I was sitting in my therapist’s waiting room this week – as we all do here on the Upper West Side, every single one of us, you know it’s true – and I picked up a magazine to leaf through while I waited. You can tell a lot about a therapist by the publications he or she has out in the waiting room. Maybe your therapist has old copies of People or Us Weekly, or New York magazine, or even The New Yorker lying about the waiting room. But in my therapist’s waiting room, carefully -- but not too obsessively -- arranged on the coffee table for your perusal, are several copies of the Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Now that’s a proper Upper West Side therapist, if you ask me! You get to contemplate the beauties of art before you enter the therapeutic inner sanctum and go on and on about your mother yet again.In this past fall’s Bulletin, it was noted that the Metropolitan Museum had acquired a work by Annibale Carracci, an Italian painter from the Baroque period who is considered along with Carravaggio and Rubens as one of the great Italian Baroque painters. The newly acquired work is called ‘Saint John the Baptist Bearing Witness’ and it captures perfectly our gospel reading today. In the foreground, the large and heroic figure of John has started to kneel beside the flowing River Jordan and he quite literally points to another figure in the background, in the distance, walking along on a curving mountain path, coming towards us. John is clearly speaking in the painting, saying, “Behold, the Lamb of God” as he begins to kneel and pay homage to the messiah. Chancing upon this painting helped me to realize just what a departure today’s gospel is from the usual depictions of John the Baptist.
In the accounts of John the Baptist found in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, we see the enigmatic figure of John from a couple of perspectives. We see him as a fiery preacher, accusing the Pharisees of being a brood of vipers. In those other gospels, we see John preaching repentance to the sinful nation of Israel – with plenty of fire and a nice helping of brimstone -- and offering his baptism as a ritual cleansing from sin. Last Sunday in the account of Jesus’ baptism from Matthew’s gospel, we saw John in yet another guise, that of the humble man, unworthy to untie Jesus’ sandal, who seeks to defer from baptizing Jesus, because he says it is Jesus who should be baptizing him.An interesting figure, this John the Baptist, in these accounts -- a bit of a paradox, sort of a humble firebrand, not a combination of attributes often found. Actually, come to think of it, there is no shortage of firebrands around today – all those pundits and commentators -- and not one of them strikes me as particularly humble.
But be that as it may, in today’s gospel, we see John the Baptist in yet another light, with a, well, not exactly a different message, but a message that comes from a different place perhaps, or maybe a message with a different focus, a message that serves another purpose, and that has something very specific to say.
In the Fourth Gospel from which we read this morning, John doesn’t say anything about repentance. The word is never used. And even more surprisingly, John the Baptist doesn’t claim that the baptisms he is conducting have anything at all to do with cleansing us of our sins. Repentance is a major concern associated with John in the other three gospels, but not here, not in the Fourth Gospel. John says, “I came baptizing with water,” not to purify the nation, but rather, he says, “that he (Jesus) might be revealed to Israel." (Jn 1:31b).
Whatever the meaning of baptism has come to be, we can see that John wanted it to point to Jesus, to lead to Jesus, to make everyone aware of the one who has come. John is almost adamant in today’s gospel. He is there to witness, he is there to be a herald of the Lamb of God.
Throughout the passage, we find the vocabulary of witness and the actions of a herald. “This is he!” John proclaims. Look, see, he says. John uses words like ‘revealed’ and proclaims, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven (upon him.)” (Jn 1: 32) “I have seen,” he tells us; “and have testified…” (Jn 1:34).
Then, the next day, John continues, like a broken record almost, he says “Look here is the Lamb of God!” (Jn 1:36) and it is his exclamation, his insistent witness overheard by two of his own followers that captivates them, captures, even commands their attention and their actions. And Andrew and then his brother Simon Peter depart from John to become Jesus’ first disciples. Andrew and Peter heard was John had to say and they heeded it, and it changed the direction of their lives.
