Advent 3, Year B
OT Reading: Isaiah 61.1-4, 8-11
NT Reading: 1 Thessalonians 5.16-24
Gospel : John 1.6-8, 19-28
John came to bear witness to the Light, the true light (John 1.7-9)
Christmas is coming. If your preparations are anything like ours, you will be surrounded at home by lists of cards to send, presents to buy, food to prepare, decorations to hang, and at this stage, with only one more week to go, the pressure is really building up, the pace is getting a bit frenetic, and you just have to hope you won’t find on Christmas Day that you have forgotten something really important. With that introduction, you might now be expecting me to urge you to leave all that busy-ness behind at the church door, to be still for a few moments, and focus instead on the true meaning of Christmas, on the true wonder of the incarnation, which lies behind all our sending and giving and feasting, the true light which was coming into the world, the light to which John the Baptist came to bear witness. But that’s not quite my purpose. Rather I want to invite you to rediscover the true light which blesses and sanctifies even the busy-ness of our preparations.
John the Baptist came to bear witness. The testimony of the witness is absolutely fundamental to what the other John has to say in his gospel. He writes to provide the next generation of believers with a secure basis for their faith; and authentic, reliable witness, or testimony, is the foundation on which such faith is built. Throughout his gospel the reliable testimony of first hand witnesses is central to his message. The woman at the well runs into the city to tell all her friends and neighbours. Even Nicodemus, who at first comes to Jesus by night, finds the courage to take Jesus down from the cross and give him a decent burial. After the resurrection, when John tells us the story of that nostalgic breakfast with Jesus on the shore of Lake Galilee, the author is himself the witness as he adds: this is the disciple who is testifying to these things, and has written them down, and we know that his testimony is true. In to-day’s reading from the opening verses of his gospel, when he tells us that John the Baptist came ‘as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him’, his purpose is to emphasise the evidence-based authenticity of the whole story he has to tell – as well as ascribing to John a key role as the first public witness to the unfolding of that story.
John’s gospel is somewhat ambivalent about John the Baptist, whose movement for purity of heart to prepare for the coming of the promised Messiah did not die out when Jesus himself appeared, or even when John was first imprisoned and then executed. On the contrary he became something of a cult figure in his own right. Indeed his cult continued alongside Christianity for a couple of centuries or more, which is why John goes out of his way in his gospel to make it plain that whilst the Baptist is to be honoured as the messenger, he is not himself the message, still less the light, the true light. He himself was not the light, but he came to bear witness to the light.
We learn more from this morning’s gospel about who or what John was not, than about who he really was. Challenged by the priests and Levites sent from Jerusalem to question him, he insists that he is not himself the Messiah, nor even the Prophet or Elijah, who was expected to come first. The most he will claim for himself is to be the voice foretold by the prophet Isaiah, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord. No wonder the Jewish authorities asked: Why then was he baptising? Baptism was not a common rite within Judaism. If you were born into a Jewish family, you didn’t need baptism. Baptism was for Gentiles, proselytes, incomers from other faiths. In offering baptism to Jews, John was implying that in order to be ready for the arrival of the promised Messiah, a god-fearing Jew was in just as much need of cleansing as any proselyte might be. This was very disturbing. Rather than being found ready to welcome a messianic figure who would give them back their lost status and authority, they needed to be washed clean just like anyone else.
Yet John was bearing witness to the Light, the true light that gives light to everyone, the light that had in fact already come into the world in the person of Jesus, whose identity was about to be revealed. And here we come to another witness statement, for John had been told that he would see the Spirit descending on the person who would baptise with the Holy Spirit. Now he proclaims that the promise made to him has been fulfilled in Jesus. ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself have seen, and have testified that this is the Son of God.’ (vv 32, 34).
John was called to be a voice crying out in the wilderness, calling men and women to repentance and purity of life as they prepared to welcome their Lord and King, the one who had been promised. When we are baptised, we are not merely washed clean of any inborn human tendency to ignore God and go our own way. We are baptised into the Holy Spirit, the source of the true light which enlightens us all. As witnesses to the grace and truth which came into the world through Jesus Christ, and has touched our lives, we are called to shine steadily as a light in the world, to the glory of God the Father. We receive a lighted candle to remind us to ‘shine as a light in the world, to the glory of God the Father’.
Loving and giving and sharing is the natural expression of the true light which is perceived by John the Baptist and celebrated in John’s gospel. The cost is not measured at the tills along Oxford Street, but the love for one another which moves us is the reason why the sincerity of our Christmas greetings, the generous hospitality of our Christmas table, as well as the thoughtfulness of the presents piled up under the tree, should all be cherished and celebrated. They are our opportunity to share with one another a reflection, feeble and flickering as it may be, of the light to which we are called to bear witness, the true light of unconditional love that entered the world in the stable at Bethlehem.