Isaiah was the greatest of the ancient Jewish prophets. Some called him ‘St Paul of the Old Testament.” He had a long ministry of forty years in Judah during very troubled times, seven centuries before the birth of Jesus. His ministry ended when Judah was invaded by the army of the powerful Assyrian empire.

They spared Jerusalem but left the entire Judean countryside a smoking ruin and the people enslaved.

Isaiah survived, but his ministry had ended. He had the time then, and the passion to do the writing that sits under his name about halfway through our Bible.

In his writing, Isaiah described the visions God had given him over the years of the coming Messiah, his nature and his purpose beautiful poems, gems of hope and encouragement that inspire us today.

We heard one this morning:

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,

Proclaim to her that her sin has been paid for.

and earlier in his writings

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light;

 For to us a child is born,

To us a son is given,

And the government will be upon his shoulders.

And he will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. [1]

But there is one prophecy of Isaiah that speaks of someone other than the promised Messiah, and this is the one that Mark uses to introduce his gospel.

‘A voice of one calling in the wilderness

“Prepare the way for the Lord,

Make straight paths for him”[2]

 

Then Mark picks up the narrative:

“John the Baptiser appeared in the wilderness,

proclaiming a baptism of repentance

for the forgiveness of sin.

And people from the whole Judean countryside

and all the people of Jerusalem

were going out to him,

and were baptised in the River Jordan,

confessing their sins.”[3]

Let’s enter into this scene a little more.

There’s so much going on, and Mark is not strong on biographical detail.  He does tell us that John’s diet was basic to say the least, and that he wore garments of camels’ hair with a leather belt, possibly as a nod to the Prophet Elijah, who did the same in ancient times. [4]Physical comfort was obviously not a consideration for John.

But what motivated this man to take upon himself the fulfilment of prophecy, the identity of herald and the monumental task of preparing the way for the Messiah? How did he know that he was the one to do it?

The answer lies in chapter 1 of Luke’s gospel, where we can read John’s back story Everything had been leading to this moment. John had been chosen by God from his conception to be the herald of the Messiah’s coming.

John’s elderly father Zechariah was a priest of the temple. On duty alone in the temple one day, he had a vision of an angel standing by the altar. The angel told him that in spite of their advanced age, he and his wife Elizabeth would soon have a son. The angel went on:

Your son will be a joy and a delight to you,

And many will rejoice because of his birth.

He will be filled with the Holy Spirit from his birth.

Many of the people of Israel will he bring back to the Lord their God.

And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah,

to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient

to the wisdom of the righteous

To make ready a people prepared for the Lord.’[5]

Imagine hearing that about your still-to be-conceived son! At John’s birth, Luke tells us that Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit, prophesying with words that are headed in our scriptures as ‘Zechariah’s Song’, words of thanksgiving and praise to God and pure, unadulterated joy!

‘Praise be to the Lord,

            The God of Israel,

because he has come and has redeemed his people.

And you, my child,

            will be called the prophet of the Most High

for you will go on before the Lord, to prepare the way for him

to give his people the knowledge of salvation

            through the forgiveness of their sins.’

(Go home and read the rest of this beautiful prophecy in Luke 1.)

So, John grew up with loving, faithful parents who delighted in their son. They knew from the beginning that God had chosen him for a special task that he was not destined to stay at home in obscurity.

When the time was right, John went to live in the desert, until God called him to begin the ministry he had been preparing for all his life preaching the baptism of repentance to the people of God in preparation for the coming of the Messiah, the one whose sandals John saw himself unworthy to untie.

The people flocked to hear him. Crowds from Jerusalem and country people from all over, the faithful few who had never strayed and men and women who until John’s challenge had ignored God’s call on their lives for years.  Others came out of curiosity.

All of them intermingling, standing about on the riverbank, listening to this strange wild man of God calling them to turn from their old ways to a totally renewed life, and to receive baptism of repentance as an outward symbol of their commitment, in preparation for the coming of the Messiah.

At this time the Jews were a weary people whose national life and life of faith had sunk to a desperately low point. No prophetic word had been heard in the land for centuries. Their great patriarchs and prophets were long gone, and the great signs and wonders of God had gone with them lost in the mist of their ancient history. Now they were living under a pagan Roman army of occupation exiles in their own country.

Their king was corrupt, their priests were worldly, yet through their history there had always been a remnant who had remained faithful who didn’t lose hope that one day things would be different that one day the Messiah would come.

The crowd on the banks of the Jordan, listening to John’s message and coming forward one by one for baptism, became the people of hope for their generation. They were people who had come to understand their own weakness, who recognized their need for God and for a renewed relationship with him.

