Confessions

We are looking at Four C’s in these Advent sermons. Two weeks ago I talked about Commands. We are commanded to be on the watch for where Jesus is present in the world. Last Sunday we talked about Connections and how Jesus was connected to scripture, to those who prepared the way for him, and to God. We must affirm the same connections in our own lives. Today we are thinking about John the Baptist and the idea of Confessions.

When we hear the word “confession” we typically think of admitting something we’ve done wrong. After all, we pray a “confession of sin” almost every time we gather for public worship and in our private devotions there is typically a confessional component as well. Furthermore, this kind of confession is specifically connected in the gospels to John the Baptist. Both Matthew and Mark report that people went out to the Jordan River, confessing their sins, and were baptized by John.[1]

But in today’s text we read how John the Baptist “confesses” and “testifies” about Jesus Christ. Obviously he was not admitting things he had done wrong. In this text, to confess and to testify mean the same thing.[2] When John confessed Christ, he was witnessing to who Jesus Christ really is. Our task this morning is to figure out what confessing Christ means for us today. Let’s read it in John’s Gospel.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, “I am not the Messiah.” And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.” Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” He said,

Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. They asked him, “Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?” John answered them, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.” This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.” And John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.”

Basically two things happen in this text. First, the authorities try to understand John. Second, John expresses his understanding of Jesus. We need to look at each of these for a few minutes.

We humans often try to understand unfamiliar things by comparing them to things we already know about. Our minds work with analogies: this “hard to understand” thing is like “this easy to understand” thing. That was the manner of the official inquiry about John the Baptist. We know it was official because priests, Levites, and Pharisees all questioned him. All the leaders questioned John about who he was and what he was doing. They wanted to know if he was the Messiah or Elijah or the prophet. If John claimed to be one of these, then they would understand and know how to react. By making the right analogy they could put him in the right box.

If John was the Messiah, they were ready to fight. For when John began preaching and baptizing sometime between the years of 25-30, widespread expectancy was abroad in the land. It was less than a century since the royal dynasty had fallen (in 63 bc) and Israel was incorporated into the Roman Empire. Whether in ancient or modern times when people are exploited and occupied, they always want to be liberated. So in John’s time talk was everywhere that the Messiah was coming to lead the fight for independence and reestablish the Davidic throne. Never mind that John was from the priestly tribe of Levi, not the royal tribe of Judah. When you hope for liberation, details sometimes get lost.[3] So if John was the Messiah, the insurgency against the Romans could begin.

If John was Elijah, they would look to the heavens. Malachi, the last of the prophets and writing sometime after the Jewish exile, concluded his prophecy by saying that before the terrible day of the Lord — perhaps an allusion to the end of the world — Elijah will return.[4] Just the way John dressed — “clothed with camel’s hair, wearing a leather belt” (see Mark 1.6 and 2 Kings 1.8) — reminded folks of Elijah. So if John was Elijah, they could look to the heavens and get ready for God doing some really big stuff. Sort of like a lot of the “end of days” hype going on right now in our own time.

If John was the prophet, they would listen for God’s voice. John had no reason to ask which prophet because everyone know who the prophet was — Moses. In his farewell speech Moses told the people that if they wanted to know God’s will, they should not turn to magicians and death talkers.[5] Their pagan neighbors did that. “No,” Moses said, “God will raise up a prophet like me to speak his word to you.”[6] Then at the end of Deuteronomy in Moses’ obituary, it says that never has there arisen a prophet like Moses.[7] But the people were wondering if now John just might be the prophet who could speak for God.

They just wanted to fit John into the right box. Then they would know how to behave. Or maybe there is another, darker motive for pigeon-holing someone, especially someone who confronts us or annoys us or disturbs our careful lives. Once we get someone in a box, we can ignore him or get rid of him. After all, prophets usually get killed. They killed the Hindu prophet Gandhi. They killed the Black Muslim prophet Malcolm X. They killed the Christian prophet Martin Luther King, Jr. It doesn’t matter the religion. We don’t like people who disturb us and we ignore them or get rid of them. John refused to fit in a box and, of course, they killed him too.

But before they killed John, he confessed Jesus. He confessed, he testified, he witnessed — they all mean essentially the same thing — to one mightier than he, to the light which enlightens everyone, to the Son of God, to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Perhaps no one has confessed Christ better than John. John’s role was to witness to Jesus and it is by confessing Jesus Christ that the world comes to know God’s presence in him.

But I imagine that by now some of you are thinking, Okay, that’s all fine and good, Bill. But it’s December 11th. It’s just two weeks until Christmas and you are still talking about John the Baptist. Why do we have to understand what he thought about Jesus? What is Christmassy about this text?

A fair question that I ask even if you don’t. And the honest answer is, nothing really. There is nothing Christmassy about this text. And yet the lectionary sets it on the Third Sunday of Advent and for Americans in 2005 that means we think about John when there are only 13 shopping days left. Every time I think of shopping and buying and the craziness in the malls that I will do almost anything to avoid, I find myself wishing that as a people we were not so consumed by consuming. And yet, in very truth, our lives right now and for the foreseeable future all depend to one degree or another on buying and selling — lots of buying and selling.

Remember a week or so after 9/11 and what President Bush said then? He said, “Go back to your normal lives. Travel again. Go shopping.” That sounded so strange to me and it was much lampooned at the time by many pundits and comedians. For even though I was born after World War II, I remember my parents telling me — and some of you are old enough to remember this yourselves — that in a time of war there needed to be rationing. Some things just weren’t available. There needed to be saving and sacrifice. Citizens needed to “go without” and “make do.” Now when there is war, we need to shop.

