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March 19, 2006
The Value of a Faithful Witness
Malachi 4: 1-5 / John 1: 15-24
March 19th, 2006
Let us look at John the Baptist this morning. He was a strange man, but important enough that Matthew, Luke, and John’s Gospels tell us about him because he was a convincing witness to Jesus.
John was the only son of very old parents, born in a day when children saw their duty to care for aged parents. But he took off from home, into the wilderness, away from every family tie. And in this he did not do wrong. Perhaps since his mother gave birth late in life she and her husband had already made preparations for their old age.
I tried to describe some of John’s strangeness to the children. The reason why Matthew tells how John was dressed and what he ate was because people stared at him because of this. “Look at that wild clothing! Look at what he eats.” He looked like a sideshow in the wilderness.
His hair and beard must have been full and shaggy. Undoubtedly he didn’t use Prell to shampoo his hair or Palmolive soap to bathe, or Gillette deodorant. His clothing was made of the same material Bedouins used to make their tents. His nondescript wrap of camelhair cloth didn’t stay yellow like a camel hair sport’s jacket you buy at a fine clothing store today. It got dirty. It was black with dirt. Around his waste there was a leather thong keeping it from falling off. Who knows where he got that thong.
He ate locusts and wild honey. Locusts were what you think they were, grasshopper-like creatures. In Leviticus we read “winged insects that go on all fours you may eat [if they] have legs above their feet, with which to leap on the earth.” But few Jews ate locusts and reacted as you and I do when we see people crunch down into bugs at Purdue’s famous bug-festival. He had to scavenge to find the wild honey, climbing cliffs, poking behind stones getting stung in the process. Honey didn’t come to him in a plastic bottle, or even from a neat beehive in a box.
But the oddest thing about John was his single-mindedness. His faith wasn’t a part of his life. It was his life. He took to the farthest extreme what most people took in doses. The faith of John the Baptist as it shed light on the life of faith was like the inoculation people take against disease. You take a small dose of polio to ward off polio. You get a small dose of tetanus or small pox or diphtheria to keep from getting the diseases themselves. People were fascinated with such an intense life and it inoculated them against complete faithlessness.
Indeed, John’s witness was like a seed planted in the minds of those who watched him. That seed grew for many. Jesus’ first disciples came from the ranks of John’s disciples. Peter and Andrew were disciples of John the Baptist. The Mandeans of Iraq are vestiges of an old sect of followers of John the Baptist.
John the Baptist said of himself, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord’.” And people listened to his voice. Why, I wonder? How different the world would be if what The Gospel of John tells us about John the Baptist could be written on the epitaph on every Christian grave, “People listened when he spoke of the Lord. People listened when he spoke of Jesus.” People came in droves to listen to John. His message ended with, “After me there comes one the thong of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie. He ranks before me. The reason why I came baptizing with water is so that he might be revealed to Israel.”
And it is this aspect of John that grabs me. The believable witness of John. All his oddness is beside the point. Even the remarkable circumstances of his birth are beside the point. What is to the point is that John the Baptist was a believable witness.
Much of the purpose of the New Testament is to inform us about how to be witnesses to Jesus Christ. There is a poem about the effect of Jesus’ life that is beloved to many. It is called “One Solitary Life.”
He was born in an obscure village
The child of a peasant woman
He grew up in another obscure village
Where he worked in a carpenter shop
Until he was thirty
He never wrote a book
He never held an office
He never went to college
He never visited a big city
He never traveled more than two hundred miles
From the place where he was born
He did none of the things
Usually associated with greatness
He had no credentials but himself
He was only thirty-three
His friends ran away
One of them denied him
He was turned over to his enemies
And went through the mockery of a trial
He was nailed to a cross between two thieves
While dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing
The only property he had on earth
When he was dead
He was laid in a borrowed grave
Through the pity of a friend
Nineteen centuries have come and gone
And today Jesus is the central figure of the human race
And the leader of mankind's progress
All the armies that have ever marched
All the navies that have ever sailed
All the parliaments that have ever sat
All the kings that ever reigned put together
Have not affected the life of mankind on earth
As powerfully as that one solitary life.
In a way this is a beautiful poem. It surely honors Jesus. But looking at Jesus in this way has become something of a red herring, a distraction from what you and I are called to be as witnesses to Jesus. We have not been called to recite sentimental poems about Jesus. Any actor can do this with feeling. As John’s life-witness drew people to hear about Jesus, it is our life-witness that is to be a launching point for any verbal witness to Jesus.
Does it sometimes occur to you that the common idea of the life of faith has so little that is unique to it? I find it hard to make myself go into religious bookstores these days because of all the do-dads of religion they sell. We are a very religious land. Religious T-shirts, symbols, stickers and self-help books are everywhere to be seen.
But do you ever ask yourself why with all this outward sloganeering about Christianity why does saying, “I am a Christian” produce such ordinary lives?” All that is common is common for Christians too. The demographics of marital infidelity, of materialism, of grudge bearing in the churches are the same as outside the church. Christianity has considerable appeal these days. But why? It sometimes seems to me Christianity looks like a vast herd of people, but headed where, as witnesses to what, to whom?
