June 24, 2007 – St. John the Baptist Sunday
Subscribe to the sermon RSS feed
I feel like this is my year of John. During Advent I preached on the John the Baptist text where he is telling everyone to prepare the way of the Lord. Then I preached on the Baptism of our Lord day in January, another time when John the Baptist had a large part of the Gospel. Which leads us to today, where I get another John the Baptist text. When I preached my first sermon on John I was pretty ho hum about it. I enjoyed the text, I liked the text, but John really did not spark a great interest in me. He was just John. Then I preached my second sermon on John and I became a little bit more interested in John as a person. I feel like he is easy to relate to, and there is something special about him. What I have learned is that John is not only the man who baptized Jesus, not only a family member of Jesus, but John is his is own very unique person in this larger story we call the life of Jesus, the beginning of Christendom.
All my life I have grown up with Johns around me. My Dad’s name is Jon, I have an Uncle John, and then there is another John in the more extended family, and now I am engaged to a John. So maybe I just saw the name John and overlooked it because there was no pizzazz. The name is not that special really. There are close to 5 million people in the United States who are named John. You might think I made that statistic up, but you can check it out for yourself on www.howmanyarelikeme.com. I promise you can spend hours on this website. It is the statistically the 2nd most popular name in the United States. Yet there is something different about John the Baptist, he is not the ordinary John you would see walking around in the woods eating locust and honey. No this John is a special messenger from God, continuously.
In this Gospel lesson for today we learn a little bit more about John’s life, it is almost the untold story, yet it really is not untold we just have to focus on a different part of the story. John’s life and ministry began ever before the little guy even learned how to walk. From the very first time we hear about John, there is something different about him. His parents weren’t exactly the parents you would assume that would give birth to the man who would baptize the Messiah. As soon as his mother found out that she was pregnant and carrying John the one who would prepare the way, Mary then announces to John’s mother that she is carrying the Son of God. Talk about being outdone. Then when he was born John already started controversy and he was only 8 days old.
The custom of that time was for the child to be named after the father, or at least someone in their family, and yet John was not named after either. When his mother said to the community Zechariah was not going to be his name the community could not believe it. Why would John not take on the name of a family member? So they looked to his father, hopefully Zechariah would make some sense out of all this. So Zechariah gives them the big surprise, this child’s name will not be Zechariah or any other family name for that matter. His name will be John. Now John is not the first person in the Bible to have his name changed, he isn’t even the last person. There was Abram who became Abraham and Simon who became Peter. When someone is renamed in the Bible it usually means we can expect something great from him or her. Something in them is going to change. They will change as a person and after their name change they went on to do some amazing things.
We do not hear about John again until we meet him in the wilderness. Walking wearing camel fur eating some interesting foods and yet he was doing something very few of us ever take the time to do or maybe would even want to do. But John got away from it all. Whether he was stepping away from the community because it was a dangerous place for him to live or if he retreated into the woods to gain the strength he needed to start his ministry, or even to just be with God, we do not know. We don’t know exactly why he went into the wilderness, what we do know is when he did go into the wilderness he began his ministry. Every time I think about John and his ministry my first thought is always of him in the woods. Maybe it is because I wonder if I could ever make it in the woods by myself or maybe it is because I am jealous that John was able to spend years in the wilderness just him and God and that was ok with him. He learned something about how God was at work in the world. The baby we first heard about in the Gospel was no longer this man walking around the wilderness. He had grown in his time away from others he became a messenger. So I wondered what people learn about God when they only have God to concentrate on.
As many of you know last week I had the opportunity to take 19 Confirmands to the wilderness. When we first arrived at camp the youth seemed a little nervous, a little unsure of what to expect or what to do. Out of the 19 only 5 have been to the camp before, 14 of the youth had no idea what to expect. Yet, when they came home they were changed. Even some parents noticed something changed in their child. So I asked the youth, what did they learn at camp? How did they experience God? Their answers amazed me. One youth experienced God in the worship services we had daily. Another experienced God in the water, because God is everywhere and is flowing smoothly and peacefully just like a river. Someone else said, “I also learned to trust in others like we should trust in God... when our group did the "Trust Fall", and the "V" in the low ropes. “ Lastly, and probably the one that touched me the most was by a 6th grader who said, “God has the ability to change the earth in many different ways. Some times bad events such as forest fires can be blessing for wildlife by rejuvenating life.”
So I started to think about John the Baptist and this statement by this 6th grader. When John entered into the woods he was changed, he was changed in way he would be a messenger to the people. He would no longer be the guy whose parents wanted to name his something different. He was no longer the guy who just baptized Jesus. No John was much more, and because of him and his ministry the world was changed in many ways. So while in the beginning I never really thought twice about John and his ministry, all of a sudden I have begun to. John is not a strange guy walking around the wilderness, John is a man whose name was changed helping him change the world. His new name meant he was not going to be the person we would expect him to be. Instead John was going to do more, he was going to be someone to take note of. And he did change the world. He prepared the way of the Lord, he helped to make the paths straight, and he began to rejuvenate the life around him. While John’s ministry was never made into a feature length film, John affected those who heard him preach. John helped turn people to the man whose sandals he felt as though he was unworthy to untie. John helped point people to the new life in Jesus Christ.
John experienced God in a way very few of us ever take the time to do, and when we do we might not take enough time to do it. The things around us often distract us and we have too much going on in our lives to want to walk away and enter into the wilderness to be changed. And yet we know God changes us when we enter into the wilderness. Just ask the 19 youth who went to camp, or the 6 adults who accompanied them, or even their family members. Something amazing happens when you enter into the wilderness, when we you get away from all that distracts you, so you may focus you attention on God and be willing to be changed. Maybe we don’t even have to enter the wilderness to experience this type of change; maybe we can do it in our homes, in this place, on the streets around our community, in the gym, at the work place. Wherever the place of wilderness is for you, do not be afraid to enter it in the coming days and weeks. Spend some time in your own wilderness allowing yourself to be changed so that you to can go out rejuvenating the life and people around you. Amen.
