Witness / mission / salvation?
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Chad Bird, in the foreword to a Lutheran devotional I love - the Sinner / Saint Devotional: Advent and Christmas, sums up my own feelings about Advent beautifully:
“Advent is, in my opinion, the most wonderful time of the year. A month pregnant with hope. A month that whispers, amidst the guffaws and blah-blah-shallowness of a loud and drunken world, “Psst. Listen, friend. Peace, joy, forgiveness, and life are yours in spades through the one whose singular calling in life is to love you and save you to the end.”
Last week Shirley preached on peace, and John the Baptist - I loved the way she asked us to think about whether we would have listened to John given his location and appearance - despite the clarity of his message.
I think the crafters of the lectionary might have thought we needed to hear John’s message twice to really tune in - because again today we’ve just heard John’s bold statement “Make straight the way for the Lord!” (John 1:23)
The account in the Gospel of John has fascinating details that don’t appear in the Mark passage we heard last week…. but I’ll get to that in a bit.
First, let’s look at how the passage from Isaiah helps to unpack what it means to make straight the way of the Lord.
ISAIAH
ISAIAH
In many ways Isaiah 61 provides a bit of a job description and mission statement about God’s intention - the passage is full of promise and reassurance, and drips with justice, hope, anticipation, and salvation. It’s a reminder to the people that God has not forgotten them - and that God’s presence before all the nations is a very real and tangible thing. This is a promise that should fill us with joy!
In Luke’s Gospel, right as Jesus was beginning his ministry, after he has been fasting and being tempted in the desert, he sits in the temple and reads the first two verses of Isaiah 61: He says:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and the regaining of sight to the blind,
to set free those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
And then comes his mic drop moment.
Luke 4:21 (NET 2nd ed.)
Then he began to tell them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled even as you heard it being read.”
It seems pretty clear to me that this is the heartbeat of God - salvation and mission. Just as we pray in the Lord’s Prayer “your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven” - we too are to be part of bringing God’s kingdom here on earth in whatever way we can.
Salvation in Isa 61 is good news, healing, liberty, release, and comfort. It is ‘the year of the Lord’s favour’, which is a reference to the jubilee year, in which debts are wiped away, slaves are freed, fields are allowed to rest, and land is returned to its original owners. Then just a few verses later, salvation is pictured as both a restored city and as an abundant garden. The nations of the world will see what God has done for Israel and know they are a people whom the Lord has blessed.
I think it’s a picture of the end of the age (or the beginning of the new age!) - Jesus ushered in a jubilee celebration that would have no end - and we wait for Jesus to return to restore the city and the abundance of the garden.
But salvation is not just another place and time that we are waiting for - it is also in the here and now. What we call ‘mission’ is when we turn our attention to those who are named as the recipients of the good news: the oppressed, the brokenhearted, the captives, the prisoners, the mournful, the faint in spirit. The Isaiah passage (and everything Jesus did and said!) reveals God’s particular love and concern for the last, the lost, and the least.
Mission is not something that goes out from God’s people - by sending money or missionaries - but it’s something that defines God’s people, as existing for the sake of the last, lost, and least. It’s loving people, in the truest expression of the word. And when mission happens the nations of the world notice that the people of God live differently, that “they are a people whom the Lord has blessed”.
JOHN
JOHN
But it’s not just good works that define us - we are also called to be witnesses to the Good New of Jesus. And this idea of witness runs all the way through John’s Gospel. The Greek verb (marturein) occurs 33 times, and the noun (marturia) 14 times. John was sent by God as a witness to testify about the light.
One thing that I suspect you’ve learned about me by now is that I love going on slightly random deep dives into strange and surprising things. I’ve got a doozy for you today!
THE CONUNDRUM
A man came, sent from God, whose name was John.
SENT FROM GOD. Have you spotted that before?
John 1:21 (NET 2nd ed.)
So they asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not!”
Eh, what?!
That’s a mighty odd thing to ask - but I’d never really taken the time to think about it much before. Cue my deep dive, which I’ll keep brief - but it’s so fascinatingly geeky and cool.
Way way back, many centuries ago, not long after the bible began (sorry), we read in 2 Kings 2:11
2 Kings 2:11 (NET 2nd ed.)
As they were walking along and talking, suddenly a fiery chariot pulled by fiery horses appeared. They went between Elijah and Elisha, and Elijah went up to heaven in a windstorm.
According to the 1st century rabbinic interpretation of that verse, Elijah was still alive. Then in Malachi it is said that Elijah would be the precursor of the Messiah.
Malachi 4:5 (NET 2nd ed.)
Look, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord arrives.
It’s not that clear why the Jewish leaders were so interested in John - maybe they’re just testing out whether John’s message was trustworthy. But when questioned, John is pretty clear in his response that he is not Elijah. A case of mistaken identity maybe?
But, John was sent from God. And Jesus is pretty clear (it’s mentioned three times in Mark and Matthew’s accounts) that John was indeed Elijah. Both Mark and Matthew have Jesus saying that Elijah has come - and they did to him whatever they wanted. (Mk 9:13, Mt 17:12) But the reference in Matthew 11:14 is particularly fascinating - Jesus again is talking directly about John the Baptist:
Matthew 11:14 (NET 2nd ed.)
And if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah, who is to come.
WHO IS TO COME. I’ll leave you to untangle that one in your own time!
As fun as this little deep dive is, it IS relevant, I promise. It took me a while to make some sense of it, but Moule’s book “The Phenomenon of the New Testament” nailed it for me. This is slightly dense language, but let me quote directly:
“We have to ask by whom the identification is made, and by whom refused. The synoptic gospels represent Jesus as identifying, or comparing, the Baptist with Elijah, while John represents the Baptist as rejecting the identification when it is offered him by his interviewers. Now these two, so far from being incompatible, are psychologically complementary. The Baptist humbly rejects the exalted title, but Jesus, on the contrary, bestows it on him. Why should not the two both be correct?”
John the baptist shuns the title, Jesus gives it to him. What is going on?! My reckon is that John is holding true to his calling to be a witness, or a sign-post, pointing directly to Jesus, the light. Why would he complicate that and draw attention on himself?
It’s the same for us. We are called, named, chosen, and loved by God - but our call is not to share how amazing that makes us (even though it does) - but to joyfully point towards Jesus, the true light. To come back to the Chad Bird quote I started with, it’s sharing the news, that
Peace, joy, forgiveness, and life belongs to everyone in spades through the one whose singular calling in life is to love you and save you to the end.”
That is the good news we are called to live and share in love. It’s good news for us, but it is also joyfully good news for everyone who will listen.
Amen.