Advent 3B 2008

A Sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent, Year B

Who are you?

The religious authorities in Jerusalem are worried.  They’ve heard about this new preacher out in the desert by the Jordan River -- drawing great crowds and baptizing many.  Wandering preachers weren’t unknown, but to the authorities they were often troublemakers.  And there was this baptizing John was doing.  In the Judaism of the day, this act, so common for us, was not usual.  It was connected in people’s minds with the coming of God’s Kingdom, for several Old Testament prophets had said that God would send purifying water to cleanse the people of unrighteousness as the great Day of the Lord drew near.  If John were baptizing, the leaders wondered – perhaps feared  -- whether he might be one of the holy people who were expected to appear at the End of the Age.

So they send emissaries to ask John,

 Who are you?

Who are you?

Are you the Messiah?

Are you Elijah?

Are you the prophet to come that Moses had spoken of?

To each question, John answers an emphatic “No!”  John is absolutely clear about who he is not.  He is not the One who whom God will send to bring God’s Rule into the world. “Well,” his questioners respond, “if you aren’t the Messiah or Elijah or the Prophet, then who are you?  We need an answer to take back to our bosses in the city!”

John answers by quoting the words of Isaiah which we heard last Sunday, saying that he is the voice crying out in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord!  Make a straight road for our God!”  John is the one sent to prepare for the One to Come.  He is the forerunner, the herald: not the Messiah himself, but the one who announces the greater One who is to come.  When pressed further, John emphasizes this point: “There is One standing among you that none yet recognize, the One coming after me.  I am not worthy even to tie his shoes.  He, not me, is the One you should be looking for.”

A few chapters later in this Gospel, John has to make the same point to his own disciples.

 Naturally, they think highly of their teacher, so they are distressed when they have to tell him, “Rabbi, the one who was with you across the Jordan is baptizing, and all are going to him.” [1]  But this bothers John not at all.  “Didn’t I tell you that I wasn’t the Messiah, but the one sent ahead of him?” he reminds them.

Then in an image of poignant beauty, John says he is like the best man at a wedding.  The best man has a key role in preparing the wedding and escorting the bridegroom to the bride.  But it is the groom and his bride who are the center of attention, not the best man.  The best man takes his pleasure in the joy of the groom.  So, too, John says, I am happy to have fulfilled my role as best man.   It is right that all are now going to Jesus.  “He must increase, but I must decrease.” With his disciples and the questioners from Jerusalem, John is clear about his own role.  He is to prepare the way for the One who is to come; he is to draw attention, not to himself, but to Jesus.

Renaissance artist Matthias Grunewald wonderfully portrays John’s role in his painting of the crucifixion. [2]   In the center, Jesus is stretched on the cross in unbearable agony. To one side, Mary faints in the arms of the beloved disciple.  On the other side stands John the Baptist, his arm cocked, pointing at the crucified Jesus, with a caption reading, “He must increase, but I must decrease.”

John knows the role he has been given by God: He is not the center of God’s work of salvation.  Instead he goes ahead of and prepares the way for the One who comes to bring salvation.  He directs attention to the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.  His job is to point not to himself, but to the One who is the Center of God’s work of salvation, Jesus.

This past week, I celebrated the 25^th anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood.  Not surprisingly, I’ve found myself reflecting on what it is I’ve been doing all these years.  What, I’ve asked myself, is this vocation you have sought to live into now for almost half your life?  What is the ministry God is calling you to now?   Most simply, “Jack, who are you as a priest?”

There are, of course, lots of possible answers to this question – but today I find John’s example compelling.  John knows his role.  His job is to prepare the way for Jesus, to point people to Jesus; to draw attention, not to himself, but to Jesus.

That, too, is my role as a priest.  Whether in preaching, presiding at Eucharist, visiting the sick, leading a vestry meeting, working on budgets or in any of the other many facets of this job – I am, like John, to be a herald of Jesus, an announcer of the One who has come and is coming to save the world; to point to Jesus and say, “he must increase and I must decrease.”  In the words of the ordination service in the Prayer Book, a priest is “to nourish Christ’s people from the riches of [Christ’s] grace” [3] -- not from whatever riches the priest has; not from his or her experience, gifts, wisdom, charisma or anything else of the priest’s own, but “from the riches of [Christ’s] grace.”

