Mark
1:1-8
Early on in each of the
gospels we meet up with John the Baptist, although they jump in at different
points in his life.
Luke has a lot to say
about the birth of John the Baptist that we sort of gloss over. The story goes that his parents, Zechariah
and Elizabeth, were well on in years and did not have any children. Zechariah was a priest in the temple in
Jerusalem and was performing his duties there when the angel Gabriel appeared
to him and informed him he was going to be a father. Zechariah didn’t believe him, so the angel
arranged for his ability to speak to disappear until the boy was born. Luke goes on to tell the story of Gabriel’s
visit to Mary, where she learns she will bear the Messiah, and she, on the
other hand, believes right away. Of
course, that creates a problem for her because she isn’t married, so she went
away for a short while to stay with (of all people) Elizabeth, whom Luke calls
her cousin. That would have made John
Jesus’ older cousin by about six months, both of them born under extremely
unusual conditions.
So,
is God or is God not still the one who tends to matters of birth? CNN had a story about something that happened
in Western New York last month. They
reported,
“Bethany Hojnacki of South Buffalo, New York, went
into labor early Tuesday… She couldn’t get to the hospital because of an epic
snowstorm, but found help along the way.
… First, the couple encountered a woman who was
stranded who just happened to be a labor and delivery nurse, Hojnacki said.
She stuck with them throughout the labor, and
delivered their baby at a firehouse.
…Second, another stranded woman at the firehouse was,
by coincidence, a maternity nurse, Hojnacki said, describing both nurses as
angels.
What are the odds they were there?
‘It’s not odds; it’s God,’ [Jared Hojnacki] said. ‘It’s more than amazing. We’re so blown away by God’s grace.’
Mom, Bethany Hojnacki, said, ‘It was crazy for a time,
sure, but a happy ending. Her name is
Lucy Grace – her name means grace illuminated.
On a day that was so sad, how many people died – this baby is such a
bright light in such a dark storm.’”[1]
Make of it what you will.
At the beginning of the
gospels, however, with the miraculous births of John and Jesus, we see God as
the Lord of beginnings. It is a hint of
what is to come, as they eventually get around to Jesus’ message that God is
the Lord of new starts and starting over and resurrection and new life.
But birth can also be
rough. Not everyone is surrounded, maybe
miraculously, by medical personnel. It
hasn’t been that long, no more than a couple of generations, since giving birth
was just about as dangerous to the mother as to the child. Even in a safe delivery, labor pains were
considered part of the curse humanity brought upon itself with the sin of Adam
and Eve. Forget epidaurals. They didn’t exist.
The kind of new birth
that John the Baptist would urge on people had its own kind of labor pains. Again, the different gospels point to
different aspects of that. In Matthew,
the pains are to be borne by those whose lives are to be made new, and it is a
dangerous business.
“But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees
coming for baptism, he said to them, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to
flee from the wrath to come? Bear
fruit worthy of repentance. Do
not presume to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our ancestor”; for I tell
you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the axe is lying at the root
of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down
and thrown into the fire.”
[Matthew 3:7-10]
There’s another, stranger kind of birth involved for
John himself, though, and it’s a stranger experience than even his miraculous
birth. It’s mentioned again in more than
one of the gospels and this morning we heard Mark’s version:
“He proclaimed, ‘The one who is more powerful than I is coming
after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’” [Mark 1:7-8]
He would need to become a humbler
person, not the most powerful figure.
John describes how John the Baptist sent some of his own followers away
so that they could become disciples of Jesus instead. John the Baptist himself would have to change
from the thunderer of judgment into a servant, who, looking at his master,
says,
“I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his
sandals.” [Matthew 1:7]
That is hard for someone as proud as John the Baptist, but he
did it. I
enjoy the way that Frederick Buechner tells that story.
“Where
John preached grim justice and pictured God as a steely-eyed thresher of grain,
Jesus preached forgiving love and pictured God as the host at a marvelous party
or a father who can't bring himself to throw his children out even when they
spit in his eye. Where John said people had better save their skins before it
was too late, Jesus said it was God who saved their skins, and even if you blew
your whole bankroll on liquor and sex like the Prodigal Son, it still wasn't
too late. Where John ate locusts and honey in the wilderness with the church
crowd, Jesus ate what he felt like in Jerusalem with as sleazy a bunch as you
could expect to find. Where John crossed to the other side of the street if he
saw any sinners heading his way, Jesus seems to have preferred their company to
the WCTU, the Stewardship Committee, and the World Council of Churches rolled
into one. Where John baptized, Jesus healed.
Finally
John decided to settle the thing once and for all and sent a couple of his
disciples to put it to Jesus straight. "John wants to know if you're the
One we've been waiting for or whether we should cool our heels a while
longer," they said (Luke 7:20), and Jesus said, ‘You go tell John what
you've seen around here. Tell him there are people who have sold their
seeing-eye dogs and taken up bird-watching. Tell him there are people who've
traded in aluminum walkers for hiking boots. Tell him the down-and-out have turned
into the up-and-coming and a lot of deadbeats are living it up for the first
time in their lives. And three cheers for the one who can swallow all this
without gagging’ (Luke 7:22-23). When they asked Jesus what he thought about
John, he said, ‘They don't come any better, but when the Big Party Up There
really gets off the ground, even John will look like small potatoes by
comparison’ (Luke 7:28).
Nobody
knows how John reacted when his disciples came back with Jesus' message, but
maybe he remembered how he had felt that day when he'd first seen him heading
toward him through the tall grass along the riverbank and how his heart had
skipped a beat when he heard himself say, ‘Behold the Lamb of God who taketh
away the sins of the world’ (John 1:29), and maybe after he remembered all that
and put it together with what they'd told him about the deadbeats and the
aluminum walkers, he decided he must have been right the first time.”[2]
[1] http://fox8.com/2014/11/19/its-not-odds-its-god-baby-born-during-epic-snowstorm-gets-incredible-help/
[2] Frederick
Buechner, “John the Baptist” in Peculiar
Treasures: A Biblical Who’s Who (New York: HarperOne, 1993).
No comments:
Post a Comment