I read the Christian magazines that come in the mail and they are filled with what seems like advice to rear-guard soldiers running in retreat from the enemy rather than instructions to the front ranks of soldiers leading the attack. “Backward Christian soldiers running from the war,” we should sing, rather than “onward Christian soldiers marching as to war.” What stuck about John the Baptist was the luminous witness to something remarkable despite the strangeness of his life.
People lined up for him to baptize them even though there was no tradition of doing such a thing. The private Essene communities in Palestine practiced frequent baptism, but nothing like what John was doing. Why did so many people come great distances to hear John’s tongue-lashings and then line up in long queues to await his baptism? His message did not comfort very many people with an ache in their hearts. “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” Yet people came to hear him, whatever he had to say.
Pharisees and Sadducees, soldiers, and tax collectors were the extremes of that crowd. But many common people must have come too. Their turn came to step out into the deep water where John stood. They felt themselves go down beneath the water, and then came up from that water feeling like their sins dripped and then evaporated under the hot desert sun.
And all this because of the witness of John the Baptist. Jesus said of him, “Among those born of woman there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” You and I are not asked to look wide-eyed at John or at any of the saints who have grabbed the interest of many Christians. We idolize exemplary people, but Jesus said, “the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than these.”
Jesus was very interested in the ordinary citizen of the Kingdom of heaven, people like you and me. Have you ever thought that you are of as much interest to God as John the Baptist, or St. Paul, or St. Francis? We sometimes sing the prayer of St. Francis, “Lord make me an instrument of your peace,” and find part of our delight in realizing St. Francis wrote those words—though not in English, of course. But the Lord is fascinated with how following Him works out in your life—and mine, just as we are—not as we idealize great saints.
The whole point of the Sermon on the Mount, of the Lord’s Prayer with its “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” of Roman’s 12’s “I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God to make your bodies a living sacrifice to God,” is to make our very ordinary lives extraordinary, but in an ordinary kind of way.
I believe that part of the reason why Matthew’s Gospel lets us know of John the Baptist’s confusion when he was in Herod’s dungeon is to help us with our own disappointment with ourselves. Matthew tells us that “When John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, ‘Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?’”
We read this and remember what John said at Jesus’ baptism, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Did John forget? Did his own life’s difficulties make his faith grow dim with discouragement? Maybe John looked for this Lamb of God to have much greater effects than He did. Why was he in prison—in a prison that makes our modern prisons seem like palaces? Jesus seemed to be failing in his task to introduce the Kingdom of God—where all would be well and God’s enemies defeated.
When Jesus summons us to follow Him He knows full well that you and I would be tempted by doubt. He knew that each of us would be tempted in many ways. Paul wrote to Christians in the church at Corinth, “There has no temptation taken you but such as is common to everyone. But God is faithful. He will with the temptation also make a way to escape that you may be able to bear it.” When Paul wrote this he was telling them, “The temptations you’ve had, I’ve had too.”
When you and I are snared with doubt, or if we realize that temptation is getting the best of us, and we’re sinking down, the Gospel to us says, “Look at John the Baptist who doubted. Look what Jesus said about him, “There is none greater in the Kingdom of God, yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”
You and I can very easily be convinced that we must be the least if we are in the Kingdom of God at all. It’s good to be modest about ourselves. But it is not good to then reach the conclusion that since I’m so unworthy I’m going to get comfortable with it. Does it seem to you there is a good bit of comfort in our ranks with a modest attempt at being a citizen of the Kingdom of God?
What would help many of us would be to accept that we are not stuck with the way we are. I would recommend to you some very simple disciplines as a start. Begin the day listening to the sound of your own voice giving your life to God for that day. “Lord, as I begin today, I want to walk with you.” Have your Bible near where your breakfast food sits on the counter, by the coffee maker. Read a paragraph and ponder it in the light of the prayer with which you began the day.
Make Friday evening your night out so that when Saturday evening comes you are starting to think of coming to worship the next morning. And then get up on time so that you can be here to hear me invite us all, “Let us worship God,” and sing together that great first hymn of praise together.
Jesus never said any of us should copy John the Baptist, dressing in dirty camelhair clothing, eating a strange diet. But there will be a uniqueness about the life of anyone who is actually a witness to the Lord Jesus.
Many years ago when our daughter turned sixteen, she invited a number of her friends to a party at Noble Roman’s Pizza place. Since her friends didn’t drive yet, she had to put up with her dad driving the station wagon, of all things to pick them up. We could squeeze eight kids in, with the rumble seat in the back. Worst of all, I wore a bow tie. And our daughter was very troubled at this odd dress until one of her friends perkily said to me, “Mr. Robertson, you’re making a fashion statement.” Immediately my bow tie appeared in a different light to my daughter.
Well, you and I are called to make something of a fashion statement about this way of life called Christianity. I can think of many ways we can make this—how we treat those who have offended us, how exuberantly we live together if we are married, how well we do our work, how trustworthy is our word, how graciously we treat people. What a fashion statement. And then, should we say something about this Jesus in whom we believe, do you think there may be some light shined on this One who has lightened our lives?
Let us pray: O Lord, we thank you for the clear witness of your servant John, and ask that by your Holy Spirit you may make of us witnesses who bear witness to the Light of Jesus Christ, that we may attract the notice of others to Him. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at March 19, 2006 09:30 AM