This sermon was a mistake. I did my preparation as usual, went through the service this morning as usual. When it got to the time where the priest reads the Gospel, I know enough Swahili to know that what he was reading and the text I had prepared from were not the same. Turns out, I had prepared a sermon based on Saturday's gospel reading. I make a lot of mistakes, but that's the first time that's ever happened! As a preacher, I have to believe that God can use our mistakes for his glory, and that somebody, somewhere needed this sermon on John rather than the one our lectionary actually called for on the Light of the World. So our little parish got a sermon on John the Baptist. And now you will too!
Prokeimenon. Mode 4.
Psalm 103.4,1
Who makes his angels spirits and his ministers a flame of
fire
Verse: Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my God you
are very great.
The reading is from St.
Paul's Letter to the Romans 9:18-33
Brethren, God has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens the heart of whomever he wills. You will say to me then, "Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?" But who are you, a man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, "Why have you made me thus?" Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for beauty and another for menial use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience the vessels of wrath made for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for the vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles? As indeed he says in Hosea, "Those who were not my people I will call 'my people,' and her who was not beloved I will call 'my beloved.'" "And in the very place where it was said to them, 'You are not my people,' they will be called 'sons of the living God.'" And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: "Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved; for the Lord will execute his sentence upon the earth with rigor and dispatch." And as Isaiah predicted, "if the Lord of hosts had not left us children, we would have fared like Sodom and been made like Gomorrah." What shall we say, then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, righteousness through faith; but that Israel who pursued the righteousness which is based on law did not succeed in fulfilling that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it through faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone, as it is written, "Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone that will make men stumble, a rock that will make them fall; and he who believes in him will not be put to shame."
The Gospel According to St. Matthew
11:2-15
At that time, when John heard in prison about
the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him,
"Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?" And Jesus
answered them, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive
their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the
dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed
is he who takes no offense at me." As they went away, Jesus began to speak
to the crowds concerning John: "What did you go out into the wilderness to
behold? A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? A man
clothed in soft raiment? Behold, those who wear soft raiment are in kings'
houses. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more
than a prophet. This is he of whom it is written, 'Behold, I send my messenger
before your face, who shall prepare your way before you.' Truly, I say to you,
among those born of women there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist;
yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. From the days
of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has been coming violently
and men of violence take it by force. For all the prophets and the law
prophesied until John; and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is
to come. He who has ears to hear, let him hear."
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
These are very confusing times when it comes to religion in general, and religion here in Nairobi in particular. There are scores of people running around claiming to have this special anointing, or that special calling. Just out in the neighborhood yesterday I saw a sign at a church that claimed the young man who was the minister there was an ‘apostle’. Another church proclaimed that a husband-wife prophetic team would be ministering there. Of course, self-proclaimed ‘bishops’ are so numerous that they go for the same price as tomatoes.
And all of these religious leaders tell their followers that we are on the verge of God’s next big thing. They claim to be riding the wave of the next movement of God’s Spirit. And of course they claim unique authority as God’s Prophet or Apostle or Leader to be able to interpret the times. They claim the ability to speak God’s very words about a person or a situation. That’s making an enormous claim when you think about it.
But none of this is new. We were doing the same things back in the 1970s. I was involved in the Charismatic Movement as it swept through my Presbyterian (!) Church. People then were claiming to be able to heal in Jesus name. We would sing and sing and sing and work ourselves up to such an emotional state that we would a burst forth in speaking in tongues. And when that died down invariably someone would call out, ‘Thus says the Lord…’ It always sounded to me a lot like a quote from Isaiah, but it was always understood by everyone there that this was a ‘word from the Lord’. What I began to observe is that, because these prophets had a kind of spiritual status, more and more people started claiming to have the ‘gift of prophecy’. But what used to bother me then was that sometimes these ‘prophets’ would say things, and you knew they were just making it up, speaking of the top of their head. Not only that, a lot of what they were saying was flat out wrong. And I noticed that most of the time when they predicted something was going to happen, it never did. But nobody else seemed to notice because we were always off onto the next thing.
