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Please stand for the invocation.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, And of the Holy Spirit, amen.
The reading today is from John,
the first chapter,
verses six through eight and nineteen through twenty-eight.
“There was a man sent from God whose name was John.
He came as a witness to testify concerning that light so that through him,
all might believe.
He himself was not the light, he came only as a witness to the light.
Now this was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders
in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was.
He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely,
‘I am not the Messiah’.
They asked him, ‘Then who are you? Are you Elijah?’
He said, ‘I'm not’.
‘Are you the prophet?’ He answered, ‘No’.
Finally they said, ‘who are you?
Give us an answer to take back to those
who sent us.
What do you say about yourself?
John replied in the words of Isaiah,
the prophet, “I am the voice
of one calling in the wilderness.
Make straight the way for the Lord!’
Now the Pharisees that had been sent questioned him. ‘Why then, do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, or Elijah, or the Prophet?’
‘I baptize with water’, John replied,
‘But among you stands one
you do not know.
He is the one who comes after me, the straps of who’s sandals I am not worthy to
untie’.
This all happened at Bethany, on the other side of the Jordan
where John was baptizing”.
This is the word the Lord.
Before our reflection on the text today, I wanna share three scenarios with you.
We'll see if we can't pull those together and connect them with the text.
The first one is I want you to imagine having a friend or a family member who is ill and you need to take them to the hospital.
So you hop in the car… let’s imagine the hospital isn’t quite so close… it ruins the analogy.
But maybe the hospital’s a little farther away, it's harder to find.
So you put your friend in the car,
and you head out,
and you see a sign,
They’re usually blue right?
A blue sign that says “Hospital”. An arrow pointing straight ahead.
You have this sigh of relief.
You pull over to the side of the road,
drag your friend out of the car, or family member,
and set them against the sign.
A few minutes pass, more people join you.
They take their sick friends and family members, park on the side of the road, and soon you have this pile
of sick people, surrounding the sign to the hospital.
That’s scenario number one.
The second one:
it’s been a long day – you’re a little bit down –
and your haven’t checked your mail yet so you're hoping that something in the mail will cheer you up
so you had out or over to the mailbox or whatever it is you have to
check your mail.
You open it up and you find
a letter
from the financial
aid office.
You’re not sure if this is good or bad news
but you open it
hoping for the best
you open up the letter
to discover
that you have been selected four a one of a kind of award;
One hundred-percent of tuition
covered for the rest of your life
at Concordia.
In the undergraduate can go and get
as many graduate degrees as you want. Not only
that, it will cover the tuition of any immediate family members
for the rest of their lives as well.
You’re so excited you run around
telling everyone – then you run over to Walgreen’s and you buy a document frame. Oh, by the way, did I 0:04:10.409, 0:04:19.630 Mention that the one thing you have to do is sign and accept this. And yet you’re so excited that you take the
document, put it in this document frame, and you put it on your wall to admire it for years;
unsigned,
unused.
Or let's try the third scenario.
It's December
and the Christmas sales are underway. Store fronts are packed, colored lights are
hanging from a big building and every trees, so it seems. Christmas music is
in the air. As you drive down the road,
it’s not odd the see
green trees tied to the
tops of people’s roofs.
And as you drive through neighborhoods
you can see those trees lit up in people's living rooms.
As December twenty-fifth draws near, presents appear; some days before, some right on Christmas.
People open the presents, enjoy family time,
enjoy more than a few good Christmas cookies,
and maybe a couple of good Christmas meals.
Some make it to church a couple of times.
Christmas passes,
things went pretty well,
it was a pretty good
Christmas.
So what do these three scenarios have in common?
And what could they possibly have in common with our text today
about John the Baptist? Well in the first strange scenario, people stopped at the sign didn’t they? They never actually
made it to the destination point; the hospital,
the place that truly could help the sick
friend or family members.
The people managed to replace the sign
with the real thing…
the real thing for the sign. Let’s look at our second scenario,
the one where the student received the CUW letter,
offering free tuition for life.
Instead of signing and returning the acceptance
letter, the person hangs it on the wall and never uses it.
Nonetheless, each time
that he or she looks at it,
a smile comes to their face.
But they never actually cash in on the offer.
These may seem strange
but they're not unusual in our day and age. In fact
philosophers, psychologists, and others have been studying this for years. Situations where people exchange a connection with an actual thing for a connection with a symbol of it.
In fact, the old experiment with Pavlov's dog is sort of like this.
At first, the dog salivated when the
the food was delivered, but my cleverly ringing a bell when the food was delivered
the researcher was able to get the dog to salivate at the sound of the bell without any food present at all.
But there's more to that experiment; if you
keep ringing the bell long enough without providing any food,
than the dog stops
salivating at the bell.
Bells are just
not as good as food,
not as good as the real thing.
In our text, we read about John the Baptist.
A man who gained
the attention of a good number of people during his day. In fact,
some people thought he might just be the Messiah.
but when people asked John about this,
he was quick to point elsewhere.
“After me comes one more powerful than I. The one who’s sandals I am not worthy to stoop
down and untie.
I baptize you with water
but he will baptize you
with the Holy Spirit”.
Later, as Jesus began his public ministry, you may recall that some of John’s
disciples began
to leave John and follow Jesus instead.
And when people said, “John,
are you upset about this?”
do you remember what he said?
He said, “No,
he must become greater
and I must become less”.
John knew his calling and he stayed true to it.
He was called to be the one who prepares the way for the Lord, a sort of sign
that points people to the place
where they can find true healing.
“He must become greater
and I must become less”.
Signs, messages, messengers, symbols, celebrations,
they're all good things
when captain perspective.
As long as they're not distorted in the something
that they're not.
John made for a great messenger
preparing the way for the Lord,
but he would not have made for a great Messiah.
The hospital sign on the side of the road serves a good and important purpose,
but it just can't bring healing.
It is at its best when it points
to the location
where healing
takes place.
The letter from the Financial Aid office
is certainly cause for joy,
but that letter only has value
if its signed and delivered.
It's the free gift mentioned in the letter
that's really
the source of joy.
And the Christmas season, well,
I think we can all make the connection;
it's a wonderful time of year
and it's at its best
when we allow it to direct our attention
to the true source of healing in the world,
to the source of unending joy, to the place where we are all invited
to discover God's free gift of love
and acceptance
in Jesus Christ. Amen