As I know from 25 years in this work there are great challenges to living this vocation faithfully. One is, whether we like it or not, and often we don’t, priests often serve as God-symbols for others. As my friend Mother Susan Norris often says, our vocation includes being on the border between things human and things divine. We stand at the altar to feed people with Christ, we stand in the pulpit trying to connect God’s Word with your lives, we pronounce God’s blessing and the forgiveness of sins -- which we all know is something only God can do. In light of all this, the Church’s tradition sometimes calls clergy (in Latin, so we know its serious) “alter Christus,” another Christ, one who represents Christ to the people we serve.

This phrase speaks a real truth about this God-symbol part of the ordained vocation. But there is a huge risk here as well. Sometimes people in the pews and clergy ourselves can take the God-symbol part of this vocation way too seriously. Clergy can get inflated egos if we begin to imagine that our role sets above other people or privileges us before them or even God. Conversely, laity sometimes imagines us to have a holiness or special connection to God that isn’t available to them.

My wife Judith jokes that I have a red phone hidden somewhere in the house that allows me to talk to God in a way she can’t. I keep pointing out that she will never find this phone – because it doesn’t exist!

More seriously, laity can be disillusioned and disappointed when, looking to the ordained as alter Christus, one who will love and care for you as Christ does, you run into a person who has his or her own set of very ordinary and un-Christ-like quirks, flaws and failings.

So, as a corrective to the image of priest as alter Christus, I want to offer a different Latin phrase, a different image for the clergy, indeed, for us all: alter Ioannes Baptista; other John the Baptists; people who stand not in the place of Jesus but next to Jesus; people, who like John the Baptist, are heralds, announcers, prepares of the way of the Lord, who direct people’s attention not to themselves, but to the One who has come and is coming to save the world, our Lord Jesus Christ.

But if I am to point others towards Jesus, as John did; if am to nourish them not from my own meager resources, but from the riches of Christ’s grace, then I myself must be pointed toward Jesus; I myself must be nourished from the riches of Christ’s grace.  If I am not nourished from the riches of Christ’s grace, I will not be able to offer those riches to others.  If I am not directed towards Jesus in my own living, I won’t be able to point others towards him, for I will have lost sight of him myself.

And here is where I – and every priest I know – has great need of alter Ioannes Baptista; other John the Baptists: friends and colleagues who will point us towards Christ; spiritual guides who will call us again and again to attend to God’s work in our own lives; mentors whose example will show us what priesthood that is regularly nourished from the riches of Christ’s grace looks like.

I have been blessed to have many such John the Baptists in my life over the years of my priesthood, people who in the past and present have directed me again and again to Jesus when my gaze has gotten distracted – as it often has.  I suspect I will always find it challenging to live a life as faithfully directed towards Jesus, as I need to be able to point others towards him with honesty and authenticity.  I will continue to need others’ help, including yours.

Over the years of my priesthood, it has not only been colleagues, spiritual guides and mentors who have been the alter Ioannes Baptista, other John the Baptists, who have pointed me to Christ.  It has also been the people in the congregations I have served.  In their prayer for me; in settings where we have shared our spiritual journeys with each other; in the witness of their own lives in Christ, they have helped me see Jesus in places I never would have known to look;

they have fed me from the riches of Christ’s grace when I didn’t even know I was hungry.  I remain deeply grateful for their ministry to me as other John the Baptists

As I am coming to know you, the people of St. Francis, I have every confidence that the same will happen with you.  Indeed, this is my prayer for us in the years to come: that we will be alter Ioannes Baptista, other John the Baptists, to one another; offering to each other the rich food of Christ’s grace; directing each other’s attention not to ourselves, but to Jesus; pointing each other again and again to the One who has come and who is coming to save the world -- so that, in the words of the Prayer Book we may, in all we do, “glorify God in this life and the life to come.” [4]

The Rev. Jack Zamboni

December 14, 2008