The Christ Is Among Us
St. John 1:19-28
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
St. John 1:19-23 19 Now this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” 20 He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.” 21 And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” And he answered, “No.” 22 Then they said to him, “Who are you, that we may give an answer to those who sent us? What do you say about yourself?” 23 He said: “I am ‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Make straight the way of the Lord,” ’ as the prophet Isaiah said.”
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… Our task on this Sunday before Christmas – which is our final preparation to celebrate the birth of Christ and to receive the coming Christ rightly – is to meditate on the words of St. John the Baptist, the prophet sent by God to prepare the people of Israel for the arrival of His Son. God sends his voice to us today, to prepare us, too, not just for the coming Christ, but for the Christ who is among us even now.
Of course, John didn’t prepare anyone for Jesus’ birth, except maybe his mother Elizabeth as he leaped for joy in her womb when the newly-pregnant Virgin Mary came to visit her. But fast-forward about thirty years, and there was John, doing the work God gave him to do, on the banks of the Jordan River: preparing people for the public revealing of Jesus as the Christ. By this time, the events in Bethlehem at the time of Jesus’ birth had been all but forgotten, and the baby who was born there had disappeared from the scene for a while. The disturbance in Jerusalem over the coming of the Wise Men and the birth of the Christ had long since faded from the minds of the Jews. And that was by design, for the time of the Messiah’s public revelation had not yet come.
But that was all about to change. Enter this prophet named John. He’s wearing clothes made of camel’s hair, he wears a leather belt around his waist, and his food is locusts and wild honey. He doesn’t fit in; but he’s not trying to fit in. He has been given a direct call from God to preach repentance, to preach baptism for the forgiveness of sins, and to proclaim the arrival of the Christ.
Repentance is neatly described for us in our Lutheran confessions, based on Biblical usage. “This is what true repentance means. Here a person needs to hear something like this, “You are all of no account, whether you are obvious sinners or saints in your own opinions. You have to become different from what you are now. You have to act differently than you are now acting, whether you are as great, wise, powerful, and holy as you can be. Here no one is godly…” (Smalcald Articles Part III, Article III:3) John was to accuse all people and convict them of being sinners. This is so they could know what they are before God and acknowledge that they are lost. It was so they could be prepared for the Lord; to be prepared to receive grace and to expect from Him the forgiveness of sins.
This is the true preparation for the coming of Christ: to recognize that we are not good enough to win heaven or to avoid hell, no matter who we are or how good and decent a person we think we may be. We need a Savior, and not a 50% or a 90% Savior, but a 100% Savior who will bear all our sins by Himself and who will provide 100% of the goodness and decency we need to stand before God.
That Savior is coming!, declared John. And then finally, one day, that Savior came. He walked right up to John at the banks of the Jordan River and asked to be baptized. Then He went off by Himself again for 40 days to be tempted in the wilderness. That is when our Gospel account takes place, right at the end of those 40 days. During those 40 days, John’s message had shifted. He was still preaching repentance, and he was still preaching baptism for the forgiveness of sins. But his message had changed from, “Christ is coming!,” to “Christ is here!”
And that finally got the attention of the Jewish leaders. They sent a delegation to John – which we heard about in today’s Gospel – to ask him just who he was claiming to be. Apparently their first question to him was, “Are you the Christ?” The Gospel writer tells us that John the Baptist denied that claim in no uncertain terms.
“Are you Elijah?” In other words, “Are you literally the prophet Elijah who has come back from the dead?” John denied being that Elijah, even though he was the figurative Elijah that Malachi had prophesied about and who would come to prepare the way for the Christ – the one who would come in the spirit and power of Elijah, as the angel Gabriel had foretold to John’s father Zacharias in Luke 1:17.
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“Are you the Prophet?” With this question the Jewish delegation may have been referring to the Prophet Moses had spoken about in Deuteronomy 18:15, when he said, “Yahweh your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren. Him you shall hear.” John denied being that Prophet, even though Jesus would later declare that John was, indeed, a prophet, “and more than a prophet.” (Matt. 11:9).
“Who are you, then?”, they asked. He answered, “I am ‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Make straight the way of the LORD,”’ as the prophet Isaiah said.” In other words, John claimed to be no one special in and of himself. He, like all true prophets of God, knew that and freely confessed it. “I am no one. I don’t matter. And yet you should listen to me, because when you hear my voice, it is really the voice of God you are hearing, for He sent me. I am not just any voice, but the voice of the Lord crying out to you. He wants you to hear me when I call you to repentance, so that you do acknowledge and turn from your sins. He wants you to hear me announcing the grace of the coming Christ, so that you do let yourself be baptized, so that you do trust in Christ for the forgiveness of sins. And He wants you to recognize me, John, as the very one whom the prophet Isaiah said would come ahead of the Lord.”
And that, dear fellow redeemed, is how it is with all the prophets and apostles and pastors who point to Christ. We are no one special, and we know it better than anyone, at least, we should. People should not follow us or join or stay at or leave a church because of us. But people should listen to us, not because we’re anything special, but because God has sent us so that you may hear His voice through our voice as we point you to Christ. And that, by the way is the ONLY thing any pastor should be doing – pointing people to Christ and His holy gifts. Nothing else.
That’s exactly what John did. The delegation sent from the Pharisees wanted to write John off. “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” But John just kept pointing his finger away from himself, even away from his divinely appointed task to baptize penitent believers. He pointed only to the One who made his baptism valid. He pointed to the One from whose name baptism derives its power. He pointed no longer to the coming Christ; he was now pointing to the Christ who has come. “I baptize with water, but there stands One among you whom you do not know. It is He who, coming after me, is preferred before me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose.”
A better translation might be this: “It is He who, coming after me, is ahead of me.” Now that Jesus has been revealed in His baptism, His teaching and His ministry have overtaken that of John. From now on, John will decrease, and Jesus will increase. From now on, John will be sending his disciples away to follow Jesus.
That is the faithful prophet that John was given to be – always pointing away from himself, and always and only directing the people to Christ. He is the reason why we should repent. He is the One in whom we believe. He stood in the midst of the Jewish people for a time, but most of them didn’t know Him.
And this same Jesus now stands in our midst – in a different but equally significant way. He stands here in His Church, in His Word, in His Sacrament. He won’t deal with you directly, as He did when He walked the earth at the time of John – at least not until He comes again in glory. Instead, He has instituted this office of the holy ministry to deal with you through the voice of His called servants.
This is where you find Him until He comes again. Not in your heart. Not under your Christmas tree. Not sitting at the table with your family. Here. Here He gives Himself to you. Here He speaks to you with His voice. Here He is, the one whose sandals even the great prophet John was unworthy to untie. Here He is, lavishing His forgiveness on you and into you, as the benefits of His death for your sin are delivered in His Word and Sacraments.
Hear His voice today and every Lord’s Day. And come to the Christ-Mass and spend it with Him this Wednesday, and Tuesday evening, if you are able. Here you will find Him, lying in the manger of His Word, offering to you again His body and blood, born of the Virgin Mary, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. This is where Jesus will be on Christmas, and every time we gather here, to help and to save you, and to hear and accept your songs of praise and worship.
Oh, come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord!
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
