Today’s Scripture Readings

Gospel Reading

NRSV

— 19 This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah.’ And they asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the prophet?’ He answered, ‘No.’ Then they said to him, ‘Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?’ He said, ‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of the Lord” ’, as the prophet Isaiah said. Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. They asked him, ‘Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?’ John answered them, ‘I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.’ This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

John the Baptist had tremendous clarity of purpose and possessed excellent self-knowledge. As speculation begins to mount that he might be the Messiah, he quickly denies it. However, it’s interesting that he also denies being Elijah—the biblical prophet who was supposed to return prior to the Messiah’s coming.

In this aspect, John’s self-knowledge falls short. True, he is not the actual Old Testament figure who was carried up to heaven by a fiery chariot. But we know from Matthew’s Gospel that Jesus himself identifies John the Baptist as the one who, even if he himself did not realise it, had taken up the mantle of the prophet Elijah to herald the coming of the Christ.

Nevertheless, John is sure that he is one who is making straight the way of the Lord. He is confident of his mission, and of his right to baptise. Where does this confidence come from? Not from himself or his name, but from his belief in, his trust in, the one who is coming after him. In this, he shows himself a true prophet: though he sees only obscurely, his faith is grounded in the reality of something, of someone, greater than himself.

And this is the way of faith required of us all. We are not given a complete picture of what is to come; we are not even granted a perfect understanding of who we are in God’s plans. Instead, we are given a model to follow. We are invited into a relationship with Jesus Christ and gently inducted into a way of life in which our faltering steps begin to fall into the pathway laid out by our Master: in which the water of our efforts, like John’s baptising, begins to flow into the wine of the Kingdom of God.