Deuteronomy 18:15-19 / Philippians 4:4-7 / John 1:19-28
When the living God touched down on Mount Sinai, there was no missing the moment. The mountain shook, the very air trembled as the blast of the trumpet grew ever louder, and He who is an all-consuming fire manifested His uncreated light upon the reeling mountain top. And perhaps even more terrifying than what the children of Israel saw that day, was what they heard. For Holiness spoke. The very sound shamed and horrified them. “No more!” they screamed together. “No more. We can’t take it. YOU go talk to Him, Moses, but don’t let us hear again that voice of the Lord our God or see this great fire any more - lest we die!”
And God told Moses that they had spoken wisely. So God gave to Moses a promise. God would not fail to visit them and to speak to them, but this time it would be in a much less terrifying way. It would be through the mouth of a Prophet, one like Moses, raised up from among their brothers - bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh. The Lord God would put His words into His mouth and He would deliver to all the people everything God had said, and they’d best listen to Him or they will answer to God for it.
But how on earth were they to know when this prophet showed up? God showing up on Sinai was unmistakable. But when the long-awaited, long-promised Prophet showed up? How would they know?
God took thought for that. Before this Prophet, He would send a herald, a trumpet voice to announce to one and all that THE Prophet to end all prophets was now among them. John’s was that task. So when the Jews send priests and levites to John (and remember, John’s father WAS a priest) to ask: “Who are you?” He testified, he fessed up right away: “Not the Christ, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Their brows puckered and they asked: “Elijah, then?” “Nope. Not him either.” “What about the Prophet?” they asked. John snorted: “No way!” “Well, come on man. You just can stand there silent. We’ve got to have SOMETHING to report back to headquarters. Who are you?”
I imagine John was silent for a moment and then he met their eyes with: “Me? I’m a voice. A voice crying out here in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord! Just like Isaiah said.” That is, I’m the trumpet that sounds to announce the arrival of the King. But unlike the scary arrival at Sinai when the trumpet sounded there, my trumpet announces the arrival of a King of grace. One you need not tremble before. One who comes to take your trembling away.
Those who had been sent from the Pharisees pounce on this, though. “Then what are you doing baptizing? What authority do you have to do it, if you’re not the Christ, Elijah or the Prophet? By what right do you plunge people into the wave and bring them up as a people prepared and ready for the Coming One?”
John answers: “I baptize with water. But among you - in your very midst - there is standing One you don’t know. The One who comes after me. The One whose way I was sent to prepare. Me? I’m not even worthy to get down on my knees at his feet and loosen his sandal strap.”
And there’s the answer to why John was baptizing. It was to make the Unknown One known. It was so that the people of Israel would know that the Lord of Sinai’s trembling height had kept His promise and sent One to them in whom were the living words of God - for He was the very Word of God. Later John would point Him out and say: “Look! That’s the Lamb of God! He’s the one who takes away the sin of the world….I was sent baptizing so that He could be revealed to Israel and I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.” (Jn 1:31, 34)
For John, it is not about John. The trumpet does not sound to announce itself, but to announce the arrival of the King. And make not mistake about it - it was the King who had come. John was not worthy to loose His sandal-strap for here from among the brothers, the children of Israel, there stood One who was before John ever existed - though according to the flesh, John preceded him by some six month. Here, the Lord of Sinai, the all-consuming fire, born of a Virgin - she, the burning bush that was not consumed. Here in human flesh and blood, you could touch the hand of God and not be undone. You could, like the apostle John, lean upon the chest of this man and hear with your own ear the heartbeat of God.
Who is worthy for such a visitation? To us rebels who always want everything to be about us and our oh-so-narrow plans and petty ambitions for this life, this world, to us who tremble at the very sound of holiness because we have not kept the Ten Commandments, to us comes the King and He comes to serve, He comes to suffer in our place and to die - to be the Lamb of God carrying away the sin of the world. He comes to lift us up to an ending life with Him! And so we don’t miss him, John was sent. Sent to be the finger that pointed him out. “There He is: The King of all, the Lord of Creation, the Giver of the Commandments. Yes, I know He looks like an ordinary Joe who gets splinters when he works wood and who knows how to be thirsty and hungry and how to cry. Among us, one with us, one of us. Our brother - but I tell you the truth, also our God. I bear witness to Him!”
Even as He came in the flesh, so He comes in the flesh - in the body and in the blood. And John is still there as herald. We sing his song: “Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis, dona nobis pacem.” As we fall down before the Lamb of God - St. John’s words ringing in our ears and sounding from our lips - we too confess that we are not worthy. We are not worthy to loose His sandal and still He comes among us to make His home in us. He comes to bestow on us His own worthiness, to grant to us all that is His. Here we encounter not Sinai’s demand of terrifying holiness, but the free gift of God’s own holiness shared with His unworthy creation.
St. John the Baptist’s voice sounds forth to make sure we don’t miss out on who He is or on what He has done for us. And for that we fall down with St. John at our Lord's feet and send up praise to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and to the ages of ages! Amen.
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