December 16, 2007 Sermon

John Plays the Role of Elijah
Luke 1:57-80

The Gospel of Luke, chapter one, runs on parallel tracks. One track tells the story of the predicted birth of John the Baptist; the other tells the same story, but for Jesus. Together they carry the whole weight of God’s plan forward. Luke saw God at work in human events. He saw God’s plan unfolding before the world’s eyes. But the world had not seen it—yet. Luke wrote his Gospel in order to help the world see God working. We still live in that story. Do we see God at work, then and now?

We play roles in God’s drama. Most of us have only bit parts, but we are on stage. Do you see God at work through the story? God directs. Play your part.

At the end of Luke 1 we read the Benedictus, a blessing Zechariah gave to God. These were the first words Zechariah had spoken in nine months. God had sent a messenger to give him good news: he and his wife, both too old for it, would have a baby boy. When he expressed his doubts, the messenger angrily told him he would not speak again until the birth. On the parallel track his wife’s cousin, Mary, received similar news. She too would bear a son, but with a big difference: his father would be God’s Holy Spirit. Unlike Zechariah, Mary accepted this news.

God’s messenger told the truth. Elizabeth, Zechariah’s wife, had that baby boy. Her relatives gathered around, as relatives do when babies arrive. They wanted to help give the baby a name, as relatives do. They suggested naming him after his father. But Elizabeth held out for “John”, which the messenger had commanded they name their child. The relatives clucked about it. Nobody in their family had that name. They went to the father, trying to play him against the mother, as relatives do. But he used his first words in nine months to agree with his wife: “His name is John.” That solved the family crisis.

Next, Zechariah broke into the Benedictus. This hymn of praise overflows with references to the Psalms and the ancient Jewish prophets. The Benedictus lauds God for directing human affairs toward the end of saving the faithful. It begins, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably upon his people and redeemed them.” This God, the God who freed the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt, spoke through the prophets and made David King. Quoting David’s own words from the Psalms, Zechariah praises God for saving the people. God has defeated their enemies and shown them mercy. God has kept his promises—even ones as old as the one made to Abraham. Zechariah sees the hand of God directing all of human history toward a moment that would happen any minute now: the appearance of the Messiah.

After blessing God Zechariah turns and speaks to his baby boy. “And you, child,” he proudly says, “will be called the prophet of the Most High; and you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways.” As a child I wondered why God would need to have the way prepared. Could God not clear his own path? Indeed God could: and did, by sending Zechariah’s baby boy (among others) to prepare people for the appearance of God. God works through people to prepare people to see God. God drew this big circle through Abraham, Moses, David and the prophets. God was drawing the circle again, Zechariah saw, through his son John. The prophet Malachi had predicted that Elijah, one of the great prophets of old, would reappear just before the Messiah finally came. Zechariah quotes this Malachi prophecy, indicating that he sees God directing that his son John would play that Elijah role, that God has always been directing things toward this moment.

Believing that we can see God at work around us is one of the great arts—and challenges—of the Christian life. If we want to follow Jesus first we must find him. Where can we find him? If God has always worked through people to lead people to God, where are the people today who will show us that way? Praise God that we have answers to this critical question! We find our leaders, first, in the Bible. In the Bible we meet the adult John the Baptist, who quoted the prophets to warn his fellow Jews to turn toward God. If they will, he promises, they will see and follow the Messiah, whom God has already born into this world.

In the Bible we meet Peter, the rough-hewn small businessman who dropped everything to follow the Messiah. In the Bible we meet Thomas, the skeptic whom Jesus forgave for expressing his honest doubts about the resurrection. In the Bible we meet Mary, the mother of Jesus, who had an out-of-wedlock baby no matter how disgraceful it made her appear in her neighbors’ eyes. In the Bible we meet real people who would seem familiar to us if we were to run across them at the store—people who followed Jesus in a way we can imitate. And in the Bible we meet Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, who loves us so much he willingly suffered and died on the cross to pay for our evil and to inspire us to love him back. Read your Bible and you will find people who can turn us to God. They can play that role for us.

Where else can we meet people who will lead us to the Messiah? Who else plays this God-given role? The church is an obvious answer, but an answer that makes some wince a little. People make up the church. People are sinners. People in churches suffer from the same hypocrisy, the same jealousy and the same angers as any other people. But the weakness of church people has blocked many from following God. I recall watching Dana Carvey do his Church Lady routine during a Saturday Night Live broadcast maybe twenty years ago. Beside me sat my brother. I thought the Church Lady was funny. My brother did not laugh. I asked him why. He said something like, “Because that’s exactly what church people are like and I don’t find them funny.”

He was right. Church people gossip. Church people lie. Church people jostle for social position. But God created the church for a purpose. God has made the church the Body of Christ. The church (all who worship Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior) serves as Christ’s back, nose, eyes, and arms on this earth. God has called the church into being expressly in order to prepare people to see Jesus at work in the world. When we provide overnight shelter for the homeless during the winter cold, we serve their most basic needs and we point them to Jesus. When we teach children about the love of God, we point them to Jesus. When we gather in our Suppers of Eight, we have fellowship with fellow believers and we help point each other to Jesus. When we listen to the pain of a woman whose husband has left her, when we visit a homebound older man, when we ride 24 hours one-way on a bus with 35 teenagers so together we can rebuild a stranger’s house blown down by a hurricane, we bring healing to all of the above and we point them to Jesus.

Participating in church means a great deal more than just going to worship services. Participating in church means finding and doing the work God has assigned to you, work you can do any day, at any hour. We are here to point each other to Jesus. God has ordained that we play this part. Of course we are imperfect sinners. Of course we misbehave. As the Church Lady loved to remind us, we must battle Satan. All the more reason, then, for us to play the part assigned to us by God. All the more reason to find people who will lead us to Jesus. All the more reason for us to lead others to Jesus.

Reading the Bible and faithfully participating in church come up in many of my sermons. There is a reason for this. They work. We all need to find and to follow Jesus. And we who hear these words have at least come to church to listen to this sermon. Others may have forgotten how to get to Jesus. Still others may never have known. Do your job. Read your Bible. Be the church together. Come to worship together and come to serve Jesus and his people together. God directs. Play your part.