Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Text (John 1:19-28):
And this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.”
Prayer: Lord God, our heavenly Father, enlighten our darkness with the light of your Holy Spirit, so that I may preach well and we all may hear well, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
There is many a pastor who has had someone say to them, “Who do you think you are?”
Now as yet, I’ve never had anyone say this to me! But I’ve heard many a story about people who have asked this question to their pastor… Normally, this happens when a pastor tells someone that they should do something, and they don’t like what he says. (…which I suppose has a positive side to it, in that “at least you know they’re listening!”)
I knew once some people who had this problem with every pastor they met. “Who do they think they are, prancing around up there?” “Who do they think they are, wearing their white robes, and forgiving people’s sins?” “What right do they have to do such things?”
This sort of thing has been happening in a sense for centuries. And every pastor worries about this sort of thing to a degree. Even in the bible, we see that the young pastor Timothy must have been worried about people taking him to task about his office. And St Paul writes to him, “Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believes an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.” So if anyone were to challenge Timothy with the words, “Who do think you are?” he could simply and confidently say, “I am called and ordained.”
The same goes for the Isaiah, when he was sent to be a prophet, when he said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”
The same goes for Moses, when he was sent to the people of Israel. We read that he says, “But behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, ‘The LORD did not appear to you.’” But then God gives him three signs as a proof of his unique position and authority – the first, to make his staff a snake, the second, to make his hand covered in leprosy, and the third, to turn the water from the Nile into blood.
Now Moses went and performed the miracles, and they believed. But then, when the task-masters and foremen made the Israelites work under harder conditions, so that they had to make bricks without straw, they said, “The LORD look on you and judge, because you have made us stink in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants, and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.”
And then we read that Moses said, “O LORD, why have you done evil to this people? Why did you ever send me?”
When God sends people to do his work, people always challenge them, and say, “Who sent you?” “Who are you to do that?” “Who do you think you are?”
But often it’s the people who say this who deserve to have the question asked of them. A lot of the time, when people say to anyone in some position of authority, “Who do you think you are?”, they are often the people out of line.
It’s a bit like when the serpent says to Eve in the garden of Eden, “You will not die. For God knows that when you eat the fruit, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
“Come on! You’re not going to die! Who does God think he is to threaten you with death?”
+++
In our reading today, John the Baptist gets the same treatment. Some Jews from Jerusalem come to John and say, “Who are you?”
Now they already know who he is. They’re not asking him to tell him his name, or his who his father and mother were, or where he grew up.
They already knew that: after all, John’s father was a priest in the temple, and there was a special miracle when he was born. His mother was old, and past her child-bearing years, and she still gave birth to John. When the angel Gabriel appeared to Zechariah, John’s father, Zechariah wasn’t able to speak, and he couldn’t give people the blessing at the end of service.
This was a big deal – rumours must have spread all around Jerusalem about this. John the Baptist must have been a bit famous. Everyone knew who he was.
But we read in our reading today that the Jews come up to him and say to him, “Who are you?” In other words, “Who do you think you are?” “By what authority do you do these things?” To use an old word, “What is your office?”
Now, when we say “office”, we normally talk about a place where someone works. But in older times, “office” meant a person’s job description, their duties, their role, and also the fact they personally were doing these things and were authorised to do these things. So we might talk about the “Office of the Prime Minister” or the “Office of the Ministry” or about a person holding “Public Office”.
An “office” is more than a person’s job description. It has to do with their whole person, and the fact that they were appointed to do those things as a person specially for the job.
So a pastor holds office. And pastors have a list of things they have to do. But on top of that, if they do certain things which are wrong morally, they sin against the office. So when we hear about the bad conduct of certain clergy with respect to sexual abuse, they not only sin personally, but they sin against their office, and bring every priest and pastor, everyone who holds the same office, into disrepute.
Also, the prime-minister, and politicians hold office. And when politicians and leaders do things that is against good morals, they bring a certain shame to their office, because it causes people to make fun and disrespect the office that they hold.
But back to John: They say to him, “Who are you?” In other words, “What is your office?”
And John answers the question that they all want to know, and says, “I am not the Christ.”
In other words, “If you thought that I was the Christ, if you think that I am the Messiah, you’re wrong.”
John’s very careful to make sure that they all know that he’s not pretending to hold an office which doesn’t belong to him.
