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Today's Sermon
Jun. 24th, 2012 03:29 pmAs St. John's follows the Roman Catholic Lectionary, we celebrated the Nativity of St. John the Baptist today rather than a Sunday after Trinity.
June 24, 2012 Nativity of St. John the Baptist
Sermon delivered at St. John the Evangelist, 10 AM.
First Reading: Isaiah 49:1-6; Ps: 138;
Epistle: Acts 13:22-26;
Gospel: Luke 1:57-66,80
“His name is John.”
In the name of God, the one, the Undivided Trinity. AMEN.
Most of us will have seen the news stories about the floods that have resulted from the unseasonably heavy rain that's fallen on northern England this last week. A priest in the area was asked by the civic authorities to hold a public liturgy to ask God to deliver them from the rain and subsequent flooding. The priest refused, saying, “I'm in marketing, not in production.”
St. John the Baptist was in marketing. Prophecy, after all, is simply marketing in advance of production.
The birth of a prophet is often the first opportunity for the prophet to make a mark on history. In John's case, this meant being the answer to prayer by not only Zechariah, a priest of Israel, but by the entire community. The name John in Hebrew means Gracious—which describes many a John whom we know and love. Gracious, full of the gifts of God.
One of the gifts John the Baptist had was the gift of gab. Prophets have to have this in order to be effective. Those who are silent are of no use to God in calling people to account.
Modern advertising has the gift of gab. If we turn on ITV or commercial radio we hear messages constantly about what we are to buy, or do, or even be in order to be happier. No advertising actually tells us what to buy in order to be poorer, or sadder.
Advertisers use tricks in order to catch our attention. Some of these tricks are trivial, such as increasing the volume of the commercial so that the change in sound attracts our minds to what the advertiser is saying. Some are more subtle, such as integrating the company's logo with the visual of the ad, so that we absorb it and subsequently desire the product, even if we do not remember the advertising.
Some of you will remember Apple's first television advertisement, in the 1980's. It showed a crowd listening to a forceful speaker who was telling them that they needed to conform. The audience suddenly rose up as one and rebelled. The Apple logo then filled the screen as the ad ended. This was the first step towards the dominance of Apple in the electronic sphere that we see today.
John the Baptist not only spoke forcefully, he also presented himself forcefully. He did not dress in finery or in colours. He was clad in animal skins, and ate locusts and wild honey. I can't say that I'd look very good in a bearskin, and I'm not fond of eating insects. Honey, being sugar, would be very bad for me as well.
John was a complete package. He spoke and prophesied as he lived: simply, strongly, and without guile. It's interesting that the advertising executives of today do not live as John did, and yet are powerful people whose mere word brings millions of people to buy things they previously did not know they wanted.
So John was the first advertising executive. He was not advocating that Israel buy anything; in fact, he wanted them to do the opposite. And what he advocated was not popular at all.
Repentance is not an easy sell. When people do something for which they should repent, it's easy to ask them to forget it, go on with their lives, and try not to do it again. The hard thing is to get people to admit that they have done wrong. The word repentance itself comes from Latin and means to be punished more powerfully. To relive that feeling you get when you have done wrong and know that you have done wrong. And that's what John was selling.
When you burn your finger on a pot, what do you do? You go to the sink and open the cold tap, and let the water run over your finger to make it feel better and alleviate the burning.
When I was a child the method used to remedy a burn was to smear butter on it. All this did was to heat up the butter a bit; it didn't actually relieve the symptoms and actually made things a bit worse.
John knew how to alleviate that feeling of constantly punishing yourself for sins that you committed in the past. His baptism, while not a baptism in the Christian sense of that word, was a recognition that punishment was painful and left lasting scars on the mind of the sinner. Dipping the sinner in the Jordan River was a symbol of washing away the sin and the punishment for sin. John was making the people he baptised clean and whole, ready for the advent of the Messiah.
We hear in the Gospel story quite a bit about the miraculous birth of John. His mother was old, his father lost the power of speech when doubting the acts of God, and regained it when he named the child as God wished. Now I wonder, why on earth did God want the child named John? His relatives wanted to name the child after his father, Zechariah, which means God remembers.
Remembering has to do with the past. John, however, had to do with the future. Jesus was about to be born, about to make his mark on the world. And John was Jesus's elder cousin, born to witness to what would happen to the world, not to what had happened in the world. God wanted the child to show that now, as the Messiah was entering the world, that world was full of grace, just as the beginning of St. John the Evangelist's gospel says: full of grace and truth.
So the birth of John the Baptist meant that grace was coming into the world. His life—his very name—testified to that grace. And so should we all. I suppose that John was the first example of truth in advertising.
May we all be advertisements for the grace that God provides in the world, living lives of repentance and joy, and marketers for the glory of God, to whom be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion, and praise both now and evermore. AMEN.
After the Eucharist one of the congregation came up to me and complimented me on the sermon. It turns out she was a first-time visitor to St. John's, and seems to have come out of Evangelical-tradition worship. I'm certain that St. John's was quite different from what she is used to. But it was nice to hear that someone enjoyed the sermon and remembered enough to comment on it.
