Dec 17, 2023 |
Who Are You?
| The Rev. Gabriel Lawrence
Who Are You?
“Who are you?” This question that the crowd asks of John the
Baptist in today’s gospel is one that I have asked myself many, many times over
in the last ten or so years as I have discerned a call to ordained ministry. It’s
a question that on some days I have been able to answer with certainty, and
other days the answer has not come with such confidence. You see, I have lived
most of my life with a stutter. I still have it. I’ve done a lot of work on it,
and some days my speech is more fluent while other days my stutter is more
pronounced. There’s more to the story, but just know for now, my stutter has
been a cause for pause. In answering the call to serve God and the Church as a
priest where speaking occupies such a central part, I have tried to answer the
question “Who are you?” with every other option. “God, I can’t possibly do this
work. Let me do anything else!” But when God calls us to something, God pursues
us. And no matter how many times I have answered the question “Who are you?”
with a shaky voice as I have discerned this calling, God has always answered
the question with confidence. “I have called you, and you are mine.”
This idea that God calls people to service who we might least expect is common. While we don’t know any of John the Baptist’s call story, I do wonder how John may have responded the first time God called him. “John, I am calling you to baptize and call people to repentance. This work will prepare the way for my son who will come into the world, a person who is greater than you.” I imagine John may have told God “No!” a few times himself, or said “Please let me do anything else!” After all, John had his life planned out. He would spend his days eating locust and honey and sew his own clothes made from camel hair. These days, we might call John “crunchy”. He’d probably be wearing socks with his Birkenstocks. I wonder how John might have wrestled with God when God called him to wilderness work.
Whether or not, we know how John initially answered God’s call to baptize and preach repentance, we know that John did answer the call. And we hear in the gospel this morning, not John questioning his own call, but the crowd. They ask him “Who are you?’’ And the real questions behind the question is “Where are your credentials?” “What gives you the right to baptize and teach and preach repentance?” “Are you the prophet?” “Are you Elijah?” You see, the priests and Levites sent to question John did not expect someone like him to be performing rites of purification and teaching. These were jobs left usually to Temple professionals like themselves. John’s type was the last kind of person they expected to be doing the holy and important work of God.
And John answers them, “I am not the prophet. I baptize with water, but the one coming after me, (who John already knew to be the Christ), is someone you won’t recognize either. If we go back a few verses in John from the ones we heard in our Gospel today, we read “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own,and his own people did not accept him.” God sent God’s son into the world, and the world did not know him. The world did not recognize God made known to us in the person of Jesus. In the person of Jesus, God did something new. God is always doing something new. God is always challenging our perceptions. God is always asking us to find God’s self in places we don’t expect.
And God is always stirring. The collect for today, the Third Sunday of Advent, begins “Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us.” And I can’t think of a text that embodies this stirring up more than the Song of Mary. She says that God has shown God’s strength, but not how we might expect. He has scattered the proud in their conceit and honored those who are humble. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones of power and saved and given special place to those who are usually left out. He has sent the rich away empty and given the resources of the rich to those in need. In all of this, God has flipped the world as we know it upside down. And God did this in the person of Jesus, who John the Baptist points to as the one who will come after him.
Part of our work in this season of Advent is to prepare our hearts to be stirred by God’s power so that we may receive Christ when he comes- so that we don’t miss Christ at Christmas when we might be looking for someone or something else. So, where do we find God? We look to the places that make us wince. The places that stand out. The places that are different. Next week, we will find God on a cold, silent night in a trough made to feed barn animals, wrapped in strips of spare fabric. We will find God in Christ not in strength, but in the weak, helplessness of a newborn child. God will come to us in our beautiful church, yes, but also in a barn, bugs flying around, mice nesting in the corner. We will find God tended to not by hired help, but by shepherds- field hands who have heard the call of God to come and find God’s self in a place they least expected. God’s love drew them to that place on that holy night, and God’s love still draws us go to places where we might at first say no.
As we prepare for Christmas, are we open to finding Jesus in a stinky, bug-infested barn? Are we prepared to answer God’s call to us even if we feel unprepared? Are we prepared to allow God’s spirit to call us and equip us for the work to which we are called?
Stir up your power, O Lord, and come among us. Transform our hearts and help us to receive you in places where we expect, and in places where we least expect. Call us to those places and save us in those places. Amen.
This idea that God calls people to service who we might least expect is common. While we don’t know any of John the Baptist’s call story, I do wonder how John may have responded the first time God called him. “John, I am calling you to baptize and call people to repentance. This work will prepare the way for my son who will come into the world, a person who is greater than you.” I imagine John may have told God “No!” a few times himself, or said “Please let me do anything else!” After all, John had his life planned out. He would spend his days eating locust and honey and sew his own clothes made from camel hair. These days, we might call John “crunchy”. He’d probably be wearing socks with his Birkenstocks. I wonder how John might have wrestled with God when God called him to wilderness work.
Whether or not, we know how John initially answered God’s call to baptize and preach repentance, we know that John did answer the call. And we hear in the gospel this morning, not John questioning his own call, but the crowd. They ask him “Who are you?’’ And the real questions behind the question is “Where are your credentials?” “What gives you the right to baptize and teach and preach repentance?” “Are you the prophet?” “Are you Elijah?” You see, the priests and Levites sent to question John did not expect someone like him to be performing rites of purification and teaching. These were jobs left usually to Temple professionals like themselves. John’s type was the last kind of person they expected to be doing the holy and important work of God.
And John answers them, “I am not the prophet. I baptize with water, but the one coming after me, (who John already knew to be the Christ), is someone you won’t recognize either. If we go back a few verses in John from the ones we heard in our Gospel today, we read “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own,and his own people did not accept him.” God sent God’s son into the world, and the world did not know him. The world did not recognize God made known to us in the person of Jesus. In the person of Jesus, God did something new. God is always doing something new. God is always challenging our perceptions. God is always asking us to find God’s self in places we don’t expect.
And God is always stirring. The collect for today, the Third Sunday of Advent, begins “Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us.” And I can’t think of a text that embodies this stirring up more than the Song of Mary. She says that God has shown God’s strength, but not how we might expect. He has scattered the proud in their conceit and honored those who are humble. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones of power and saved and given special place to those who are usually left out. He has sent the rich away empty and given the resources of the rich to those in need. In all of this, God has flipped the world as we know it upside down. And God did this in the person of Jesus, who John the Baptist points to as the one who will come after him.
Part of our work in this season of Advent is to prepare our hearts to be stirred by God’s power so that we may receive Christ when he comes- so that we don’t miss Christ at Christmas when we might be looking for someone or something else. So, where do we find God? We look to the places that make us wince. The places that stand out. The places that are different. Next week, we will find God on a cold, silent night in a trough made to feed barn animals, wrapped in strips of spare fabric. We will find God in Christ not in strength, but in the weak, helplessness of a newborn child. God will come to us in our beautiful church, yes, but also in a barn, bugs flying around, mice nesting in the corner. We will find God tended to not by hired help, but by shepherds- field hands who have heard the call of God to come and find God’s self in a place they least expected. God’s love drew them to that place on that holy night, and God’s love still draws us go to places where we might at first say no.
As we prepare for Christmas, are we open to finding Jesus in a stinky, bug-infested barn? Are we prepared to answer God’s call to us even if we feel unprepared? Are we prepared to allow God’s spirit to call us and equip us for the work to which we are called?
Stir up your power, O Lord, and come among us. Transform our hearts and help us to receive you in places where we expect, and in places where we least expect. Call us to those places and save us in those places. Amen.
