“After me one who is more powerful than I is coming….I have
baptized you with water; but the one who is coming will baptize you with the
Holy Spirit.”
-the words of John the Baptizer, from the 1st
chapter of Mark
How odd, to read about John the Baptizer, for not one, but
two Sundays in Advent! This strange
figure, with wacky clothes and diet, performing baptisms somehow like ours, but
not quite, in the river Jordan, is somehow our messenger, telling us about
Jesus, who is to come.
How does he speak to our longing for a better world? What does he tell us about our desire for God
to draw near? We’re excited about the
baby coming; why do we want to hear him talking about the grown Jesus?
This season of Advent (the four weeks before Christmas) we
are yearning, and hoping, waiting patiently or not, for Jesus to come. We aren’t
just remembering Jesus coming in a stable as a baby, but also waiting
for him to come again in power, and looking for all of the ways he breaks into
our everyday world, making it holy. And
all along, we ask “What will it be like when Jesus comes?”
John the Baptizer is a strange answer! Or, maybe, a strange way to ask that
question!
And while we’re asking about the One to Come, we get to do
some very real baptisms ourselves! With
deep joy, I get to announce to you that we will have two adult baptisms this
Advent season. Nick Candeleria will be
baptized on Dec 11th, with Hal Core as his baptismal sponsor, and
Nick Deriso will be baptized on Dec 18th, with Bridget Jensen
sponsoring. What joy! The Holy Spirit has been busy working in the
lives of Nick and Nick, and through the lives of Bridget and Hal!
In fact, I see this as a sign of the way God is working, so
deeply and awesomely, in all of Grace Lutheran.
Your welcome, your witness, your love, are powerful responses to God at
work in the world. In fact, I think we
have a partial answer to “What does it look like when Jesus comes in our
world?” God’s work looks like you!
And John the Baptizer, with his funky clothes and his misfit
nature- sorry to tell you dear ones, but you and he have an awful lot in
common! Like John, you point the way to
Jesus. Like John, you draw the world
closer to the waters of baptism. Like
John, we pour water of people, trusting in the words of Jesus that the Holy
Spirit gets even more caught up in their lives than before. Like John, we wait
for Jesus, pointing the way….
And all of our desire for a better world is somehow caught
up in this: Jesus coming, in water in wine, in new people coming to us, in
community, in the Holy Spirit moving through us, in the Holy Spirit changing
our lives and our world.
Holy and Blessed Advent to you, dear people of Grace.
Pastor Lura