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Of course, this weekend we can’t help but to think of another of God’s heralds, The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King spoke out against oppression and he called our nation to repentance, much like John the Baptist. And like a herald, he pointed us toward our salvation, because the evil of racism wasn’t just a wrong committed against African-Americans. It was a wrong against all Americans because it caused us to defy our better natures and our highest ideals. Dr. King saw a path to salvation for our country, and he heralded it, and he paid an awful price for speaking God’s truth. But, at least in part, our nation heeded his message, and in dismantling government sanctioned segregation, we have found a bit of our salvation, not just for the victims of racism, but for the perpetrators of it and the unwitting or unwilling beneficiaries of it. We have become a more perfect union. Like Andrew and Simon Peter, we heard the voice of truth, and it changed the direction of our nation – and caused our nation to follow what some would call, myself among them, a more Godly path. 
After coming across Caracci’s painting this week, I did a little research on the ways in which John the Baptist has been portrayed in art. One of the attributes you find in stained glass and medieval images of John the Baptist is the Holly Tree. For like John the Baptist, the holly is a herald of Jesus. It blooms in bright red berries at end of the year, just as we are about to celebrate the nativity of Jesus. And the sharp spines at the tips of the holly leaf, and the blood red berries remind us that John the Baptist, like Jesus himself, was to suffer and undergo an untimely passion and a cruel death.++++++++++++
Just over a week ago, in Tucson, Arizona, a gunman opened fire at a gathering of an elected official and the people she was duly elected to represent, wreaking terror and havoc, seriously wounding a member of the U. S. Congress, injuring nearly a score of innocent bystanders, and in the end, killing six, including a nine year old girl born on yet another day of terror, September 11, 2001. We’ve all thought a lot about that incident, and I’ll bet you, like me, have thought a lot about that little girl and her family. What a set of dates to carve into a child-sized tombstone, September 11th, 2001 and January 8th, 2011.
Many have spoken about these events in the past week. Some have said things that have deepened the wounds we feel – out of what seems to be more of a regard for their own exoneration than for concern for those of us who feel so disheartened about what happened in that Tucson grocery story last Saturday. But others have tried to help us make sense of what happened a week ago. Some have tried to help us redeem those horrible and indefensible acts.
President Obama spoke at a memorial service in Tucson, and I’d like to ask you to listen again to some of what he had to say. In particular, what he had to say about the youngest victim in Tucson. The president said,
Imagine: here was a young girl who was just becoming aware of our democracy; just beginning to understand the obligations of citizenship; just starting to glimpse the fact that someday she too might play a part in shaping her nation's future. She had been elected to her student council; she saw public service as something exciting, something hopeful. She was off to meet her congresswoman, someone she was sure was good and important and might be a role model. She saw all this through the eyes of a child, undimmed by the cynicism or vitriol that we adults all too often just take for granted.
I want us to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it. All of us – we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children's expectations…
The president concluded by urging us to “place our hands over our hearts, and commit ourselves as Americans to forging a country that is forever worthy of (Christina Taylor Green’s) gentle, happy spirit.”
Our president would like us to heed the message of Christina Taylor Green as if she were another herald, sent to us to show us a path to salvation. She didn’t proclaim a message as did John the Baptist or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. but she certainly paid the price that our heralds often pay, and like those other heralds, her actions send a strong message. Believe in the ideals this country stands for, be enthusiastic about them, learn more about them, take part in them, have hope in them. If we heed the message of Christina Taylor Green like our president asks us to, we may find that her example could indeed lead our nation toward the salvation of our political process and our public discourse, an improvement much needed, one that I would again call a more Godly path.+++++++++++++
Those elected to point out to us that which can save us are also those who, in the inscrutable ways of the Divine Will, must also pay a terrible price. Maybe that’s the way it is with heralds. I don’t know. It seems unfair, and even unjust. But even more unjust would be to let the messages of God’s chosen heralds go unheeded. Let’s not let the good examples of Christina Taylor Green and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and even of John the Baptist go unnoticed, nor should we let their life changing messages go unheard; and let us not let the meaning of their lives and their sacrifices go unheeded, nor let them, God’s heralds, go unheralded.
Let us pray.
Grant us, Almighty God, the ears to hear the messages you send us through your prophets and heralds, in the days of old and in our own day. May we prove that we are worthy of the price they pay in calling us to our duty to one another, and to you. May we show forth your praise and theirs, not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up our selves to your service and by walking before you in holiness and righteousness and grateful humility all our days, should those days be great in number, or but a precious few. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
© The Rev. Mark R. Collins
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