John 1:6-8, 19-28
Today's gospel is the same scene as
last Sunday's. Last week Mark told the story. This time it's John.
Notice that there is nothing here about camel's hair or eating bugs
dipped in honey. The Gospel writer tells us that a man named John
was sent by God to testify concerning the light. The Gospel writer
emphasizes that John was not the light.
Maybe John had received a special
revelation from God. But then again, maybe not. John, after all, if
we are to believe Luke, was the son of a Jewish priest. As you may
know, the priesthood was hereditary, so John would have not only had
the right to be a priest, he would have that as a duty. And we know
that priests began their careers at a very early age – generally
the teen years. The other thing that maybe points to John's
priesthood is the fact that he is baptizing with water. If you were
a gentile and wanted to become a Jew, part of the process requires a
ritual bath which was arranged by the priest. In Orthodox Jewish
communities even today the ritual bath is still used. Our ritual of
baptism probably was derived from this tradition. I think the
Pharisees saw the symbolism in what John was doing. When they asked
him by what authority he was baptizing, it seems that they expected
something like that, which was reflected in the guessing about his
identity. They expected someone would come along and revitalize
Israel, but surely it would be someone important.
John's job was to testify to the
light. In his experience as a priest, I wonder if he became
disillusioned. If he studied scripture, he must have read that
Isaiah had quoted God as saying, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice”
and yet every day priests were being paid to sacrifice animals –
paid with money earned by hard labor. Maybe John had become
disgusted with so many of the priests who really believed in nothing
but enriching themselves; we know that most priests were Sadducees,
who did not believe in the resurrection. We also know that the high
priests were very tight with the authorities. John may have looked
at the Pharisees as an alternative, but it wasn't much better. In
their efforts to keep the law they were spending enormous amounts of
time and energy working out exactly what the law was for every
conceivable situation. And they were trying very hard to get
everyone to do what they were doing. When John compared what was
actually happening with what the prophets said God wanted of his
people, he could see how Israel was missing the mark and when he
preached and baptized, he was trying to jump-start a new Israel.
We've seen other prophets like John,
people like Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela –
people who looked at the world they lived in and saw that this was
not the way things were supposed to be. And this vision became the
force behind their heroic attempts to change the world, sometimes
being imprisoned or even killed as a result.
But there is another type of
testifying. Maybe an example is the kind of witness the apostles
gave. The apostles had been through a marvelous experience. They
had walked and talked with the Son of God himself; they had seen his
miracles, they had listened to his preaching, they had been his
friends and witnessed his life, death and resurrection. And this was
the subject of their testimony. When you read the sermons of Peter
and Paul and others in the New Testament, the subject is Jesus
Christ and him crucified. When the authorities told the apostles to
quit their preaching, Peter replied that if they were silenced the
very stones would cry out.
Because of our baptism, we are also to
be witnesses. Because of our confirmation, we are given the strength
to witness. Jesus promised that when we were put on the spot he
would give us the words we needed to say. We Christians who are
adopted brothers and sisters of Jesus, who can claim God as Father,
are in the world to testify as John did, so that all might believe.
And we also are supposed to witness in
both ways. We too can look at the world and judge it; we can see how
things are and how things should be. Being this kind of witness is
hard, and can get us into trouble. It's a lot harder to publicly
stand up for Christian values today than it was twenty years ago.
But Jesus promised that those who were persecuted for his sake would
inherit the kingdom of heaven. One way we can all witness is to
learn why the Church teaches what she does, about same sex marriage,
about abortion, about physician assisted suicide, about any of the
current hot topics. When we understand these things then we are
prepared to give an account of ourselves, as Saint Peter urged us in
his first letter. Another way of course is to put our Christian
principles into practice in some way, so that we are giving some of
our time and some of our treasure to promote the kingdom of heaven.
But the other kind of witness, the
testimony of the wonderful things God has been doing, is also our
responsibility. When we look at our own lives, especially through
the rear view mirror, we can often see that God was there when we
didn't know it. Think back to the big turning points in your life,
some of them good and some not so good. We can be sure that God was
there, offering us grace, helping us grow, drawing us closer to him,
because that's what God does, even though it hurts sometimes. And
when we look at the Church to which we belong, the Church Jesus left
us, that's something to be grateful for as well.
The early Christians told the world
how things should be, and many died for that. And they told the
world about the wonderful things God was doing, and because of that,
the Church grew. If we Christians were brave enough to testify,
think of how much better off the world would be. Isn't it time we
realized that like John the Baptist we have also been sent by God to
testify to the light?
