John 1: 6-8, 19-28
“There was a man
sent from God, whose name was John.” It’s never really occurred to me before
how ordinary this sentence sounds; compared with so many other sentences in John’s
gospel that is. The very first sentence of John’s gospel is, of course,
beautiful poetry,
“In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Gorgeous! But
it’s definitely not ordinary.
Verse 14, which we
do not read today, is also another poetic masterpiece,
“And the Word
became flesh and dwelt among us.”
I may be
frustrated at times with John’s gospel, but those nine words have the power to
bring me to my knees. Definitely. Not. Ordinary.
But verse 6 sounds
more ordinary than these others.
“There was a man
sent from God, whose name was John.”
Perhaps ordinary
is not the right word; maybe straightforward is what I’m searching for. John’s
gospel, with its multiple layers of meaning in every verse, with its metaphor and
imagery, is rarely straightforward. But verse 6 is. It sounds like the
beginning of a wonderful story. It sounds like, well it sounds almost, kind of
ordinary.
You’re probably
thinking, “It would be ordinary, Amy, if it weren’t for the subject. You know,
John?! The guy who wore camel’s hair and ate locusts! That guy from the
wilderness who, to put it mildly, was a little off center. He was the one who
baptized Jesus for heaven’s sake! How could a sentence about John the Baptizer
be ordinary?”
It’s true, John
was no ordinary character. The various gospel accounts of him tell us that he
was Jesus’ cousin, son of Elizabeth and Zechariah. Some historians speculate
that he may have been an Essene, a member of that ascetic, mystical Jewish
sect. And if we know nothing else about him, we know him as the Baptizer, the
one who baptized Jesus. Except in John’s gospel he does not baptize Jesus. In
John’s gospel, he really isn’t the Baptizer at all. He does do some baptisms, as
we read in the last part of our passage, but Jesus is not one he baptizes. In
John’s gospel, he is John the Witness. He is John the one who is sent to the
witness to the light. He is not the light, but he points to the light.
This last part is
almost a disclaimer. He is not the light. That is made very clear. In our later
verses, this is reiterated when the priests and the Levites come to question
John about his identity.
“Who are you?”
He answered them
in the negative; who he was not.
“I am not the
Messiah.”
They persisted.
Are you Elijah? Are you the prophet? We need an answer to give the people who
sent us. At that, John quoted Isaiah.
“I am the voice of
one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’” as the
prophet Isaiah said.”
John made it clear
who he was not. And the gospel makes it clear who he was. He was the one sent
by God as a witness to testify to the light. Don’t get him confused with the
light. That is not who he was. He was the witness. He was the one sent by God
to witness to the light; John the Witness.
What does it mean
to witness? If we are a witness in court, presumably we tell what we know or
what we have seen. Many years ago when I was in college, I was involved in a
fender bender on the way home from my summer job. It wasn’t my fault. Really.
While the other driver and I were waiting for the police to come, and we were exchanging
phone numbers and insurance and all the other things you do when you’ve had an
accident, another driver stopped. She came up to me and gave me her phone
number. She said to call her if I needed to. She saw the whole thing, she said.
She was a witness.
John was one sent
from God as a witness to the light. He was sent to tell the truth about Jesus,
the Light of God, the Word made flesh, the Messiah. He was sent to testify to
Jesus’ true identity. John was sent from God to tell people the truth about
Jesus, God’s Son, and in doing so to make the people ready. He was that one
crying out in the wilderness to prepare the way for the Lord.
It would seem that
John really was no ordinary man, yet I maintain that verse six is a wonderfully
ordinary sentence. It is a wonderfully ordinary and captivating beginning to a
story unlike any other. Why is it ordinary? Because whether John was an
ordinary person or a wild man from the wilderness is not the point.
“There was a man
sent from God, whose name was Bob.”
“There was a man
sent from God, whose name was Glenn or Bill or Mark or Thomas or Vic.”
“There was a woman
sent from God, whose name was Alice or Lynn or Peg, Kathy or Wanda.”
Take out John and
insert your own name. We are all sent from God to witness, perhaps not in the
way John did, but we are called and we are sent. We are all called to witness.
How are we called
to witness? While you are pondering that question, let me add one more thing.
The Greek word for witness is martyrion which gives us our English word,
martyr. One who witnesses is a martyr. While I have not done a full word
study on how our understanding of the two words has evolved over the centuries,
I find it interesting that these words share a common root. It seems to me that
if we are called to witness to Jesus, to tell our truth about him, then there
is a certain element of risk implied. We may be martyred for our witness, for
our truth telling; perhaps not physically, but in other ways. Not only may we
not be believed, but we may be mocked, shunned, disparaged or just downright
shamed. More than once I have hesitated telling a stranger my vocation because
I dread the response.
Yet, just as there
is a cost that comes with discipleship, there is also a danger that comes with
being a witness, with truth telling, with testifying to the light. Maybe that’s
why we want to believe that is only extraordinary people who are called to
witness to the light. But the funny thing about God is that God tends to call
ordinary people like you, like me, to do extraordinary things. God works
through unlikely people and unlikely circumstances. That’s what we celebrate
during this season. That’s what we are waiting for: for God to work the
extraordinary through the ordinary, to work the divine and the glorious through
the most lowly. That’s what the incarnation is, the Word becoming flesh: our
flesh, our ordinary, lowly, frail and fragile flesh.
John the Witness
was an ordinary man sent from God to testify to the Light. We are ordinary
people sent from God to testify to the Light. We are called to be witnesses, to
share our truth, to offer our testimony. We are called to do extraordinary
things, not because we have exceptional power that other people don’t, but
because we trust that God is working through us and is with us. It seems to me
that’s what John understood. He trusted that God was working with him and
through him, and he never stopped doing what God called him to do. Not once. He
never stopped witnessing to the Light.
There was an
ordinary man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to
testify to the light, so that all people might believe through his telling.
Let all God’s
children, God’s witnesses, say “Alleluia!” Amen.
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