Advent 3B
Text: John 1:6-8, 19-28
sermon by Rev. Robert Klonowski
Faith Lutheran Church, Homewood, IL
December 13, 2020
Jesus’ Favorite Preacher
A little while ago Baylor University came out again with its occasional list of the twelve greatest preachers in America. They do this regularly, refreshing and turning over the list every few years. Which means that every few years I see the teasing headline, I click on the link, and I scroll through the list, only to find that once again this year, I didn’t make it.
So who does make it? Well, most of them are mega-church pastors with TV shows, people with a profile somewhat larger than mine. But I notice that the other thing these great preachers have in common is they are mostly folk who preach positive things, ideas that make you feel good. And I think that’s understandable, in one way, because it is after all the job of the preacher to bring Good News to the people of God.
So – who do you think would be Jesus’ favorite preacher? I don’t know how Baylor comes up with their list every few years, but if they asked Jesus to nominate someone, whom would He choose? I have to think that Jesus would choose John the Baptist.
No other person exercised so strong an influence over Jesus. Two of the gospels begin with stories of Jesus’ birth and two do not mention it at all; one of the gospels includes stories from Jesus’ childhood, and the other three do not; but all four of the gospels, before they ever speak of Jesus’ preaching, tell us of the preaching of John. It is as if they want to say, “You can’t hear Jesus until you first hear John.”
Do you know what is the first thing Jesus ever says, when he begins his preaching ministry? “Repent, for the Reign of God is at hand.” Does that line sound familiar? One of my teachers in seminary used to say that a good preacher is someone who knows the difference between bad material, and material that is good enough to plagiarize. Clearly, Jesus knew what to plagiarize. When Jesus began preaching, he sounded so much like John the Baptist that when King Herod heard of it he said, “Oh, no! It’s John all over again!” Jesus sounded so much like John, old Herod thought that it was John come back from the dead. “Didn’t I kill this guy once already?,” he said. Jesus’ voice sounded that much like John’s.
So John the Baptist was Jesus’ favorite preacher. But why? We say it is the job of the preacher to bring Good News to the people of God. Does this sound like Good News to you? “[John] said to the multitudes, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? … I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.’”
Dale Carnegie in his book How to Win Friends and Influence People says that when you make a speech, you should begin by flattering your listeners. Let your listeners know that you are on their side. John the Baptist did not study preaching with Dale Carnegie. And John told his desert congregation that if they thought he was rough on them, just wait until the next guy, the coming Messiah, got hold of them. “I baptize you with water … There is one coming who will baptize with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor, to gather the wheat into his granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” Repent!
He smelled of camel’s hair and sweat-stained leather in the desert heat. He cared so little for the comforts of this world that he subsisted on locusts, and the wild honey he could find. The message that he brought was studded with violent, threatening images: with an ax, with stones, with a winnowing fork, with fire.
And this, we are told, was Jesus’ favorite preacher. And this man and his message attracted multitudes out into the desert wilderness to hear. And this John the Baptist, says Mark in the first verses of his gospel, this John the Baptist is “the beginning of the Good News.”
How can it be? A man who will not follow the principles of Joel Osteen or Dale Carnegie; how can it be Good News?
I’ll tell you how. The ax, the winnowing fork, children from stone, the refiner’s fire: these are all images of change. Weird, nasty-smelling old John did have a message that was a Good News message. It was a message Good enough that everybody wanted to hear it, and yet nobody really wanted to hear it at all, this disturbing, disorienting Good News. Here was the message: Repentance is possible. Things can be different. You can change. That’s what repentance means, of course: change. Where there is wilderness, the ax is laid to the tree to make a straight path through. From nothing but stones in the muddy Jordan, newly baptized children of God come forth. Chaff is burned away so that the good wheat is left. Dusty, ugly ore is refined, and refined, until there is pure gold.
Herod hated John, and had him killed, because Herod did not want to hear about change. Those who are in power, those up at the top, the establishment, they don’t want to hear change. Why change? They like things as they are. Sitting atop the good old status quo, the status quo is good enough for them.
But multitudes came out to hear John. The majority of us, though we are part of the status quo, are not content with it. We know that America is now a place in which the rich get richer and the poor are pushed poorer, but we are not content with that. We know this is a world in which economic consuming engines rip up and overheat and stain the natural world, but we are not content with that. We know that in this world some are in bondage to addiction, and to other diseases; and we know that we all are in bondage to racist foolishness, in bondage to abusive patriarchal systems, but we are not content with those things. We know that we ourselves get caught up in all sorts of vain, self-serving garbage, but we are not content with ourselves like that. When John preached, even his fierce preaching sounded like Good News, because when he spoke of repentance, making a difference, change, it was Good News to those of us caught up in an old, aimless, and dying status quo.
Multitudes came out to hear John, and he told them: “The Messiah is coming. The Reign of God is at hand. That means that not everything is fixed and tied down. It’s not always gonna be like this; some things are going to be very different around here.” It is a hard and frightening message, but it is a good message. Good News for us; in fact, the very best kind of news. Repentance is possible; things can be different; you can change. When God’s Messiah walks in, stands at the door and knocks, calls your name, is born among us anew: we can change. The powerful grip of our economic realities, our racist social systems, the psychological ruts in which we are so easily trapped; all these things that hold us begin to relax their grip. With ax, winnowing fork, and fire, the world begins to shift — we feel the ground move under our feet — and we can change and make a different world. That is, indeed, Good News.
It was sometime during the first couple weeks of my high school English class, sophomore year; I was 15 years old. Hanging around after class to talk for a minute, I let my new teacher know that I usually had trouble in my English class, and that I never liked English much; I wasn’t very good at it. I guess I wanted to warn her.
“Is that so, Bob?,” said my new teacher, Miss Olson. She was kind of a John the Baptist type. Ex-nun, she had never married; she was laser-focused, always meticulously prepared. Out in a wilderness of recalcitrant fifteen-year-olds she proclaimed with fierce intensity the glories of literature. “Is that so?,” she said to me. “Well, we’ll have to see if by the end of the year you are thinking differently.”
By the end of the year I was, and I still am. To this day I am often late at night reading a good book when I should be sleeping; to this day reading and writing are favorite things for me. Neither I, nor the English teacher I had the previous year as a freshman, ever would have thought it.
The Messiah is on the way; the Reign of God is at hand, and with ax, winnowing fork, and fire the world begins to shift and be transformed. Repentance is possible. The world can be different. We can change.