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A sermon preached in Salisbury Cathedral by the Revd Maggie Guilllebaud on Sunday 14 December 2008
Isaiah 61: 1-4, 8-11 and John 1: 6-8, 19-28
"AMONG YOU STANDS ONE WHOM YOU DO NOT KNOW"
Isaiah 61: 1-4, 8-11 and John 1: 6-8, 19-28
I wonder if any of you, like me, is a fan of Dr Who. I don't mean the old black and white Doctor Whos, with the wobbly stage sets and scantily clad assistants - all very un-PC for modern tastes - but the new, edgy Dr Who, immersed in fantastic computer generated special effects. He's a very different character. And at the moment he is assisted by the competent Martha - a doctor, of course - who last week saved the world.
Now, I'm not the first, nor will I be the last, to have seen some very interesting moral questions being explored in the contemporary Dr Who series. In the middle of all the technical wizardry and improbable situations, themes such as fidelity to a cause, compassion, forgiveness, the meaning of self-sacrifice, the triumph of good over evil, are all explored, albeit in a science fiction frame of reference. It's good to know that children are being given something more profound to think about than the normative reality TV which occupies so much of our screens. But what really struck me in the last episode was the way in which Rose saved the world. As earth teetered on the brink of extinction by the baddie, Rose's testimony turned the whole thing round. She had 'infected' - and I use the word advisedly - the entire world with the message of the goodness of the Doctor and his ability to save humanity by telling small groups of people about him, and encouraging everyone in these groups to do likewise to other groups, until the whole world knew about him and were able collectively to defeat evil and save their planet.
I hope by now you know where I'm going with all this. Secular 'theology' is always great fun, and utterly infuriating for non-believers, which makes it even more fun, if you're in that kind of a mood. But what I would like to concentrate on this morning in our two readings are two things: the figure of John the Baptist, and the nature of witness.
John the Baptist is, in many senses, an odd figure. Paintings and frescoes of him down the years often make him look very hairy - Mark records that he wore camel hair and ate locusts and wild honey - , and a bit mad. He was a baptizer, and we know from Luke that his mother was related to Mary. The other gospels tell us how he got into trouble with Herod, and that this trouble cost him his life. But in this gospel John is defined by what he is not: he is not the light; he is not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet. He is unworthy to tie the sandal of one coming after him. While he baptizes with water, the one he proclaims will baptise with the Holy Spirit. And he knows who this person is, for he is standing right there among the priests and Levites sent to question him; and the priests and Levites do not recognize him.
And yet John is transformed into the key figure at the beginning of Christ's ministry. Far from the 'being not' all the things that Jesus is, John exudes certainty about what he has to do. He is like a witness in court giving testimony - in fact the New Standard Revised Version of the Bible uses just this felicitous word to describe what John does here: 'This is the testimony given by John… I am one the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord.' He has magisterial confidence in his message.
And in acknowledging that he stands in the prophetic tradition of Isaiah, he links us to the prophecies of our first reading today, that joyous vision of the good news of deliverance. The whole passage overflows with joy at the vision is of a just king who frees the oppressed, comforts those who mourn, repairs ruination, and hates all the sin and wrongdoing which disfigure the world; a God who makes an everlasting covenant with his people, and promises them that they are the people whom the Lord has blessed. This is John's task as a witness, to proclaim, to testify to, this glorious message: the time has come, the time is now, the Messiah is amongst you.
For Christians throughout the world the yearly cycle of Advent reminds us of the period of waiting for this arrival of Christ. We wait. We anticipate. We know the Messiah has come, but once again we wait to welcome him afresh into our hearts and lives. We long for the time when we remember the tearing of the veil between the earthly and heavenly realms, when God became man, and changed human history forever. And we long for his promised return, even though such a return includes judgement.
I suppose ever since I was a little girl, and sat in the warm but spare Danish Lutheran church in London with my family on Christmas Eve, I have listened to the message of Advent and Christmas framed by crises. Then it was the austerity in the early fifties, when an orange was a treat. The Hungarian uprising. Suez. The Cold War. The shooting of President Kennedy. The Vietnam War. Always some new crisis, always a world in turmoil. This year is no different, with the credit crunch and the financial uncertainty which it brings, as well as the violence and greed which mars our God-given world. But those of us old enough to remember past crises also reflect that the gates of Hades have not prevailed, and that each Advent and Christmas the message of hope, and the promise of redemption, has carried us through the darkest times, sustaining us until, and through, the next crisis.
What has changed, and changed for ever, is how we communicate with each other. At the flick of a button we can talk to anyone, anywhere. I wonder what John would have made of that. The astonishing thing is that he had only himself to begin the whole process of communicating, of testifying, to the truth that God was on earth and walking among us. He baptized and told others. They told others, who told others. The process of communication was by word of mouth, with nothing written down until Mark penned his gospel some sixty years after Christ's death. The witness of just one man set off what was to become the whole chain reaction of bringing the message of hope and salvation to humanity.
