Psalm 119.81-88
OT Reading: Isaiah 33.13-22
NT Reading: John 3.22-36
Text: Behold the Lamb of God (John 1.29)
Since our gospel reading was about John the Baptist and to-morrow we are invited to commemorate his beheading, I thought we might spend a few moments this evening reflecting on his life and death, and on what we might learn from his example.
You will remember that his father Zechariah had some difficulty believing the angel Gabriel when he brought the message to him in the temple where he was on duty as a priest. His penalty was to be struck dumb until the child was born, but his speech was restored when he faithfully insisted that the child should be called John – and not Zechariah – and it was then that he gave thanks in the words of the Benedictus that we said together instead of the psalm.
And thou, child shalt be called the Prophet of the Highest, for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways; to give knowledge of salvation unto his people for the remission of their sins.
Six months later the birth of John’s cousin Jesus was the subject of a similar message, carried by Gabriel to a more receptive young woman, who responded with the Magnificat – and we have said that together too. We don’t know how much contact there was between Jesus and John as children, possibly not very much despite all those lovely paintings of two babes gambolling together. After all, Mary and Joseph lived in Galilee, whilst Elizabeth and Zechariah lived in the hill country of Judaea.
But the two men did emerge onto the public scene at much the same time, John once again a little ahead of Jesus. John presented himself as an old-fashioned prophet, clothed in camel’s hair, living out in the wilderness, eating locusts and wild honey, and calling the people to repentance, so that they would be cleansed of their sins and thereby made ready to receive the Lord whose way he had been sent to prepare. His baptism was with water for the cleansing of sin, but he promised that the one coming after him would baptize with the fire of the Holy Spirit.
The only meeting between the two cousins of which we have any knowledge takes place when Jesus comes to be baptized by John in the river Jordan. John sees the Spirit descending upon Jesus, and knows this is the one to whom he must point. He is a bit taken aback that Jesus should insist on being baptised – whatever for? – but he is gently persuaded to go through with it anyway, and his recognition of Jesus as the Lamb of God is confirmed by the voice from heaven which declares: “This is my Son, my Beloved, in whom I am well pleased.”
You might suppose that at this point, job done, John would shut up shop and go home, but he doesn’t do that. In the first place the revelation may not have been as clear to John at the time as it was when the gospel stories were written down many years later. And secondly, even if John was absolutely certain about it, even at the time, people were still coming to him to be baptised, and they still needed to be prepared to recognise and accept the Messiah when Jesus chose to launch his own mission. So John continued to baptise, to call people to repent, and to be ready to receive the Messiah.
There seems to have been a period of some months, perhaps longer, when John and Jesus were both active, both drawing the crowds, even baptizing, though it was Jesus’ disciples who baptized rather than Jesus himself, and people began to ask questions. Did John mind if people were leaving him to go after Jesus? Not at all, that was bound to happen; he must increase, and I must decrease; the groom takes the bride, and the best man is happy for him. Why did Jesus’ disciples not fast and pray as John’s did? Jesus answer was that you can’t expect the wedding guests to fast while the party is still in full swing around the bride and groom.
When asked about Jesus, John always pointed to Jesus as the one who was to come, and when Jesus was asked about John, he was full of admiration for him. What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed blowing in the wind? Of course not, you went to see a prophet and more than a prophet. I tell you, among those born of women, no one is greater than John (Luke 7.28); but he adds: yet the least in the kingdom of God is greater than he. And a little later on Jesus sums it up as follows: The law and the prophets were in effect until John came; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is proclaimed.
So we are taught to respect John as the last of the prophets, but he never quite grasps what Jesus is about. True to his prophetic tradition he has the courage to tell Herod, his local ruler, that he has no business messing around with his sister-in-law Herodias. Herod doesn’t appreciate such public criticism of his behaviour and claps John into prison, bringing his public mission to a close. And John, perhaps rather miserable and deflated, seeing no sign of the Messiah he was probably expecting, begins to wonder whether his identification of Jesus was correct. He sends messengers to Jesus: Are you the one, or should we be looking for another? Jesus carries on healing and teaching, and sends the messengers back with news of what they have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. The evidence is there if John has eyes to see it, but like the rest of us, John must make up his own mind.
We don’t know whether John ever came to understand that this was what the Messianic kingdom was really about, but not long afterwards, Herodias found her opportunity to put her lover into a position where he could not refuse to behead the prophet who refused to be silenced. And when Jesus heard the news, he withdrew by himself to a deserted place (Matt 14.13) to mourn his cousin’s gruesome and untimely death, which he must have seen as confirming his own destiny. If there is a lesson for us in John’s story it may be that we should be more willing than he was to leave behind our preconceptions of the kingdom of God, handed down to us from the past, more willing than he was to embrace new and radically different expressions of God’s plan for us and for our community.
John the Baptist is the last of the great prophets, but despite his death at the hands of Herod, he is not the first Christian martyr. He dies as the prophets died, proclaiming the truth, and refusing to be silenced. But in his gospel St John the apostle attributes to him, at the time of Jesus’ baptism, the seminal words: BEHOLD THE LAMB OF GOD. So it is deeply fitting that we should sit here beneath our west-facing window, with John the Apostle on one side to tell the story, John the Baptist on the other pointing to Jesus in the centre, who presides over our communion table under the sign of the Lamb of God, who not only takes away the sin of the world, but brings the fire of the Holy Spirit to dwell in our hearts. Thanks be to God for the witness and profound insight of both the Johns whose memory we honour in the dedication of this church.