Remembering the ministry of John

John 1:19-34

Around Easter each year, as part of my spiritual reading practice, I read a new Christian book about some aspect of the cross. Last year, I read Richard John Neuhaus’ Death on a Friday Afternoon: Meditations on the Last Words of Jesus From the Cross. This year I am reading D.A. Carson’s Love in Hard Places. Let me encourage you to do something similar as you endeavour to grow in your experience and understand Easter each year.

But the impetus for today’s sermon, and my next two sermons at Northside, comes not from a book but a painting. It is a famous painting of the crucifixion by Matthias Grünewald from the Isenheim Altarpiece, created on the eve of the Reformation.

At the centre of this picture, nailed by his hands and feet to the cross, apparently at the point of death, is Jesus. On his left, with an open book in one hand, and the long index finger of his other hand pointing to Jesus, is John the Baptist. And at John’s feet is a white lamb, also looking toward Jesus, with its right front leg resting on a small wooden cross.

The ministry of John

Now if you are familiar with New Testament history, you will know that John died before Jesus (Mk 6:14-29). In fact, it seems that Jesus waited until John had died – or at least until he had been imprisoned – before he commenced his public ministry.

So what is John the Baptist doing at the foot of the cross in a fifteenth-century religious painting? I suggest that this is precisely where you would expect to find John, and where he would most want to be, during those long hours of terror and trauma when Jesus was immersed in the river of God’s fiery breath; and when, as the Lamb of God, he completed the work of propitiation that takes away the sin of the world.

To understand John the Baptist, we need to go back three years and join the crowd on the muddy bank of the Jordan River, not far from Jerusalem, as they listen to John’s preaching and observe him baptising. John was not the first “Baptist,” although he certainly baptised converts by immersion. Sixteen hundred years would slip by before Baptists as we know them began to called by that name.

John was born into a family of Jewish priests; his mother was related to Mary, the mother of Jesus (Lk 1:36, 39). As an adult, John adopted a spartan diet, dressed in camel skins, and practiced ascetic behaviour.

One day in the desert, God spoke to John and commissioned him to proclaim “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,” drawing on the words of Isaiah the prophet (Lk 3:2-6), who had spoken of:

The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, Make his paths straight … And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

And so this unusual figure came out of the desert and began proclaiming his message to all who listened.

He was not one to mince his words. There is no doubt that he caused offence, and created enemies in high places. Eventually, as Mark tells us, John was imprisoned, and literally lost his head, because he chose to criticise the immoral lifestyle of the king.

But not long before he went to prison, John experienced three surprises he would never forget. We find him, as his namesake John the Apostle describes it, at Bethany, a few kilometres from Jerusalem, exhorting the crowd to live a holy life as God commanded, and a delegation of priests and Levites questions him.

The delegation wants to know who he really is, but all he can say is that he is the voice of one crying in the wilderness (Jn 1:23). Then they ask why he baptises, and he answers, “I baptise with water, but among you stands one you do not know, even he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie” (v 26).

The delegation, perhaps convinced that John is no threat to public order and religious orthodoxy, or perhaps frustrated by the way in which John answers their questions, returns to head office.

John meets Jesus

And John is back on the riverbank the next day, and he sees Jesus walking toward him. At the time, Jesus was an unknown carpenter from Nazareth. John and Jesus probably know each other, since their mothers are related. And both were faithful Israelites. But I doubt they knew each other well.

Jesus walks toward John, along the riverbank, and – in a flash of prophetic insight – God reveals to John the true nature and identity of Jesus. God said to John, “This is him!” And John stands tall, and shouts above all the competing noise of people and animals and water, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (v 29).

This is why Mathias Grünewald, fifteen centuries later, has John the Baptist at the foot of the cross, pointing with his long index finger to Jesus. John is overjoyed that his mission is fulfilled, his life purpose achieved, that he goes on (vv 30-31).

But then John receives his second surprise of the day. Jesus walks right up to John and asks to be baptised! And John, initially and understandably hesitant, consents and immerses Jesus in the richly historical and yet very ordinary waters of the Jordan, “to fulfil all righteousness” (Mt 3:13-16).

But there is a third surprise waiting for John. As Matthew tells it,

When Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Mt 3:16-17).

And John later bore witness to this awesome event, as John’s Gospel recalls:

“I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God” (Jn 1:32-34).

Our glory and our hope

And so John the Baptist prepared the way for the Lord. He announced Jesus as both the Lamb of God and Son of God, and anticipated – through the arrival and ministry of Jesus – the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy (e.g. Ex 12:3ff; Isa 53:7; Ezk 36:25f).

No longer is Jesus unidentified: he has come; he is here; he is known. No longer is the long-awaited kingdom of God merely future: with the arrival of Jesus, it too has come.

And because Jesus has come – and because through the cross and the empty tomb he has established his eternal kingdom – his audacious claim to be the Saviour of the world, and his awesome power “to take away the sin of the world” can be personal.

Jesus can be your God, your Saviour, your Master. He takes away your sin, and baptises you with his Holy Spirit, and grants you eternal life. This is the excellent news that we celebrate at Easter.

In The Magnificent Defeat, Frederick Buechner puts us in our place and captures the wonder of our salvation through Jesus:

There is little that we can point to in our lives as deserving anything but God’s wrath. Our best moments have been mostly grotesque parodies. Our best loves have been almost always blurred with selfishness and deceit. But there is something to which we can point. Not anything that we ever did or were, but something that was done for us by another. Not our own lives, but the life of one who died in our behalf and yet is still alive.

This is our only glory and our only hope. And the sound that it makes is the sound of excitement and gladness and laughter that floats through the night air from a great banquet.

“Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (Jn 1:29). That was then.

“I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain … worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honour and glory and blessing!” (Rev 5:6, 12). This is now.

“Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready … And the angel said to me, ‘Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb'” (Rev 19:6-7, 9). This is what we are waiting for.

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E146 Copyright (c) 2004 Rod Benson. Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2001). To talk with Rod about this message, email RodBenson[at]morling.edu.au