This used to really bother me, and it still does. And not least because it is misleading God’s people in God’s name. Telling a lie ‘in the name of Jesus’ does not make it true. This is what a real prophet of the Lord has to say about this sort of nonsense. Jeremiah says this:
‘Thus says the Lord of hosts: Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you; they are deluding you. They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. They keep saying to those who despise the word of the Lord, “It will be well with you”, and to all who stubbornly follow their own stubborn hearts, they say, “No calamity will come upon you”… I did not send the prophets, yet they ran; I did not speak to them, yet they prophesied. But if they had stood in my council, they would have proclaimed my words to my people, and they would have turned them from their evil way , and from the evil of their doings.’ (Jeremiah 23:16-17, 21-22)
Moses simply says this,
But any prophet…who presumes to speak in my name a word that I have not commanded the prophet to speak – that prophet shall die. You may say to yourself, “How can we recognize a word that the Lord has not spoken?” If a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a word that the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; do not be frightened by it. (Deuteronomy 18:20-22)
So what is a true prophet? If we let our Bible answer that question, we come up with something very different from the sort of so-called prophets that are running around today. First of all, genuine prophetic ministry is tied to the covenant that God made with his people Israel at Mount Sinai. A prophet’s primary call was to warn Israel that if they continue to break the covenant, the curses that God said would happen to the covenant breakers would fall on their heads and they would be destroyed. But they also remind God’s people that if they return to the Lord in repentance and keep the covenant, the blessings God promised would be theirs. Genuine prophets will also often mention that another is coming who will do what we sinners cannot do and make a way for us to be saved from the consequences of our rebellion against God. All the other things that prophets do, like miracles (in the case of Elijah and Elisha), or sacrifices and judging (as in Samuel), or advising kings (as in Nathan and Jeremiah), are secondary to this one most important ministry – calling God’s people back from breaking God’s covenant with them. Some prophets preach. Some prophets write. But if you look at every single one of the prophets in Israel’s history, they are concerned either about keeping the covenant or about the coming one.
At this point I need you to understand something very important about the covenant that God made at Mt. Sinai and the rest of the Old Testament. Almost everywhere you go here in Kenya, Kenyans assume that the Old Testament is just as applicable to their lives as the New Testament. It isn’t. And this is the reason why. Who was it that God delivered from Egypt? The people of Israel. And who was it that God brought to Mt. Sinai by the leadership of Moses and Aaron? The people of Israel. And with whom did God make his covenant at Mt. Sinai, the covenant we have recorded in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy? The people of Israel. So let me ask you, are you a member of one of the 12 tribes of Israel? Are you Jewish? No, you are a Gentile. God did not make his covenant with you. All those laws that make up the covenant between God and Israel – they don’t apply to you or to me, because I’m a Gentile as well.
Israel was saved and blessed by God as his special people so that they could in turn becomes God’s blessings to the rest of the nations. But Israel failed. They did not keep the laws of the covenant. They ran after the gods of the nations around them and in fact became worse in their behavior than all their neighbors. God had said, if you keep my covenant you will be blessed. But if you break these laws, you will be cursed. And that is precisely what happened. And that is what happens to us as well if we start telling ourselves and other people that we have to keep the Old Testament laws. We can’t even keep the 10 commandments, which are at the heart of the covenant God made with Israel. How many of you keep the sabbath holy? None of us do. None of us can pretend that we keep God’s Old Testament laws. And everyone who says they do is simply deluded and is calling down on his or her own head the curses of not keeping God’s covenant. So Israel broke God’s covenant and needs a Savior. But we Gentiles have also been alienated from God, lost in our idolatries, and condemned to die because of our rebellion against God from the beginning. And we need a Savior, too.
