Sermons
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Hope Is Enough – The Rev. Michelle Meech
December 17, 2023
The river wasn’t really that deep but people seemed nervous about getting in, a little scared to join the gathering crowd, for some reason. The river started in the mountains of Lebanon to the north and sped downhill into the Sea of Galilee before coming out the south end of that lake as the slow-moving creek. So it was… in the middle of the desert… the gently sloping hills cradled a narrow river bed where John stood in a deep spot, feeling the sluggish current pull at the hair on his legs as the sun warmed his skin from above.
For John this river was a source of life. Although narrow and shallow, it fed the dry valley. Making an arid and brown land green. His ancestors had crossed over this same river to their new life, into a land promised to them by God. And it was to this place that John knew he had been called to help people understand. To help people remember. To take people by the hand and guide them through their fear of the river’s current just as his ancestors had done for one another. John’s hope had called him to the banks of the River Jordan, the source of life, for these people.
These people who walked through the dusty desert from the city of Jerusalem, over 20 miles away. These people who came to this place from all over Judea – through its dry, mountainous terrain, walking step by step. A long journey feeling the sun’s warmth and the night’s cold… to come to this place where John greeted each of them with patient warmth.
What a gracious space he must have held that invited scores of strangers to open their hearts to him and confess their brokenness. What a beacon of compassion.
I don’t know about you, but usually when I imagine John the Baptist, I imagine someone preaching fire and brimstone on a street corner in a crowded city. I don’t picture this compassionate, welcoming presence, standing in the Jordan, with his hand outstretched, willing to touch and be touched by all those in his midst. Asking them to open their hearts to something new. But something that was somehow familiar.
Saint John the Baptist by Titian
This image we have on the cover today of John the Baptist was created by Titian, an Italian painter from the 16th century. Considered one of the great Italian masters of painting, Titian often depicted characters from the Bible as well as from other stories, like myths and legends, as though they were people he might have known – with typically Italian features and coloring. And in landscapes he might have known, along the Mediterranean coast.
So even though, to our eyes, we have a somewhat grand image, to the people of 16th century Italy, this was an average guy standing along the banks of a familiar river. We only know it’s John the Baptist because Titian made sure to include the staff and the Lamb of God, traditional attributes of John the Baptist.
And John is pointing to something. We may think he’s striking some kind of fancy pose, but the body language is more important than we might think.
He’s facing toward his left but is half turned, looking over his right shoulder and pointing with his right hand to what is coming along behind him. It’s a pose that specifically says, something… someone… else is coming after me. Look to him, not to me. This beacon of compassion, who people from all over Judea came to see, he was saying… it’s not me. Look beyond me.
The stories we have of John the Baptist make him a rather unique character in the Gospel narrative. He’s the voice crying out in the wilderness. He’s the one who ate locusts honey and wore hair shirts. The one who preached about repentance along the banks of the Jordan and offered people an opportunity to be cleansed from their sin so they could be right with God. I think because we have these stories, we think of John as exceptional. We think of him as special.
But the truth is that John was a local boy who had become famous, or infamous, really. There are some characters in the Bible that we have no record of outside the Bible. And that makes sense. There wasn’t any social media and no birth records were kept. But with John, we do have a record of him.
The Jewish historian Josephus wrote about the fear that Herod Antipas had for John. Herod was convinced that John would cause an insurrection. As Josephus says, “for they seemed ready to do anything that he should advise.”
This is quite striking because we also know that John was not the only person preaching repentance. All over Judea, people who claimed they were a prophet, or the messiah, were telling people that they were the one to follow. But John’s following was larger, more significant than the others. Perhaps it’s because he didn’t just preach about repentance. He also preached about hope, not a hope that pointed to himself. But a hope that pointed to the one coming after him.
This hope spoke of equality and justice and the message was powerful enough to bring Jewish people from all walks of life to John. It was a turbulent, dark time. For decades, Rome had kept the people of Judea oppressed under the rule of Caesar. And over those decades, the Jewish people formed uprising after uprising after uprising, in defiance of Roman rule. Many of the Jewish leaders, including Herod Antipas, were corrupted by the wealth of Rome. The religious leaders, just wanted the Jews to behave so they could continue worshipping God instead of Caesar. The tax collectors who were Jewish, because they always used local people, were forced to collect heavy Roman taxes that would pay the military who were invading nations and keeping them under Roman rule. It was a tense, dark, unstable, fearful time.
But here’s John, the voice in the wilderness, speaking without fear. And telling people… not about a military uprising… but about another kind of someone/something that was coming. Hope in the midst of the oppression, the pain, and the betrayal. Hope in the midst of the poverty, and the death. Of course, he seemed like a threat to the powers that be. Who exactly was he? How did he know so much? What is this hope of which John spoke?
The story we tell as Christians, says that John knew exactly who was coming. It comes from the Gospel of Luke. But not all the Gospels tell this story. So, what if John didn’t know exactly who was coming or what was coming?
What if all John knew was hope itself? A remembering of God and how God works. A remembering of God’s power. Not power-over, which is the way evil works in the world. But the power of Love in the midst of fear and pain and sadness. The life that arises from death. The coming of Love that breaks into the world and its ways and overturns absolutely everything.
What if this was what John believed so deeply in? And what if this is what people so needed to hear? What if they still need to hear it?
That Love will never cease. That life will always find a way forward through the death-dealing ways of the world. That eventually… no matter how bad things get, no matter how dark things can seem, the light of God will always shine through like a candle piercing the shadows so that we can find our way home again.
Because John is really just someone who remembered God. In the midst of the world’s horrors and all that it can bring, John remembered the promises of the God of Life, the God who is Love. And he talked about that to other people. Without fear. Because he believed in God with everything he was.
What if all John knew was this hope? That God is with us? What if all we have is this hope?
I think that is enough.