December 14, 2014
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
We have all learned how to point a finger in life. If someone needs directions, we point our finger toward the correct way. If we need to decide what to buy, we might need someone to point out the best buy. We have heard that pointing at someone is impolite when we are passing judgment.
Christopher Pike once said, “When you point your finger at someone, anyone, it is often a moment of judgment. We point our fingers when we want to scold someone, point out what they have done wrong. But each time we point, we simultaneously point three fingers back at ourselves.”
On this Third Sunday of Advent, the Gospel of John begins with John the Baptizer. We are given very little of John the Baptizer’s preaching. Rather this John presented here is a transparent witness to the “light,” that light that is God coming into the world.
John the Baptizer’s significance is not in himself, but rather in the Messiah to whom he points. Today we shall follow John the Baptizer’s finger that points away from himself to the miracle of God’s incarnation among us.
John the Baptizer
In the Gospel of John, we begin like in Genesis, “In the beginning.” And almost immediately, we go from this high-flown talk of the “Word” toward a man “whose name was John.” So quickly we move from God to humanity, so swiftly the Word, the eternally begotten Word, becomes flesh, our flesh as we are made to look at “a man whose name was John.”
John’s Gospel takes us from God in heaven down to earth, to a strange figure named John the Baptizer. We are told little about this man whose name was John—nothing of his parentage or his hometown—only that he was “sent from God.” In a way that man is a parable for any preacher like me who has ever lived. The Fourth Gospel doesn’t even call him John the Baptizer. It just calls him John.
John’s main activity is preaching, and the location for his preaching is “the wilderness.” This wild man addresses those who are in a wild, trackless, threatening waste of wilderness. The Word goes out to those who need it most, out in the wilderness. John’s location, his pulpit in the wilderness, reminds us that there are some words that are too true, too lively to be fully contained in a temple, synagogue, or church. To be sure, the Word of God is to be heard at these confined, established, sacred sites. But the Word, the living incarnate Word cannot be contained. It reaches out, pushes out, even into the wilderness. The Word is greater even than the beautiful religious platforms that are built to present it.
The one sent from God has only one function: to “witness.” A witness is someone who testifies, who simply tells what he or she has seen and heard. The witness is not to embellish or exaggerate. The witness has little significance in and of himself. His significance is in what the witness has to say about what the witness has seen and heard. We want an honest account of what the witness knows to be true. Except for two more brief references to this “witness” (John 5:33-36; 10:40-42) these few verses are all that we hear of John. He speaks and then he disappears. When asked, “Who are you?” John replies that he is a “voice.” He has no body, no substance or enduring significance other than the sound of a voice, a voice crying in the wilderness “that all might believe.”
We Preachers
The theologian Karl Barth says that John is the model for every preacher of every age. John is only interesting as a voice, a witness, someone who points toward the coming Christ. He is transparent, like a pane of glass, to the one who comes after him who is greater than he. As a witness, John is simply to testify to what he has seen and heard, no more. He must decrease as the one toward whom he points increases. His significance is not in himself but rather in the truth that he tells to those in the wilderness.
Here I am as the preacher for today, reading the Scripture, discerning the text’s meaning for us today and that my name is listed in the bulletin has no significance. My purpose is to point to the truth in the Word just as John did.
Today when we celebrated Believers Baptism, Pastor Visal may have said the words of Baptism, performed the act of Baptism, and may even be remembered by those who were baptized that Pastor Visal performed the ordinance but Pastor Visal was only pointing to the truth in the Word.
Today, our attention and focus are on Hailey Ung, Craig Lai, and Ivan Szeto as they publicly professed their faith in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior as it should be. But we pray that they in their commitment to active discipleship will also be a witness pointing to the truth found in the Word made known to us in the incarnation as Jesus the Lord. We are like a pane of glass, transparent so that the people out in the wild world may see through us to the One who is greater than us.
