40:3) What John the Baptist was saying was: ‘I am nobody; I am only a voice telling you to get ready for the coming of the king, for he is on the way.’ The last thing that John the Baptist wanted men to do was to look at him. He was to prepare the way for Jesus. John the Baptist pointed to Jesus, which is the task shared by every true preacher. The message from today’s Gospel reading is this. Get ready for the coming of Jesus. He is on the way.

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