Willing Witnesses Pastor Stephen “Tig” Intagliata
John 1:19-44
Summary: Like John the Baptist, let us be willingness witnesses, preparing the way for Jesus to come into the world.
Last Sunday after worship some of us went Christmas caroling at the Fairfax Rehab and Nursing Center. The communication beforehand was a bit shaky, so we weren’t sure what to expect.
When we arrived, there wasn’t anyone there to welcome us, and no one had arranged for the residents to come to the dining hall to hear us sing.
After standing around for a while, we decided to just go into the dining hall and start singing carols. For a while there were only one or two people there, but finally toward the end a few more people came.
We were like a voice crying out with Christmas Carols in the wilderness of an abandoned rehab center lobby, wondering if anyone knew who we were, why we were there, of if they had any desire to hear our message of the birth of Jesus through song?
In a way, we felt like John the Baptist might have felt when in the wilderness of the Jordan River region, when he cried out “Prepare the way of the Lord!” in preparation for the arrival and ministry of Jesus.
Does anyone know who I am? Is anyone listening to my message? Is anyone going to come down to the river to be baptized? Does anyone want to get right with God so you can be prepared for our long-awaited Messiah?
John was a pretty strange and surly dude who could probably turn heads with his outfit of camel hair and his diet of grasshoppers, but could he turn hearts and minds toward Jesus?
As much as a spectacle he was by his physical appearance and his booming voice, John made it clear that it wasn’t about him; he was just a messenger paving the way for someone greater than him, he said, who he said wasn’t even worthy to tie the sandals of.
Even though he was misunderstood, ignored, criticized as a heretic, or written off by some as crazy, he wasn’t deterred from his mission to bear witness to Jesus whom he knew was the Emmanuel, the revelation of God to a world longing for a Savior.
We could say that John the Baptist was a willing witness to the good news of Jesus’ coming. The Greek word for witness is martus, which our English word “martyr” comes from, and the verb is martureo, which means to bear witness, testify, give evidence of something or someone.
We know from the biblical account that John the Baptist ended up becoming a literal martyr—a witness with a capital W. He was thrown in prison by King Herod for calling out his adulterous relationship, and a couple of years later was dragged out of prison and beheaded.
John the Baptist was a witness who boldly spoke the truth about who Jesus was and with courage and conviction, he called people to follow Jesus .
This morning I want to look at three things that John said to bear witness to Jesus in today’s scripture from the gospel of John,
and tell a few stories of people who were witnesses to Jesus throughout history, with the hope that we can be inspired to be willing witnesses in our own lives.
First, John is echoing the first part of the prophet Isaiah’s words in Isaiah chapter 40.
3 A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord;
make straight in the desert a highway for our God. (Isaiah continues:
4 Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.
5 Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together,
I also think of Mary’s Magnificat, where she proclaims with the coming of Jesus that there will be a leveling of the playing field, with the radical vision that the rich will be brought down and the poor will be lifted up.
In the gospel of Luke’s version of John the Baptist when he says “prepare the way of the Lord” and baptizes people in the river, the people around him say, “what then shall we do.?
John said to them “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none, Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.”
So to John the Baptist, repentance and getting right with God has to do with sharing, a redistribution of wealth so everyone has enough, and also with not getting richer at the expense of other people, i.e. practicing justice in relationships.
This is the road to Las Gamas, Bolivia. It reminds me of the scripture of making paths straight. My friend Juana sent it to me the other day, showing me how hard it is for her and others to get out to Las Gamas from the city of Santa Cruz.
Sometimes they have to get out of the car and push it through the mud, and sometimes they have to turn around and abort their trip because they just can’t get through.
To me, this picture is a symbol of the work that Juana and others are doing to share their time and resources with the community and church of Las Gamas, and how we at Daniels Run Peace Church are playing a small part in that ministry through our Christmas project of raising funds for their church.
One way we could view John the Baptist’s ministry of calling people to repent is that he was like a revival preacher.
Recently, I’ve heard some Christians in our society talking about revival, and they say the signs of revival are crowds of people coming together to pray and sing worship songs, you know the kind that repeat the chorus 7 or 8 times in a row.
But for John, the signs of revival are different—he says, “bear fruit that is worthy of repentance”, and that fruit has to do with showing mercy and living justly. If those things are missing, then no matter how much we worship and pray doesn’t matter.
These days, when I hear most politicians talk, I can get frustrated and angry pretty quickly. But there’s one politician that to me is like a breath of fresh air, whose words reminds me of John the Baptist and Jesus. His name is James Talarico, a state representative in Texas who’s running for the U.S. Senate. I heard him say recently:
The reason poverty exists in the wealthiest country on earth is not because we can’t feed the poor. It’s because we can’t satisfy the rich.
Talarico is calling out the injustice that takes place when people’s greed for wealth and power greed leads to a widening gap between the rich and poor, which is what’s happening in American society.
Like John the Baptist, James Talarico is reminding us to repent and “prepare the way of the Lord” by living generously and justly with those around us.
The second thing that John the Baptist says to the people is “behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”
When I hear this phrase, I immediately think of going to mass in the Catholic church, and hearing the priest say it in preparation for people to receive the Eucharist, what we Protestants call communion or the Lord’s Supper.
But I’ll admit that when I heard the priest say “behold the Lamb of God”, I didn’t think very much about what it meant. But as lambs were sometimes used in the Israelite’s sacrifices to God in order to obtain forgiveness from sin,
it reminds us of Jesus’ sacrifices he made during his life, culminating in his death on the cross, which makes it possible for us to experience forgiveness from God.
And I think “the lamb of God” also has another dimension to it as well.