Which brings us to Jesus’ cousin John, the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth, who early in his life went to the Judean wilderness and from there started preaching, warning people to repent because God’s kingdom was at hand. And John gave a way for people who wanted to repent of their sins, to repent of having broken God’s covenant, to respond – he started baptizing repentant men and women in the Jordan River.
John was a prophet of the Sinai Covenant, sent by God to warn his people that God’s judgement was coming because of their having broken the covenant. But he also announces to God’s people that God’s salvation was at hand for everyone who responded by turning back to God and by trusting in the one who was coming. What John was doing by the Jordan and in the wilderness was so alarming to the political class in Jerusalem, that they sent people out to investigate what was really going on. And they asked John, Why are you baptizing all these people? Are you the Messiah? And John said, No, I’m not the Messiah. Are you Elijah, then? No, I am not Elijah. Are you the Prophet that Moses said would come? No I am not the Prophet. What then are you? What report are we supposed to take back to Jerusalem? And John said, ‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness. Make straight the way of the Lord, just as Isaiah the prophet said.’ (John 1:23)
Then the religious leaders from Jerusalem asked John, ‘So why are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?
‘I baptize you with water for repentance,’ says John, ‘but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.’ (Matthew 3:11-12)
Not only did John call Israel to repentance, it fell to him to point out what God was doing right here, right now, in their very midst. ‘The next day John was again standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!”’ (John 1:35-36) And then you know how the next part of the story goes. In Matthew’s version,
‘Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Joran to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”’ (Matthew 3:13-17)
John wasn’t concerned about what was popular, he wasn’t concerned to attract a following or to make money. He spoke the truth and called people to account. And as a result he put powerful and rich people on the spot and made them feel very uncomfortable. And when he criticized King Herod Agrippa for committing adultery with his brother’s wife, Herod arrested him and threw him into the dungeon beneath his palace. This was obviously a very challenging time for John. But what he was most concerned about was figuring out what Jesus was doing. Jesus, of course, was busy confounding everyone’s expectations about what a messiah should do and be, those of his disciples, those of the people; and even John in the king’s dungeon was concerned. So John sent friends to ask Jesus, ‘Are you really the One, or shall we look for another?’
And
this is what Jesus said:
"Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is he who takes no offense at me." As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds concerning John: "What did you go out into the wilderness to behold? A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? A man clothed in soft raiment? Behold, those who wear soft raiment are in kings' houses. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is he of whom it is written, 'Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who shall prepare your way before you.' Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has been coming violently and men of violence take it by force. For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John; and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come. He who has ears to hear, let him hear." (Matthew 11:4-15)
John was a faithful witness. He did what God sent him to do. He warned Israel to repent, and he warned sinners of the consequences of their sin. And he pointed everybody around him, and even us today, to Jesus. History his proven Jesus right in his estimation of John and his ministry – ‘there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist’. And yet those who are now part of God’s kingdom, because they are living out Jesus’ priorities and participating in the advance of the Kingdom here and now, Jesus says that the least of these is greater than John.
The gospel of John records a conversation between John the Baptist and some of his disciples. They were concerned that many of the crowds that had been following John were leaving to follow Jesus. But John said to them,
‘You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, “I am not the Messiah, but I have been sent ahead of him.” He who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. For this reason my joy has been fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease.’ (John 3:28-30)
A true prophet points to Jesus. This is what made John the greatest of the prophets. And when Jesus comes, the true prophet stands aside. Because what is a candle when the sun rises in the morning? And the essence of the true prophet’s ministry is that Jesus must increase, and I must decrease. If the prophet’s ministry is about the prophet and his or her reputation and about getting money and becoming a somebody, you can be certain that that person is not serving the Lord but himself or herself. That person is not pointing us to Jesus but is, in fact, a deceiver.
Glory to the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Preached this morning in the little parish of St. Sophia Orthodox Church, off of Kabiria Road in Nairobi, Kenya.
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