I’m not at all commenting here on the current war or the president — we probably have as many opinions about this as we do people in the room. But it seems strange that we live in times when sustaining an economy to fight a war and pay for everything else, means we need to spend, not save. This is a sad irony, I think, and I wish we lived in a time when consumption was not the thing we do most necessarily. There is nothing wrong with material things in and of themselves. But when consumerism is the highest and most necessary good, our possessions start possessing us. So, of course, pundits and preachers often rail against consumerism. But it’s sort of a cheap shot, really, and a misguided one. For without that consuming, everything would collapse, including the ability of churches to pay for staff and many other things. I’m very aware of this.

And this is why I think we need John the Baptist even when there are only 13 shopping days left. Life as we know it may depend on our spending and the economy may depend on our spending. But our spending doesn’t make Christmas. None of all the stuff we do for Christmas, good though it may be, makes Christmas. The real Christmas was the birth of the one whom John confessed as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. If our confessions are to be about this real Christ and not just about a sentimental baby, we need to always look more deeply at things.

That’s why I both laugh at and get angry at all the bickering and arguing and finger-pointing about Christmas in public. Is it a “Christmas” tree or a “holiday” tree? Are Target stores really banning Christmas, as one pompous commentator claims, when they apparently instruct their clerks to wish people “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”?[8] Can we have nativity scenes in the public square or do we have to add a menorah and Frosty the Snowman to keep them inoffensively non-religious? The arguments go back and forth. Everyone yabbers, no one listens, and — this is my point — none of it makes any difference about the real Christmas.

What really matters about confessing Jesus Christ goes much, much deeper. I read last week about a minister who was counseling a woman after her sister’s suicide. The sister who killed herself had been hooked on drugs throughout her adult life. Completely exasperated, feeling as if everything had been tried and done, the other sister cut off all communication with her drug-addicted sibling, hoping beyond hope that a tough, silent treatment would get through. There would be no communication until her sister’s addictions were broken. And now the living sister was weeping in the pastor’s office. “Two and a half years ago,” she said, “I stopped talking to my sister because I thought it would help her get better. It didn’t work. She’s dead. I was told that drug addiction was a matter of the will. I no longer believe in willpower. If there is any hope at all, it can’t come from us.”

And, as sad as that story was, the minister remembered then that the first step to recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous is for alcoholics to admit they are powerless to defeat alcohol by themselves.[9]

Friends, that’s what makes Christmas. That’s what it means to confess Jesus Christ as the Son of God. It is the deep, life-changing insight that our only hope can never come from ourselves or this world. Hope never comes from making Christmas nice, although I hope it is nice for you and me. It doesn’t come from spending. Or baking, decorating, or sending Christmas cards. Those are all good things, but the real Christmas is knowing that hope only comes from beyond this world. Having this hope is what it means to confess Christ.

A rabbi named Hugo Grynn was, during the Holocaust, sent to Auschwitz as a little boy. In the midst of the concentration camp, in the midst of the death and horror all around them, many Jews held onto whatever shreds of their faith they could without drawing the ire of the guards. One cold winter’s evening, Hugo’s father gathered the family in the barracks. It was the first night of Chanukah, the Feast of Lights. The young child watched in horror as his father took the family’s last pat of butter and made a makeshift candle with it, using a string from his ragged clothes. He then took a match and lit the candle.

“Father, no!” Hugo cried. “That butter is our last bit of food! How will we survive?”

“We can live for many days without food,” his father said. “We cannot live for a single minute without hope. This is the fire of hope. Never let it go out. Not here. Not anywhere.”[10]

He witnessed to hope. We witness to hope when we confess that Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Christ is the Light which enlightens everyone and the hope which comes from beyond this world. Thanks be to God.

[1] Matthew 3.5-6: “Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.” Mark 1.5: “And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.”

[2] “We must not make too strong a differentiation [of the word group omologein — confess] from the word group marturein-marturia [testify] (John 1.7, 15, 19). These solemn declarations belong to the circle of witness to Christ.” Gerhard Friedrich, ed., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, trans. and ed. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, vol. V (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1967) 207.

[3] Or they are just not known. F. F. Bruce, The Gospel of John (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1983) 46-47.

[4] Malachi 4.5: “Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes.”

[5] Necromancy is the supposed practice of communicating with the dead, especially in order to predict the future.

[6] Deuteronomy 18.15-22: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet. This is what you requested of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said: ‘If I hear the voice of the Lord my God any more, or ever again see this great fire, I will die.’ Then the Lord replied to me: ‘They are right in what they have said. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their own people; I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything that I command. Anyone who does not heed the words that the prophet shall speak in my name, I myself will hold accountable. But any prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, or who presumes to speak in my name a word that I have not commanded the prophet to speak-that prophet shall die.’ You may say to yourself, ‘How can we recognize a word that the Lord has not spoken?’ If a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a word that the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; do not be frightened by it.”

[7] Deuteronomy 34.10-12: “Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. He was unequaled for all the signs and wonders that the Lord sent him to perform in the land of Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his servants and his entire land, and for all the mighty deeds and all the terrifying displays of power that Moses performed in the sight of all Israel.”

[8] Ellen Goodman, “What Would the Druids Do?,” The Boston Globe [Boston, MA] 9 Dec. 2005: D1.

[9] Craig T. Kocher, “Waiting for the Light,” Pulpit Resource 33.4 (2005): 56.

[10] A “Tom Long story” quoted in Kocher, 55.