Advent 3 B: Joyful Sacrifice

Posted by DJL on Dec 7, 2020 in Dear Partner | 3 comments

John 1:6-8, 19-28

Dear Partner in Preaching

No complaints this week about the RCL Advent readings. Yes, it’s week two of an adult John the Baptist (meant to orient us to John’s role as the forerunner of Jesus and fulfillment of messianic expectation). Yes, this will make almost no sense to our folks absent our explanations. Yes, they could have chosen a story from Luke 1 about Elizabeth’s conception of the child John and made the same point. Yes, this jumping around in timelines for theological purposes was probably helpful when folks really knew their Bible but today probably only makes it harder for folks to learn the biblical story. But… really, no complaints this week.  🙂

Okay, and more seriously, since this is the passage at hand, here’s the one thing that stands out to me most clearly: John’s negative confession that he is not the Messiah. And it seems to me like that is exactly John’s (the evangelist, this time) intended response to this passage, as he repeats twice that John is “confessing” after also names what he is doing as “testimony”: “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.’”

Why does this phrase make such an impression on me just now? Three reasons:

1) It is rare and refreshing. John has zero-interest in making this about himself. He is there to bear witness. From the constant self-expression and self-aggrandizement encouraged, promoted, and even demanded by social media to the posturing of too many political candidates as the only person who can do the job, we are living during a distinctly ego-centric, if not full-on narcissistic, time in our culture. What a refreshing change to see someone say “I’m not the messiah” and then follow up with a series of “no” responses to the other questions about what great figure John might be. Who is John instead? Just exactly what God called him to be: the voice of one crying in the wilderness, someone destined to prepare the way for another, a person called to point others to Jesus. And that’s enough. And, while we’re at it, every time we respond to God’s call to be ourselves – and not be who the culture or world or our social media “friends” invite us to be – we also discover that it is enough.

2) In this way, John stands as a model and example of what life lived in response to God’s call looks like. And by model and example, I don’t mean simply or even primarily an example of humility, but rather of self-actualization. So much of our life seems devoted to banishing the persistent concern that we’re not enough on our own. And so we are constantly invited to act like we’re more than who we actually are – airbrushed pictures of ourselves on our website or social media account, posts with perfect (or at least artfully contrived candid) pictures of our best selves living our best lives now, carefully crafted expressions of our political or cultural views and judgments meant to reinforce whatever “self” we’ve constructed and presented. It can be exhausting. No, it is exhausting – to the point that spikes in anxiety and depression can be traced causally to time spent on social media. And then comes along John saying, “No, I’m not the messiah or Elijah or the prophet. I’m just some dude trying to do what I believe God called me to do.” The bystanders, likely, were terribly disappointed, but John just as totally at peace. Which is why I think this invitation is less about setting a standard for us to imitate and more about an invitation to revel in God’s acceptance of us, and call to us, just as we are. Imagine the collective sigh of relief if our folks believed they are enough, that God accepts them as they are, and that God has good work for them to do that doesn’t require them to be anything other than who God created them to be!

3) This invitation – and, goodness, but invitation is rushing headlong into promise! – to self-acceptance based on God’s acceptance and self-actualization based on receiving God’s call and affirmation rather than striving for the affirmation of others in turn frees us to make the sacrifices required by the day that only deepen our sense of calling, purpose, and meaning. Make no mistake, John is making a sacrifice. His is a negative confession – “I am not…!” – when everyone around him was willing and eager to reward him with their attention, affirmation, and approbation if he’d just conformed to their expectations. I mean, think of all the “likes,” retweets, new followers he’d have gotten if he’d just been who they wanted him to be! But rather than assert himself, he makes a negative confession and sacrifice: “I am not!”

Maybe it’s just me, but it feels like there’s a lot of self-assertion going on these days, both in and outside of the church and particularly around the question of worship and, more generally, responses to the pandemic. Calls to restrict or refrain from public worship are met by the assertion that it is a matter of religious freedom and our right to express our faith. Masks are dismissed – less so, thank goodness, but it sure took a long time – as too restrictive when we should be able to do what we want. Civic mandates related to limiting the spread of the coronavirus are resisted or denigrated as incursions into our various freedoms and rights.

On one level, I get it. We live in a highly-individualized culture and that emphasis, at times, has served us well. But at other times I think we’ve lost our sense of being connected to a larger body and the degree to which we only know who we are in relation to who we’re with and whose we are. Which means that scolding our folks about being over self-assertive won’t work or be helpful (scolding almost never is – do you like it? 🙂 ). But perhaps locating these various sacrifices – and they are sacrifices – in the larger picture of God’s call might help our people to understand why we are doing what we’re doing and how it stems from our fundamental identity as people so beloved of God that we are free to sacrifice for the sake of others. That is, when we see the One to whom John pointed and his total and complete sacrifice of himself so that we would know how deeply we are loved (prefect time to reference John 3:16!), we are in turn so confident of that love, so rooted in our identity, and so assured of a future that is in God’s hands that we can let go of all the artificial gestures of self-protection and self-affirmation that we can look beyond ourselves to the needs of others and find joy – yes, Joy! on this Third Sunday of Advent – in sacrificing for others.

A sacrifice that is demanded or coerced is not a sacrifice. I realize that many aren’t all that comfortable with the word or concept of sacrifice these days, but sacrificing out of love is joyful. Always. Which doesn’t mean it’s easy. But when we make the many small sacrifices of love for our children, or for friends, or for neighbors because we’re caught up in how blessed, loved, and accepted we are, the result is always joy. Perhaps John can help us hear, believe, and practice that act of free and joyful sacrifice at a crucial and critical time in our world.

Blessed Advent, Dear Partner! I remain so grateful for the many sacrifices you make in order to bring the freeing word of the Gospel to our people at a time when good news is so important, necessary, and life-giving. Blessings on your proclamation!

Yours in Christ,
David

PS: I’ll say more about this in a separate post in the next day or two, but for now, if you’d like some help and sense of solidarity related to decisions around Christmas worship (and particularly refraining from in-person worship), please check out Keeping Christmas, a site a few of us put together with resources to help us help our folks understand and embrace the sacrifices we believe God is calling us to this year.

Post Image: St. John the Baptist Preaching to the Masses in the Wilderness by Pieter Brueghel the Younger.