You may have noticed that I haven’t been posting very often on the blog in the last few weeks. At first it was pressure of pastoral work. In the last week or so it has been an acute viral infection that has included fierce headaches. In fact I didn’t preach last Sunday’s sermon, despite trying to do it sponsored by Lem-Sip!
Because of that (although I am on the up now) I cancelled a number of diary appointments this week and one bonus for me is that tonight I have managed to write Sunday morning’s ‘ordinary service’ sermon. The evening carol service sermon (which will be on the Magi) should follow in a couple of days’ time. So here goes:
John 1:6-8, 19-28 (Yes, Lectionary fans, I know: I mistakenly looked up the wrong column and this is last year’s Gospel reading for Advent 3 but it was too late to change track.)
Introduction
An evangelist and a pastor took a holiday together to go bear hunting in Canada. One evening the pastor was sitting in their log cabin when he heard cries for help. Looking out of the window he saw the evangelist rushing towards the hut, hotly pursued by a huge grizzly bear. The pastor jumped up to open the door to let his friend in but, at the last minute, the evangelist side-stepped the door while the grizzly bear plunged on in. as the evangelist pulled the door shut from the outside, he yelled, ‘You deal with that one – I’ll go and get some more!’
[Stephen Gaukroger and Nick Mercer, Double Cream, p 73.]
What image comes into your mind when you hear about evangelists or evangelism? Something scary? Maybe not to do with inflicting grizzly bears on others, but perhaps emotional messages and appeals, knocking on the doors of total strangers, or fraudulent types embezzling money out of naïve followers whilst conducting sexual liaisons with people to whom they are not married. Evangelists don’t have a good press, inside or outside the church, even though these are stereotypes of a minority.
Now if I told you I thought John the Baptist was a model evangelist you still might feel apprehensive. All that wilderness living and the diet of locusts and honey makes him sound like he’s been caught in a series of ‘I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here’. And then there is the fierce preaching. No thank you, I’d rather not have him as an example, is the reaction I imagine you having. Well, OK, just a pot of honey.
But indulge me for a few minutes this morning. John is an evangelist, because his entire intention is to point them to Jesus. And if you give me some time, I hope I can show that his example – whilst nevertheless being challenging – might also be an encouraging model for our call to share our faith in Jesus. Here are three models I see in the reading.
1. Witness
Witness – now there’s a word from the courtroom. And sometimes we feel like we’re on trial when talking about our faith. But let me give you a slightly different slant.
Some years ago when many of the bishops being appointed to office in the Church of England seemed to be men of rather sceptical faith, a lay member of the General Synod proposed a motion asking that all future appointees be men who clearly believed in the evidence of the Bible. She was roundly snorted on by various clergy and bishops, notably the Archbishop of York at the time who said that the New Testament was not about evidence, it was about witness.
Well, I couldn’t resist the challenge. I wrote a short letter to the Church Of England Newspaper in which I said something like this:
Dear Sir,
So the Archbishop of York thinks the New Testament is witness, not evidence. That’s funny: I thought witnesses gave evidence.
John the Baptist is a witness, and his witness points to Jesus:
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.
[verses 6-8]
John as witness says, ‘Here is the light: his name is Jesus. Believe in him.’ In other words, John simply speaks of Jesus. And this is the heart of our witness, too. It is simply to speak of what we know about Jesus and pray that the Holy Spirit will use that to draw people to Christ.
Put it another way, it is just a case of telling our story of Jesus in our lives. Think of the things we know Jesus has done in us and for us. Think of how we first came to know him. Think of what he has been up to recently. All these things constitute our witness.
But some of us face a problem at this point. We say, ‘I don’t have anything special or exciting to recount, I’m just an ordinary Christian who hasn’t had a colourful life. It won’t make for a compelling story.’
And of course much of this will be because we know the culture of the spectacular testimony: the person converted from a life of drugs and crime; the wealthy person who thought money was the answer to everything until encountering Christ; the celebrity who discovers that fame is not enough. Only a few days ago I was at a meeting where I heard a most moving testimony of someone who wrecked his family and his career in the city through alcoholism and became homeless, but who met Christ on a Salvation Army rehab course. The man was not arrogant and was careful to say that even now, many years later, he is still a recovering alcoholic.
If we feel that our witness is insignificant or even worthless when put alongside these exciting stories, then I need to say one thing: it is not the drama of the story that matters but the honesty. The stories that become page-turning paperbacks are helpful for many people (so long as they are not simply seduced by worldly glamour). But many others need to hear that this Jesus thing works in the ordinary life of someone like them. So tell your story – even the bits with the struggles, don’t airbrush them out. And pray that the Holy Spirit will make your witness into evidence for your conversation partners.