The practice of baptism wasn’t new to the Jewish people. People from other races coming into the Jewish faith were routinely baptised in cleansing from sin as part of their initiation. Israelites were not baptised; they were God’s chosen people and didn’t need to be cleansed. The surprise in John’s ministry was that he, in obedience to God, was calling the Jews themselves into baptism, calling them to turn away from their sin, with a total commitment to serving God, and living again as his people.

The penitents kept coming, drawn by the challenge of John’s spirit-filled preaching.

Then one day he looked into the crowd on the riverbank and saw, standing there, waiting for the baptism of repentance, the Messiah, the sinless one! John tries to deter Jesus to gain some understanding:

“I need to be baptized by you; why do you come to me?”

Jesus’ answer is recorded in Matthew’s gospel:

Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfil all righteousness.[6]

So, John led Jesus into the river, and held him as his body was totally submerged.

I wonder how John felt at that moment…

As Jesus rose from the water, something happened that our gospel writer found hard to describe. Mark writes that Jesus saw the heavens open and the spirit descending on him like a dove.

This is not about a gap opening up kilometres in the sky and a dove flying down. “Heaven” in the Bible often means God’s dimension beyond our ordinary reality. It’s more as though an invisible curtain, just in front of us, is suddenly drawn back, and instead of the familiar scene around us, we are standing in the presence of a totally different reality. And within that reality, in a way we cannot begin to understand, as Jesus stood in the water after his baptism, the Holy Spirit touched him, filled him and equipped him for all that lay ahead. He heard too the voice of his dear heavenly father, his Abba, naming him as his beloved son, assuring him of his love, and affirming him in the life in Nazareth that he has left behind, and in the ministry that has begun with his baptism.

In preparing this sermon, I’ve been reflecting on our own service of baptism.

In all my years of ministry, among my most joyous moments have come when I look into the face of the person whom I’ve just baptized (usually a small baby), make the sign of the cross on their forehead and speak these words:

“I sign you with the sign of the Cross to show that you are marked as Christ’s own forever.”

What a beautiful thing to remind us of the love of Jesus in coming as Emmanuel, God with us, to live and die and rise again to bring us back to him when we wander!

Next is the bidding of how to stay on the path:

Live as a disciple of Christ;

fight the good fight,

finish the race

keep the faith.

Confess Christ crucified,

proclaim his resurrection,

look for his coming in glory.

Shine as a light in the world

to the glory of God the Father.”

There it is, the call of God to all of us, every baptized Christian, to live a life of Christlikeness, to be a disciple of Jesus the call that is so often drowned out by the clamour of our daily lives.

The outworking of the call is different for everybody. We each have to discover God’s will and purpose for ourselves, because each of us is unique. We all have our own life experiences, gifts and talents, our limitations and frailties, our family circumstances, the health or fragility of our bodies the very age we are. All these form the framework of our discipleship.

It’s not always easy.  To belong to Jesus means more than that deep abiding feeling of being cherished and loved by our saviour. There’s a struggle in the understanding that there are conditions for discipleship, and that “following” means some hard demands.

Jesus said, “If any want to become my disciples let them deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me.”

To follow Jesus means that sometimes we will be rejected and misunderstood.

Sometimes we will make mistakes. He may lead us where, left to ourselves, we would never choose to go. Sometimes we will need to give where nothing seems to be returned, or persist when we look at ourselves and think, “I have nothing left to offer!”

To follow is to serve, even when body and spirit are tired, and to never really know what lies ahead. To follow Jesus is to live with mystery and to walk in faith, knowing only that we are deeply loved by him, the one who calls us.

We can’t do any of this on our own. It’s only with the help of the Holy Spirit that we can even begin, and he works in and through our lives to the degree that we are open to him. In the presence of his Holy Spirit, he is as close to us as our next breath, all loving, and the same yesterday, today and forever.

My prayer for all of us is that we will come to Christmas Day with hearts not only eager to celebrate the joy of Christ’s coming, but also confident with the assurance that we have grown in love and understanding of our dear Jesus, Lord and saviour and that we ourselves have changed in some small way during this Advent to become more like him.

Jesus loves us with an everlasting love out of the total generosity of his heart. May each of us respond to that love in our own unique way as we listen to him during this time of waiting and answer his call.

As I read again these words from the service of baptism, imagine the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking to you at your own baptism at the very beginning of your own Christian journey:

Live as a disciple of Christ;

fight the good fight,

finish the race

keep the faith.

Confess Christ crucified,

proclaim his resurrection,

look for his coming in glory.

Shine as a light in the world

to the glory of God the Father.” Amen

[1] Isiah 9. 2a,6

[2] Is. 40. 3

[3] Mark 1. 4-5

[4] 2 Kings.1. 8

[5] Luke1

[6] Matthew 3.15