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This morning brings us one of those wonderful Johanine dialogues where the questions asked don't get straight answers and a whole world of meaning is revealed.
Humans have always experienced the presence of God/the Sacred in the uncanny, the mysterious and John the Baptist is mysterious in John the Evangelist's gospel: The evangelist doesn't give him a back story. There is no information about the circumstances of his birth, early life or call from God. We don't get any clues about his garb or diet-no camel's hair or locusts. He's just a voice, hard to grab ahold of, ephemeral. We're only told he was sent by God, a bit mysterious
When the delegates of the religious authorities try to pin him down about who he is, he tells them who he’s not. You can almost hear their frustration. They might be thinking, “C’mon, work with us here. We have a job to do. If we don’t go back to those who sent us with an answer, we’ll be in big trouble.”
The people John says he is not: the Messiah, Christ, Elijah, the prophet promised by Moses were thought to be forerunners of the Day of the Lord when God would bring about everlasting peace, prosperity and justice. But John the Evangelist is most interested in John the Baptist as a witness, as someone who sees and understands that Jesus is here in the world and tells others about it.
There is a slight problem here. John the Baptist knows that he's a witness, but doesn't seem to know to whom. At this point he doesn't know who Jesus is, he only knows who he himself isn't. He isn't the important one.
The authorities are asking “Who do you think you are? (Perhaps to trick him into saying that he's the Messiah or Elijah or the profit and they will have gotten him.) And John answers by quoting Isaiah, “I am a voice crying in the wilderness.” A voice, of course, has no place in the religious hierarchy and no job precise description or role.
In that John differs from most of us who, when threatened, take refuge in our role: “I'm your mother and you'll do what I say.” “I'm your supervisor, your boss, your bishop.” “I know what should be done and how it should be done and I don't want to hear any objections.”
Another reason that John is being interrogated is that he had no formal authority to baptize. I was surprised to learn that he didn't invent baptism. It was done by the Jewish priests to restore ritual purity, e.g. with someone who had touched a dead body, and as the last step in the conversion of a gentile to Judaism. It was also done by a Jewish group the Essenes, who were preparing for the Day of the Lord which they thought was very near.
So John is operating out of the system - truly a voice crying in the wilderness. He knows who he isn't and, at this point in the story, has a pretty fuzzy idea of the one to whom he is to witness, although he is a step ahead of them because he knows that there is someone among them whose sandal strap he is not worthy to untie.
The phrase John uses, “There is one among you whom you do not know.” is one that appears again and again in John's gospel. Many people are right next to Jesus and fail to recognize who he is. Some of them eventually do recognize him, but others never do. Among them are: Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman at the well, the sick man at the pool of Bethesda, the woman caught in adultery, Mary Magdalen in the garden, the disciples on the shore after the resurrection.
So this is an important theme in John's gospel and in this passage we read today. Why?
Back to the mysterious. The religious authorities wanted to solve the mystery of John the Baptist, but he slips between their fingers because he is about a bigger mystery than they can comprehend. And maybe, just maybe he isn't completely sure of what he's about and what he knows.
How could this be a good thing? Well, I'm not sure, of course, but part of the mystery of being human is that the more tightly we cling to our definitions of who we are, the rightness of our cause, our moral and political beliefs, the less we can let the light through our fences and defenses of who we think we are.
What if, for a moment, we could withstand the panic of letting go of these sureties and entertain the sense that we really don't know what's going on in us and around us? Buddhists would call this letting go Beginner's Mind. We might discover all sorts of things about ourselves, others, the world. We might become witnesses in a whole new way.
This is a good Advent practice. By becoming awake we might discover all sorts of things, all sorts of ways that God is with us. We might discover blocks in ourselves that prevent us from becoming witnesses to the presence of Jesus right here and now, right next to us.
The Reverend Alyce McKenzie names some of the blocks we might discover:
-Like Nicodemus we may feel the risk is too high.
-Like the woman at the well, our sense of guilt and unworthiness may block our accepting forgiveness and new life.
-Like the sick man at the pool, we may have become comfortable with our pain and lost the motivation to change.
-Like those who yearned to condemn and destroy the woman caught in adultery, we may be unwilling to forgive or be forgiven.
-Like Mary in the garden, we may be so caught up in our grief that we see only the grave and not the savior.
-Like the disciples locked in a room for fear of their enemies, we may be so mired in fear that we cannot raise our eyes to faith.We too are called to be witnesses - to testify in whatever way we can to the light. This Gaudete Sunday is an invitation to open our eyes and ears a bit more so that we can incarnate the God who is coming and who is always among us with freedom and joy.