So they try again. “What then? Are you Elijah?”
And John says, “No.”
Now in another place, Jesus says that he is the Elijah that is to come. And also when John was born, the angel said that he will go in the spirit and the power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children. This was to fulfil the prophecy at the end of Malachi which says that before the Messiah comes, Elijah will come.
Now, Jesus says, that John is in actual fact that Elijah.
But when the Jews say to him, “Are you Elijah?” John says, “No.”
But the Jews thought that the same Elijah from the Old Testament was going to rise from the dead. Now even though John fulfilled the prophecy, he wasn’t actually the same person as Elijah in the Old Testament. If then the Jews were asking him, “Are you Elijah risen from the dead?” Then John was right to answer, “No”.
So the Jews give John another question: “Are you the Prophet?”
In our Old Testament reading today, we heard that God was going to raise up another prophet like Moses. Now Moses was the great prophet of the Old Testament. God established the Old Covenant through him, when Moses sprinkled the blood of the lamb on the people. Now in the New Testament, the great new prophet is Jesus, who established a new covenant through his death on the cross and through the Lord Supper. “This is my blood of the new covenant.” Jesus sprinkled his blood on people through Holy Baptism, and pours out his blood for us in the Lord’s Supper.
Now John isn’t that type of prophet. So he says, “No.”
And he says, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of the Lord.”
Then we see that the Jews really started to question his authority.
Then why are you baptising, if you are neither the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?
In other words, “Who on earth do you think you are?”
And he says, “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.”
Every pastor is a bit like John the Baptist. And every pastor has to make sure that they know who they are, and what they’re there for.
So no. 1: Every pastor has to know that they are not Jesus. That’s the first thing John says, “I am not the Christ.”
Pastors can’t actually save people. They can preach the saving word, but the saving belongs to Jesus, as he sends the Holy Spirit.
And some lay-people don’t always understand this. I remember there was a congregation who had their mind set on calling a certain pastor in the LCA: One pastor! They treated him like he was the Angel Gabriel, or even the Messiah themselves. What a shock it was to them when the Messiah decided not to accept their call!
Also, pastors are not Elijah! They are not the great prophet of the New Testament!
It’s not a pastor’s job to speak new revelations. Everything is already written in the bible. I’m never telling you as a pastor what’s not already written in the bible. And pastors don’t pour out their blood for people – Jesus does that.
But pastors baptise with water. They wash people with the water and the word, as it says in Ephesians. And Jesus promises to be there also, as this happens, to baptise people with the Holy Spirit. Baptism with water and the Holy Spirit are not two different things. Jesus promises that when people are baptised with water, the Holy Spirit is poured out.
Pastors speak the forgiveness of sins. But the forgiveness doesn’t belong to them. Jesus says, Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. If you forgive anyone their sins, they are forgiven.
Pastors consecrate the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper. They don’t make the body and blood of Jesus be there. Jesus does that. He promises to give us his body and blood in the Lord’s Supper. Pastors are not the creators, or the doers here. They are just the servants, the ministers, the instruments through which Jesus does these things.
But every Christian has to bear this in mind too. You are not Christ! You are not Elijah! And you are not the prophet!
All you do is give the cup of cold water to the person who might be an angel in disguise. All you do is carry out your God-given work and tasks, clothe the naked, feed the hungry, comfort the lonely, befriend the person who has no friends, and Jesus promises, when you do it to the least of these my brothers, you have done it to me.
It’s the serpent, the Devil, in the Garden of Eden who doesn’t own up to Eve and say, “I am not God.” Instead, he pretends to be God.
And so there’s a great comfort in the fact that you know that you aren’t God. It means that you can’t fix everything. It means that can’t save anyone.
But God calls you to carry out your work as a son, daughter, mother, father, husband, wife, employee or employer, or in whatever situation he has placed you, faithfully. And he knows that you’re not Jesus.
And when he knows that you’re not Jesus, he forgives you. And thank God for that! And Jesus is not afraid, he is not ashamed to call you his brother and sister. And God the Father is not ashamed to call you his child. And the Holy Spirit is not ashamed to be breathed upon you.
Amen.
Lord God, heavenly Father, we are not Jesus. We cannot save ourselves form our sins. But we thank you for sending him to come and die for us, and rise again from the dead, and to pray for us and to encourage us, and to be a saviour for us. In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.
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