June 24, 2012 Nativity of St. John the Baptist
Sermon delivered at St. John the Evangelist, 10 AM.
First Reading: Isaiah 49:1-6; Ps: 138;
Epistle: Acts 13:22-26;
Gospel: Luke 1:57-66,80
“His name is John.”
In the name of God, the one, the Undivided Trinity. AMEN.
Most of us will have seen the news stories about the floods that have resulted from the unseasonably heavy rain that's fallen on northern England this last week. A priest in the area was asked by the civic authorities to hold a public liturgy to ask God to deliver them from the rain and subsequent flooding. The priest refused, saying, “I'm in marketing, not in production.”
St. John the Baptist was in marketing. Prophecy, after all, is simply marketing in advance of production.
The birth of a prophet is often the first opportunity for the prophet to make a mark on history. In John's case, this meant being the answer to prayer by not only Zechariah, a priest of Israel, but by the entire community. The name John in Hebrew means Gracious—which describes many a John whom we know and love. Gracious, full of the gifts of God.
One of the gifts John the Baptist had was the gift of gab. Prophets have to have this in order to be effective. Those who are silent are of no use to God in calling people to account.
Modern advertising has the gift of gab. If we turn on ITV or commercial radio we hear messages constantly about what we are to buy, or do, or even be in order to be happier. No advertising actually tells us what to buy in order to be poorer, or sadder.
Advertisers use tricks in order to catch our attention. Some of these tricks are trivial, such as increasing the volume of the commercial so that the change in sound attracts our minds to what the advertiser is saying. Some are more subtle, such as integrating the company's logo with the visual of the ad, so that we absorb it and subsequently desire the product, even if we do not remember the advertising.
Some of you will remember Apple's first television advertisement, in the 1980's. It showed a crowd listening to a forceful speaker who was telling them that they needed to conform. The audience suddenly rose up as one and rebelled. The Apple logo then filled the screen as the ad ended. This was the first step towards the dominance of Apple in the electronic sphere that we see today.
John the Baptist not only spoke forcefully, he also presented himself forcefully. He did not dress in finery or in colours. He was clad in animal skins, and ate locusts and wild honey. I can't say that I'd look very good in a bearskin, and I'm not fond of eating insects. Honey, being sugar, would be very bad for me as well.
John was a complete package. He spoke and prophesied as he lived: simply, strongly, and without guile. It's interesting that the advertising executives of today do not live as John did, and yet are powerful people whose mere word brings millions of people to buy things they previously did not know they wanted.
So John was the first advertising executive. He was not advocating that Israel buy anything; in fact, he wanted them to do the opposite. And what he advocated was not popular at all.
Repentance is not an easy sell. When people do something for which they should repent, it's easy to ask them to forget it, go on with their lives, and try not to do it again. The hard thing is to get people to admit that they have done wrong. The word repentance itself comes from Latin and means to be punished more powerfully. To relive that feeling you get when you have done wrong and know that you have done wrong. And that's what John was selling.
When you burn your finger on a pot, what do you do? You go to the sink and open the cold tap, and let the water run over your finger to make it feel better and alleviate the burning.
When I was a child the method used to remedy a burn was to smear butter on it. All this did was to heat up the butter a bit; it didn't actually relieve the symptoms and actually made things a bit worse.
John knew how to alleviate that feeling of constantly punishing yourself for sins that you committed in the past. His baptism, while not a baptism in the Christian sense of that word, was a recognition that punishment was painful and left lasting scars on the mind of the sinner. Dipping the sinner in the Jordan River was a symbol of washing away the sin and the punishment for sin. John was making the people he baptised clean and whole, ready for the advent of the Messiah.
We hear in the Gospel story quite a bit about the miraculous birth of John. His mother was old, his father lost the power of speech when doubting the acts of God, and regained it when he named the child as God wished. Now I wonder, why on earth did God want the child named John? His relatives wanted to name the child after his father, Zechariah, which means God remembers.
Remembering has to do with the past. John, however, had to do with the future. Jesus was about to be born, about to make his mark on the world. And John was Jesus's elder cousin, born to witness to what would happen to the world, not to what had happened in the world. God wanted the child to show that now, as the Messiah was entering the world, that world was full of grace, just as the beginning of St. John the Evangelist's gospel says: full of grace and truth.
So the birth of John the Baptist meant that grace was coming into the world. His life—his very name—testified to that grace. And so should we all. I suppose that John was the first example of truth in advertising.
May we all be advertisements for the grace that God provides in the world, living lives of repentance and joy, and marketers for the glory of God, to whom be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion, and praise both now and evermore. AMEN.
After the Eucharist one of the congregation came up to me and complimented me on the sermon. It turns out she was a first-time visitor to St. John's, and seems to have come out of Evangelical-tradition worship. I'm certain that St. John's was quite different from what she is used to. But it was nice to hear that someone enjoyed the sermon and remembered enough to comment on it.
