John again?

This Sunday we are scheduled by the wider church to have John 1 as the gospel lesson.  It is the Gospel of John's presentation of John the Baptist - although in the gospel of John, he is John the Witness instead.

If you read through the first chapter of John you will note that the Baptizer devotes more time to who he isn't than to who he is...   His entire job is to witness to the one who is coming....the one who is among you....the one you don't recognize....the one who is greater than I am.

Every Advent we have two John the Baptist texts and I know that preachers are often found sputtering....What, John again?  The implication, of course, is that there is not enough to be said to fill two Sundays of preaching around John and his ministry of witnessing and baptizing.

Yet we tell the Christmas story every year.  Again and again, Luke 2 is read - some of us are able to repeat from memory long portions of the story without any true effort on our part. 

What is the point of re-visiting a story we know so well? 

Well, with John it is to help us stop and consider all that the coming of God in the person of Jesus might mean for us....this year, this day, this decade,.....you can add your own caveat here.   No rushing into a glowing story of a newborn babe without proper consideration of what it means to have a God who chooses to take on the limitations of being human and stand among us. 

Not simply among the glowing candles of a Christmas Eve service.  Not simply among the gaily wrapped presents of our Christmas mornings.  But among us - in the between time - between the first and second comings - between the craziness of preparation and the let down of the day after.  The miracle of the incarnation - the taking on of human flesh by God in Jesus - we will never be able to wrap our heads around that.  It is too wonderful, frightful, amazing, and in the end incomprehensible.

It takes us two weeks of John the Baptist's 'crying out' to even begin to get us ready.