The lectionary readings
for the First Sunday after Epiphany bring us Isaiah 42:1-9, Acts 10: 34-38, and
Mark 1:7-11. In Isaiah God is calling us to “Behold my servant” who has the
Spirit of God to be a “covenant to the people, a light to the nations…to open
the eyes that are blind…” In Acts, Peter states “Truly I perceive that God
shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is
right is acceptable…”
The Gospel reading tells
us how Jesus came to John the Baptist who was preaching in the wilderness and
who confesses, “After me comes he who is mightier…he will baptize you with the
Holy Spirit.”
What do all these readings
tell us about Jesus and about John’s insight into the truth (John’s epiphany)?
First, we notice in Isaiah
that God is promising a Servant who will be for all people and nations. This
truth is affirmed by Peter. Peter’s confession comes after he has arrived in
Caesarea to preach the Gospel to Cornelius, a Roman soldier! For a Jew, this
was an unheard of step of faith. To associate in any way with the Gentiles,
much less with a man who would be considered a ‘godless Roman centurion’ was to
become unclean yourself. Yet, Peter manifests the Gospel by going to this man’s
house and talking to him as an equal.
John knows that he is the
‘messenger, preparing the way’. One wonders if he had any inkling of who Jesus
was until the time of baptism when “he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit
descending upon him like a dove, and a voice came from heaven, ‘Thou art my
beloved Son, with thee I am well pleased.’” In Mark, we are left to wonder, but
in the parallel reading in Matthew we hear John say, “I need to be baptized by
you, and do you come to me?” (Matthew 3:14). Either way, to see the dove
descending on his cousin Jesus would have been an affirmation of John’s
ministry.
J
ohn preached the coming
of Messiah and “all the country of Judea and all the people of Jerusalem [went
to him] and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, as in this image by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. What sort of preaching
makes that kind of impact? This week the Rev. Laurie Brock in her Dirty SexyMinistry blog
suggested that the kind of preaching
that makes people respond like that is “preached from our feet”.She says, “The Gospel preached from our feet is not the Gospel of dry, controlled, rational love preached from layers of rationalizations and footnotes. It is the Gospel preached from our own wounds, our own deaths and resurrection, from our mind and heart, from the Word that has become flesh in our bodies and souls and given us life….”
I am not a professional
preacher, nor are most of you, my readers. John was not one of the scribes or
Pharisees or Sadducees, either, yet his preaching moved people to act. Jesus
taught “as one with authority, not like the scribes” (Matthew 7:29) and his
words changed hearts. Each of us in our own way is a witness who preaches the
Gospel to those we meet at work and at play and at church.
Laurie Brock asks, “When we are called
to preach the Word, do we allow it to become flesh, to become embodied with
life and emotion, with joy and grief, with hope and challenge? Do we dare to preach
from our imperfect earthiness, from the voice of our deep soul, and from that
which moves us?”
It’s a challenge to be
that open to the Word and to the Spirit. As those who follow in the footsteps
of John and proclaim ‘Emmanuel, God with us’, can we do any less?
Next week we’ll look at
Nathaniel’s response to Jesus’ invitation to ‘follow me’
