This is the second of a little two-part series on the beginnings of the gospel about Jesus from perspectives of the not-so-usual Christmas gospels of Mark and John. The idea of using such passages, apart from the fact that they appear in the suggested lectionary passages to be read on these Sundays, is to jar us a little bit out of our comfortable, acculturated vision of the season leading up to Christmas as a season entirely of warm cozy fireplaces, Christmas trees, and jingle bells, and to remind us that when John proclaimed his role as one sent to say, "Make straight the way of the Lord," he wasn't just making up a cool line for future Christmas card content. He was saying that something very big was on its way to happening. Very big. Scary big.
As we reflected last week, the four gospels each have very different ways of introducing the story about Jesus. Matthew begins his gospel with a long genealogy (Matthew 1:1-16) through fourteen generations, through the line of Mary's husband, Joseph, all the way to Jesus. Luke's gospel begins with stories of the more familiar portions of what we think of as the Christmas story, but Luke also gets around to including an even longer genealogy of Jesus than Matthew, (Luke 3:23-38) traced all the way back to Adam, the first human.
But John trumps Matthew and Luke in writing about Jesus' beginnings. Foregoing a genealogy, he moves back to the time before time. John understands Jesus as having been present at the beginnings of the whole created world, before Abraham, before Adam, before generations, at the very edge, the very start of the world, one with God.
John's gospel begins the story about Jesus with his majestic opening line, "In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God and the Word was God" (John 1:1). And before too long, the local parish council wanted to know who this Baptist fellow was who was saying all these things, stirring up the population. "Who are you?" they demanded to know.
I read once that an adoring fan found herself on an elevator with Robert Redford, and as she stood there alone in that small, enclosed space with one of the most famous of movie stars, she discovered that she could not take her eyes off him. At last she stammered, "Are you the real Robert Redford?" More than accustomed to such questions, Redford smiled and said, "Only when I'm alone."
I'm going to date myself here, but maybe some of you also remember a 1960s doo-wop song by Don and Juan, that repeatedly asked the question, "What's your name?"
Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet proposes the question, "What's in a name?" (Act II, scene 2), as though it might somehow be assumed that names should be insignificant; yet we learn by the end of the play that names are not insignificant, they are all-significant. It turned out that Capulets just don't marry Montagues, no matter what the young lovers hoped for. It is a theme as old as humanity. What's your name? Who do you think you are?
There was an old African-American gospel song, which I first heard sung by Peter, Paul, and Mary, but which turns out to have had its origin clear back in times of slavery:
There's a man going around taking names.
There's a man going around taking names.
He took my father's name, And he left my heart in pain.
There's a man going around taking names.
There's a man going around taking names.
There's a man going around taking names.
He took my mother's name, And he left my heart in pain.
There's a man going around taking names.
There's a man going around taking names.
There's a man going around taking names.
He took my sister's name, And he left my heart in pain.
There's a man going around taking names.1
The slave trader literally went around taking names, taking people, buying and selling human beings, separating wife from husband, child from mother, as though they were cattle, leaving their hearts and their lives in pain, and there wasn't a thing they could do about it except sing this song. When someone starts taking names, we suddenly know things are serious in a way we might not have realized before. Have you ever been holding forth about your opinion on something when someone who identifies themselves as a reporter steps up, scribbling on their pad, and asks, "May I have your name?" Makes you pause, doesn't it? There are always people going around taking names. Some people literally take our names, so it is as if we have no name of our own at all any more, this is the case with the rampant increase in identity theft that currently plagues us.
When they asked John, "Who are you?" we can almost hear in his answer the traces of a wry grin. "I'm nobody to be particularly concerned about," he seems to say. "I'm not the one you should worry over. But the one who is coming, hoo boy! That's the one you should be asking about."
He, himself, was not the light, any more than we are the light. He came to testify to the light: "Among you stands one whom you do not know" (v. 26b), he said. I'm wondering this morning if it is not possible that right up alongside knowing who we are, it is equally important to know who we aren't. Because we are not far more things than we are. Because of the number of rainy days there, pastors in Oregon are more inclined than those in other areas of the country to hear lighthearted questions from worshipers such as, "Can't you do something about this weather?" I have to admit my complicity in this little farcical game about a preacher's potential for influencing the weather — as one who clearly has no more control over weather than I have over my height or my shoe size. I finally came up with a good response to this question, some of you have heard it. I respond to questions about doing a better job of managing the weather by replying, "I'm in sales, not in management." I think John the Baptist had kept that distinction more than clear in his own mind. He was in sales. He came to bear witness to the light, not to be the light.
The shortest day of the year is only a few days away. We who live near the 45th parallel are more aware than our neighbors to the south, that the light of the sun is a gift, we miss it when it is gone. We have weeks to go before we will begin to notice the return of lengthening days, weeks of dark afternoons and mornings to remind us of a world in the absence of light. Many leave for more southerly climates in this season; they find the short days and long dark nights too taxing on their spirits. But we do have an advantage in this part of the world, when the subject turns to light in our Advent season, we know what it is to need a John the Baptist to bear witness to it. And we know what it is to need a light that is not our own. The most basic affirmation about who we are in relation to our Savior is to recognize first that he is the Savior and we are not. He is the one to whom all scripture testifies and we are not. He is the one deserving of the worship of all people everywhere and we are not. He is the perfect, self-giving servant and we are not. He is the healer and we are merely the ones who receive his healing or who may be privileged perhaps to carry his instruments of healing. He is the teacher and we are privileged to communicate the truth about him as accurately as we can. He is the holder of the highest office in God's kingdom and we are called to serve him, not displace him.
He is the king of righteousness and we are called to follow him because of the righteousness he gives us, not the righteousness we already possess. He is the king of glory, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, the light of enlightenment, God's only Son, full of grace and truth, the one whose fullness grants us grace upon grace, the only Son of God who is close to the Father's heart and makes him known.
He is enduringly strong, he is eternally steadfast, he is merciful without partiality, he is the Son of God, he is the forgiver of sinners, he is the cornerstone of the faith, he is tempted and yet uncorrupted, he is the deliverer of captives, he is the only true blessing of the meek, the mournful, the hungry, and the persecuted, he is the wellspring of wisdom, he is the manifestation of righteousness, he is the remover of burdens, he is eternal, and scripture testifies that he is so many more things to us there is not time or space to write them all down. He is all these things and more. We are not.
If virtue is the better part of wisdom, then the better part of virtue is in knowing who alone possesses pure virtue, and it is not us.
Our Advent prayer should mirror the prayer of every pilgrim seeking the truth about God. We pray that God will not only send us his precious light, but that he will also give us eyes to see it when it comes and voices to testify to it. For like the Bethlehem baby, he does not share his message without a messenger to declare who he is. Indeed, this one, standing among them whom they did not know turned out to be, as Paul wrote, "... the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth" (Philippians 2:9-10). Amen.
1. Religious Music: Solo and Performance, Album #15, Library of Congress, "Folk Music in America," 1978, public domain.