And we continue to be part of that chain. The Church of England has in this past year backed a campaign to 'bring a friend to church', or as The Independent more colourfully put it, 'bring a heathen to church', and it has been very successful. By witnessing to the message of John, by proclaiming in the way we live our lives that we know the Christ has come, we join the cloud of witnesses who have gone before us. Crises may come, but just as surely crises will go. Our hope is founded on the certainty of John's message: not 'among you stands one whom you do not know', but rather, 'among us stands one whom we do know'. The Messiah has come, and is with us, now. Shortly we shall encounter him in the bread and wine The waiting and longing of Advent culminates in that one, simple, fact: the Messiah has come. May it be our Advent duty, as well as joy, to pass the message on. Amen
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Now, I'm not the first, nor will I be the last, to have seen some very interesting moral questions being explored in the contemporary Dr Who series. In the middle of all the technical wizardry and improbable situations, themes such as fidelity to a cause, compassion, forgiveness, the meaning of self-sacrifice, the triumph of good over evil, are all explored, albeit in a science fiction frame of reference. It's good to know that children are being given something more profound to think about than the normative reality TV which occupies so much of our screens. But what really struck me in the last episode was the way in which Rose saved the world. As earth teetered on the brink of extinction by the baddie, Rose's testimony turned the whole thing round. She had 'infected' - and I use the word advisedly - the entire world with the message of the goodness of the Doctor and his ability to save humanity by telling small groups of people about him, and encouraging everyone in these groups to do likewise to other groups, until the whole world knew about him and were able collectively to defeat evil and save their planet.
I hope by now you know where I'm going with all this. Secular 'theology' is always great fun, and utterly infuriating for non-believers, which makes it even more fun, if you're in that kind of a mood. But what I would like to concentrate on this morning in our two readings are two things: the figure of John the Baptist, and the nature of witness.
John the Baptist is, in many senses, an odd figure. Paintings and frescoes of him down the years often make him look very hairy - Mark records that he wore camel hair and ate locusts and wild honey - , and a bit mad. He was a baptizer, and we know from Luke that his mother was related to Mary. The other gospels tell us how he got into trouble with Herod, and that this trouble cost him his life. But in this gospel John is defined by what he is not: he is not the light; he is not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet. He is unworthy to tie the sandal of one coming after him. While he baptizes with water, the one he proclaims will baptise with the Holy Spirit. And he knows who this person is, for he is standing right there among the priests and Levites sent to question him; and the priests and Levites do not recognize him.
And yet John is transformed into the key figure at the beginning of Christ's ministry. Far from the 'being not' all the things that Jesus is, John exudes certainty about what he has to do. He is like a witness in court giving testimony - in fact the New Standard Revised Version of the Bible uses just this felicitous word to describe what John does here: 'This is the testimony given by John… I am one the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord.' He has magisterial confidence in his message.
And in acknowledging that he stands in the prophetic tradition of Isaiah, he links us to the prophecies of our first reading today, that joyous vision of the good news of deliverance. The whole passage overflows with joy at the vision is of a just king who frees the oppressed, comforts those who mourn, repairs ruination, and hates all the sin and wrongdoing which disfigure the world; a God who makes an everlasting covenant with his people, and promises them that they are the people whom the Lord has blessed. This is John's task as a witness, to proclaim, to testify to, this glorious message: the time has come, the time is now, the Messiah is amongst you.
For Christians throughout the world the yearly cycle of Advent reminds us of the period of waiting for this arrival of Christ. We wait. We anticipate. We know the Messiah has come, but once again we wait to welcome him afresh into our hearts and lives. We long for the time when we remember the tearing of the veil between the earthly and heavenly realms, when God became man, and changed human history forever. And we long for his promised return, even though such a return includes judgement.
I suppose ever since I was a little girl, and sat in the warm but spare Danish Lutheran church in London with my family on Christmas Eve, I have listened to the message of Advent and Christmas framed by crises. Then it was the austerity in the early fifties, when an orange was a treat. The Hungarian uprising. Suez. The Cold War. The shooting of President Kennedy. The Vietnam War. Always some new crisis, always a world in turmoil. This year is no different, with the credit crunch and the financial uncertainty which it brings, as well as the violence and greed which mars our God-given world. But those of us old enough to remember past crises also reflect that the gates of Hades have not prevailed, and that each Advent and Christmas the message of hope, and the promise of redemption, has carried us through the darkest times, sustaining us until, and through, the next crisis.
What has changed, and changed for ever, is how we communicate with each other. At the flick of a button we can talk to anyone, anywhere. I wonder what John would have made of that. The astonishing thing is that he had only himself to begin the whole process of communicating, of testifying, to the truth that God was on earth and walking among us. He baptized and told others. They told others, who told others. The process of communication was by word of mouth, with nothing written down until Mark penned his gospel some sixty years after Christ's death. The witness of just one man set off what was to become the whole chain reaction of bringing the message of hope and salvation to humanity.
And we continue to be part of that chain. The Church of England has in this past year backed a campaign to 'bring a friend to church', or as The Independent more colourfully put it, 'bring a heathen to church', and it has been very successful. By witnessing to the message of John, by proclaiming in the way we live our lives that we know the Christ has come, we join the cloud of witnesses who have gone before us. Crises may come, but just as surely crises will go. Our hope is founded on the certainty of John's message: not 'among you stands one whom you do not know', but rather, 'among us stands one whom we do know'. The Messiah has come, and is with us, now. Shortly we shall encounter him in the bread and wine The waiting and longing of Advent culminates in that one, simple, fact: the Messiah has come. May it be our Advent duty, as well as joy, to pass the message on. Amen