The Word
In the Fourth Gospel, Jesus is the Word, in the Greek, Logos, who came down from heaven and dwelt among us. As the Word, the Christ is God’s self-communication, the major means of the establishment of divine-human communion. John says that the Eternal Word came to tent among us (that’s what the verb “dwelt” literally means in the Greek, “pitched his tent among us”) and his primary way of dwelling among us is as the Word.
He was more than words can say, but never less than words. In Jesus, the words about God became God-in-the-flesh and dwelt among us as the Word. Jesus is God’s word to the world. God’s sermon to us, God’s Word to which all our words in all our sermons point. As Paul put it, “For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord” (2 Cor. 4:5). While John’s Gospel employs a host of metaphors for Jesus—he is the door, the good shepherd, the vine, bread, water, and life, here Jesus is the “Word.”
But something went wrong. The Word was uttered once again over the wasteland, in the wilderness, over the dark chaos, and some heard and some did not. He came “that they might receive him,” believe in him, and thereby be empowered “to become children of God” (1:12), but it did not work out that way. “His own people did not accept him” (1:11).
The Word, the eternal Word coming down and dwelling among us was rejected by us. And since then and up to now at this worship time as well, we have been preaching the Word millions and millions of times by millions and millions of voices in the wilderness. Generations of preachers like Pastor Visal and myself will point, sometimes well, sometimes poorly, toward the one who is the message that is mightier than his messengers, and those in the wilderness will shrug their shoulders or scratch their heads and walk away. The story that John has to tell in the Fourth Gospel eventually leads to a cross.
For the benefit of our doubt, the Word by its very nature is not easy to comprehend. It’s prone to misunderstanding. Failure is everywhere for the Word. Throughout John’s Gospel, almost no one whom the Christ—the Word made flesh—confronts understands anything he is talking about.
Jesus speaks to Nicodemus of being born of the water and Spirit and the supposedly wise teacher thinks “birth.” He speaks to the woman at the well of “living water coming down from heaven,” and she thinks water drawn up by a bucket. The disciples were often baffled.
The Word is veiled, not easily accessible, hidden and bewildering even as it is light, revelation, and present among us. Sometimes, you have said to me that you don’t understand what I’m preaching about. But any preaching that is not at some moment also is inaccessible, mysterious, and incomprehensible is not a message from the Word made flesh. Any preacher who does not fail, and fail dramatically and often to communicate the good news, is not communicating the good news that is Jesus Christ. The preaching career of Jesus ended in failure on a cross.
Pointing to the Light
Yet that end is not the end of the story. John 1 is a reiteration of Genesis 1. The purposes of God for the Word are not forever stumped. The light shines in the darkness and nothing that we have ever done, even the worst of it, has been able to overcome the light. To those who receive the Word has been given the gift to become children of God. “Blessed are those who have not seen yet believed,” says the risen Christ toward the end of John’s Gospel.
The irony is at work here all the way to the end; we have not seen Christ as his first followers saw him and yet here we are, believing on the basis of nothing more than John’s words about the Word. “These are written,” says the Fourth Gospel, “so that you may come to believe” (20:31). And despite all the setbacks and perfectly good reasons for not believing the testimony of a wild man with a voice like John’s, we do.
Today we are pointing our finger to the one who is coming, the Word. And when we point to the truth, we are indeed pointing three fingers back at ourselves saying that we are in need of God’s grace and forgiveness when we didn’t have faith or didn’t give witness or did something terribly wrong.
These three who were baptized today have pointed to the Word. Pastor Visal and I will continue to point to the Word. Will you point to the Word, Jesus Christ too?
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus, we are amazed continuously that you desire to incarnate among us. You refused to remain aloof, distant, obscure. Out of love, you reached down to us, reached out to us, and thereby embraced us and claimed us for your own.
For the miracle of your incarnation, we give thanks and praise. Show up to us this day and turn our words into your Word. Let you light shine among us. Let our lives point to the life-saving miracle of the Word in Jesus Christ. Amen.