My former professor at the Mennonite seminary, Willard Swartley, talks about it having to do with the exodus event in the history of the people of Israel.
Swartley says:
“The lamb commemorated Israel’s deliverance from slavery in Egypt. Jesus thus comes as light and life to reclaim the world from its alienation, its sin.” He goes on to say that Jesus is the Savior and Deliverer who has come from God to restore the world to God.
I love this phrase, “reclaim the world from its alienation, its sin”. What does it mean to reclaim the world from sin? To me, it has something to do with calling out sin when we see it, exposing it, and then showing a better way, the way of Jesus and his kingdom.
When we do that, it can break the grip that sin has on us so we can experience true freedom in Christ. This can happen on an individual level, with our own personal sins and demons that hinder our relationship with God and others.
And it can also happen on a societal level, when sin has become embedded in systems and institutions, where groups of people are oppressed, dehumanized, and treated unjustly.
I think of the Civil Rights movement, which addressed the sins of racism and economic inequality in our society. God raised up Martin Luther King to lead that movement, and his role as a witness to God’s justice ended up costing him his life.
After King was assassinated in 1968, a school teacher named Harriet Glickman wrote to Peanuts creator Charles Schultz asking that he add a black character to the comic strip. She felt it would help continue Dr. King’s legacy of Civil Rights and keep racial justice and integration in people’s minds.
Here’s the first comic strip Schultz created with the new character named Franklin. (read it)
When Schultz proposed this comic to his bosses to get published in the newspaper, his boss pushed back and asked him to take Franklin out. Schultz responded with “either you print it the way I draw it, or I quit. How’s that? It ended up getting printed.
Behold the Lamb of God who exposes and takes away the sin of racism, and breaks down barriers to create the kind of society that God envisions.
Today, we are experiencing injustice and racism with what’s happening with ICE raids targeting anyone with brown skin; it could be seen in similar light as the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s.
And like Dr. King and Charles Schultz, there are people who are standing up to ICE and taking action to protect people from harassment, arrest, and deportation without due process.
I heard a story recently of a largely Latino school in Montgomery County, MD, where some parents worked with a local immigrants rights group to respond to ICE activity in their community.
They now have a network of about 30 volunteers who are stationed at set locations around the school for a half hour each morning and afternoon during student arrival and dismissal.
They’re using the Signal chat app to communicate with each other about ICE’s activity in the area. They said they’re focus is not on surveillance, but on getting to know each other and building friendships.
What a great example of working together to strengthen their community, combat the fear they feel, and protect it from the injustices of ICE activity.
I know that some people in our congregation are joining forces with others in the area to learn how to respond to ICE. Mennonite Action had a training recently at Hyattsville Mennonite Church that Cindy Fogleman attended which focused on learning strategies to deescalate situations where ICE is confronting residents.
Now on to the 3rd thing that John the Baptist said: “I saw the Spirit . descending like a dove.” When John saw the dove descend onto Jesus, this was a sign that he knew that Jesus was the Messiah and Savior that God had promised.
The dove is a symbol of peace, and one way we describe Jesus’ identity as the Prince of Peace. Peace is an important part of our identity here at Daniels Run Peace Church, and also of our denomination, MCUSA, whose symbol is the dove of peace.
Being witnesses of Christ’s peace is so desperately needed in our world today. Unfortunately, some Christians use scriptures from the Old Testament to justify using violence and going to war in order to advance the government’s agenda.
For example, prominent Christian spokesperson Franklin Graham spoke at the Pentagon’s Christmas service last week, and he said, “We know that God loves, but did you know that God also hates?” Graham said. “Do you know that God also is a God of war?
Graham then read another passage where God requested Israel’s King Saul to attack Israel’s enemies and “utterly destroy all that they have.”
Yes, this is in the Bible, but if we read the Bible through the lens of Jesus, we see that he showed a different way to live, a way focused on being peacemakers, not warmongers.
Before emperor Constatine came onto the scene in the 4th century, most Christians were pacifists; they took Jesus’ words to love their enemies seriously.
One of the powerful stories of peacemaking in that time was the story of Telemachus, a regular Christian guy who became so disgusted with the gladiator games glorifying killing, sponsored by the Roman Empire that he decided to do something about it.
During a gladiator game, with a full arena of people cheering on the gladiators as they fought to the death, Telemachus jumped into the ring and got between them. He said something like “God is not honored by your fighting—stop it now!”
There are different accounts of what happened next, but either the gladiators killed him or people in the crowd stoned him to death. He became a martyr for the faith and was later given sainthood in the Catholic Church.
We need more Telemachus’ today, more willing witnesses for the sake of peace in the world. I’m encouraged by the work of Mennonite Action in working for peace here in the US as well as in other parts of the world like Israel/Palestine.
Screenshot
This past week I got an email from Mennonite Action with their reflection on Christmas. They included this quote from civil rights leader and Christian minister Howard Thurman.
In the letter, Mennonite Action said “Too often that radical message of Christmas is lost in the cookies, eggnog, and unwrapped presents. We certainly hope that you enjoy family and friends during this season. But beyond the tinsel and the garland, Christmas has a much deeper call to us. It’s not reducible to a personal, transactional salvation, either, but is rather a cosmic event that rights wrongs and undoes oppression with justice, captivity with liberation.
Friends, this was the message and the witness of John the Baptist, and it is our calling as witnesses of the Jesus who has come to save the world from the grip that sin has upon it.
So let us be willing witnesses by living out John the Baptist’s words:
Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight
Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
I saw the Spirit descending as a dove over Jesus.
And let us heed the words of the apostle Paul in his letter to the Hebrews:
Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. AMEN.
