by CCW | 24 December 2023 10:00
The questions reverberate with great intensity in today’s Gospel. “Who are thou?” If not the Christ, then “Art thou Elijah?” If not Elijah, then “Art thou the Prophet?” If not the Prophet, then “Who art thou? that we may give an answer to them that sent us. What sayest thou of thyself?” Only then do we learn what Jesus told us last Sunday about John the Baptist as “more than a prophet”. He says of himself “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Isaiah.” Ego vox clamantis in deserto. This in turn leads to the last question. “And Why baptizest thou then, if thou be not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”
This parade of questions might seem to correspond to our contemporary obsessions about personal identity. Rather it counters and corrects such tendencies. The whole scene is known as “the record” or “the witness of John,” meaning John the Baptist. It complements wonderfully the Epistle reading from Philippians that “the Lord is at hand.” And wonderfully so since this day, the Fourth Sunday in Advent, is also Christmas Eve. Both the readings and this day itself bring us to Christ in the meaning of his coming to us.
The questions of the “Priests and Levites from Jerusalem”, later identified as Pharisees, point us to a deeper understanding of what it means to be human, namely, the desire to know. They show us that universal quest for knowledge, for meaning and understanding, not information. In a way, they anticipate and are like the “Magi from Anatolia,” seekers all. They are from Jerusalem, not in Jerusalem. They have come into the wilderness of “Bethany beyond Jordan” in the quest to know who John the Baptist is. The Christ, Elijah, the Prophet? “Who art thou?” The passage comes immediately after the Prologue of John’s Gospel, part of which is read at Christmas Eve. It focuses on the ministry of John the Baptist who prepares for the coming of Christ in us.
How? What is John’s ministry? Mark tells us concisely just after quoting this same passage from Isaiah that “John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” But the baptism of John with water through the confession of sin is not the forgiveness of sins. Yet it signals the profound desire for forgiveness, a metanoia, a change in outlook and understanding in us. In other words, it highlights our desire for something more, for wholeness and truth. Thus, John the Baptist points us to Jesus. That is the point of this Gospel. As John the Baptist explains, “I baptize with water: but there standeth one among you, whom ye know not: he it is who cometh after me, whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to unloose.” And the very next day (as it will be literally for us}, “John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.”
The imagery belongs to the Passion of Christ and thus to the deeper meaning of his Advent and Nativity. He comes as Redeemer and Saviour. He is the forgiveness of sins which through John we can only seek but which can only be realized through the Cross and Passion which is only possible through the humanity and the divinity of Christ. Thus Christ “defines for us what it is to be God, and what it is to be human, in one, at the same time”.
We cannot come to the mystery of Christmas apart from the awareness of sin and the desire for forgiveness. Christmas is inseparable from the Passion. The Advent Sundays teach us about the radical meaning of Christ’s nativity and point us to a new and deeper understanding of our humanity as grounded in the self-giving life of God made known to us through Jesus Christ. “The mystery of God and the mystery of the human being … are only known together, as one and the same, the theanthropos, the God-man.”
The witness of John shows us that our identities do not arise from our personal assertions and claims about ourselves. Rather they belong to our lives in Christ, to the truth of our humanity in unity with God and in God’s will for our good. Thus “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding” is the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ, “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” Like John the Baptist, we live for God and so, too, for one another, and not as autonomous and isolated beings. Our true fulfillment is in Christ, not in ourselves.
John the Evangelist in the latter part of the Prologue tells us parenthetically that John the Baptist “bore witness to [Christ, saying], This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, for he was before me’. And from his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace.” We wait upon that fullness coming to us in the fullness of time and gathering us into the eternity of God.
Fr. David Curry
Advent 4
December 24th, 2023
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2023/12/24/sermon-for-the-fourth-sunday-in-advent-14/
Copyright ©2026 Christ Church unless otherwise noted.