2. Voice
Go to a party or social gathering or some other event where you meet strangers and how does the typical conversation go? The introduction tends to include name, where you come from, family status and occupation. It might also include why you are at this place. People want to know who you are. Listen, then, to the religious delegation from Jerusalem that is sent to quiz John:
This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah.’ And they asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the prophet?’ He answered, ‘No.’ Then they said to him, ‘Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?’ He said,
‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
“Make straight the way of the Lord” ’,
as the prophet Isaiah said.
[verses 19-23]
John doesn’t play the game. ‘Never mind me, I’m no big shot. I’m just a voice. And I’m calling you to get ready for the Lord.’
He was a voice, and we are voices too: voices given over to singing his praises.
But what we sing isn’t always a song that the world wants to hear, especially if the lyrics are, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord’. That could be uncomfortable. That means all that life-changing, repentance stuff, doesn’t it? Who wants to hear that? And – who wants to hear a song like that from yet more hypocritical Christians, who are saying one thing in public and doing something else in private? They’re all the same, aren’t they?
So let me suggest that the song is not merely voiced by our lips, but by our hands and feet, too. If our witness is that Jesus has changed us then the ‘voice’ of our lives needs to speak of that change and be the first challenge to people. I am not saying we should be silent about the need to leave sin behind, but I am saying that a consistent life will be an authentic voice. The call to the world to ‘straighten up’ will be more believable from people who are manifestly being straightened out themselves. Not perfect, but on the way.
John the Baptist had two basic reactions to his call for people to make straight the way of the Lord. The first was the vast queue of people who came for his baptism, professing repentance. He called them to ‘bear fruits worthy of repentance’ [Luke 3:8], that is, show their repentance by their new lifestyle. The second response was Herod imprisoning him for telling him his marriage to Herodias was immoral. That led, not to a pool of water but a pool of blood. John’s blood.
Nevertheless authentic Christian evangelism cannot avoid this. Jesus didn’t negotiate with the rich young ruler and say, ‘Come back, it doesn’t matter if you only give a little bit to the poor. Does that sound better?’ We have no mandate to massage the message. The Gospel message is both invitation and challenge. Faithful evangelism holds the two together.
3. Compère
Go back to the late Seventies and early Eighties when I was part of a group of young Christians at my home church. They formed a singing group. Yes, ‘they’, not ‘we’ – have you heard me sing? They called themselves Tapestry (glad I wasn’t in – too twee!) and became very popular for a few years in local church circles.
I have to say I didn’t always handle my exclusion from the gang well. I felt rejected and it showed. But occasionally they involved me. On one occasion in December they put on a big concert at our church. It was packed out and Tapestry had a packed programme of music. I was asked to introduce them at the beginning of the first and second halves of the show.
The next morning was the Third Sunday of Advent and our superintendent minister preached on John the Baptist. He hadn’t been there the night before but he said that he regarded John the Baptist as a compère for Jesus. The rôle of the compère is to introduce the main attraction and then get out of the way. You can imagine how it hit me after the previous evening when my job had been that of compère: I was to introduce Tapestry and get out of the way.
And my superintendent minister was right about John. Listen to verses 24 to 28 again:
Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. They asked him, ‘Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?’ John answered them, ‘I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.’ This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.
When I talked about evangelism as ‘witness’ I said that our witness was the story of Jesus in our lives. And the emphasis is on Jesus, not us. We’re not here to big up anybody but Jesus. To whom or what do we want to draw attention? Ourselves? Our church or religious club? Neither will do: the focus has to be Jesus. He is the centre and circumference of our evangelism.
Why? Because it is Jesus who changes people’s lives, not us. It is Jesus who comes in the humility of the Incarnation as the great rescuer. It is Jesus, not us, who has matchless teaching. It is Jesus who overturns the world’s preoccupation with power, wealth and fame with good news for the poor. It is Jesus who dies on a cross to redeem creation and who is raised from the dead to transform history. It’s not about showing how clever I am: that gets in front of Jesus. It’s not primarily about getting someone to join the Methodist Church, because believe me there are many times when the church gets in the way of Jesus, too.
No. it’s about saying something like this. Here is how Jesus has changed my life. I hope you can see the changes. He wants to change you, too. And he has already done and given everything to that end, two thousand years ago. You don’t need any additions to Jesus, no optional extras, no fancy trim. What he has done is completely sufficient.
And that’s why we are compères: because Jesus is more than enough, and because Jesus deserves the applause of his creation. Don’t try to grab any applause for yourself: just regale people with the wonder and beauty of Jesus. And then get out of the way.
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