conversation and investigation

Perhaps it was happening! Perhaps the event the nation of Judah had waited hundreds of years for was actually happening. There was a man preaching, and crowds were going out into the desert to hear him, perhaps he was the man they had waited for, the promised savior who would make everything right. A party of priests and lawyers were sent from the temple to make enquiries; they arrived at the river side and began to question the preacher, known as John. John’s father was a priest; his mother was a descendent of priests. So they were respectful when they questioned him.

“Who are you?” they said to John.

We do not know what the investigators thought as they began the investigation. Were they excited and hopeful, or fearful and threatened? Perhaps they were merely skeptical. I do not know them, but I know today’s people, especially the people who come asking questions about God. These modern people come sometimes yearning, hoping, longing; they want to find the way to know, and trust the Supreme Power. Then there are the people who come close enough to hurl a statement in the direction of the preacher, but are distrustful of religion. Uncertain how to react to a higher power, they are threatened but hopeful. They wish that perhaps God would pay them a special visit, in order to convince and reassure them, and all the while they are unaware that this is just what God has done. The skeptical ones never come at all; they are obsessed with their skepticism and guard it carefully from anything that might weaken it.

“I am not the Messiah,” replied John, and their hopes were disappointed.

“Then who are you, Are you Elijah?”

“I am the voice of a person crying out in the wilderness, prepare the way for the Lord God, and make straight roads for Him.”

The priests and lawyers returned to the temple, and reported that John was just a country preacher and should be watched because he had said that the national religion had become corrupt. John went on preaching that people should stop sinning, and be baptized for the forgiveness of the sins that they had committed. The priests themselves taught that people should stop sinning, but how could they, of all people, allow John to baptize them in order to signifying God’s forgiveness? To be baptized would mean acknowledging that they had sinned, how could the leaders of the people do that? Since that time there has been a big change, today all religious leaders confess that they are sinners in need of forgiveness.

So for the priests and the lawyers the excitement waned. They had not discovered the Messiah; they had simply discovered a country preacher who talked about sin. That never did discover the Messiah, even when he stood before them at his trial.

What about the people I meet today? The hopeful ones and the fearful ones, they have heard the news that the Messiah has indeed come and is going to make everything right. Some people respond with joy, their life has got so far out of their control that they are delighted to renounce sins and be baptized. Their lives bear evidence of dramatic change; they have stopped sinning and become new people.

Then there are the ones who do not respond joyfully, they are the virtuous people; people living helpfully in family and society, contributing to the cure not the sickness of humanity. All their lives they have conscientiously lived a moral respectable lifestyle. They have already forgiven themselves for their small lapses from the good life, but to renounce sin would be like saying they have been bad people, when they have in fact been good people.

I want to call after these people, ‘Don’t go away, you need another perspective. It’s not about you, it’s about God. Because of the sinless perfection of God he cannot be united with any degree of sinfulness, he can only unite with sinless perfection; this is what is offered to you.’
“How can I be made sinless, how can I be perfect?” they question, and their questions are rarely hopeful, usually they are just bewildered and disappointed...
‘That’s what Jesus does,’ the preachers respond, ‘the sinless perfection of Jesus will be transferred to you, God will see you as made perfect by his Son’s life and death and resurrection. Without that accreditation your good but imperfect nature would never survive union with the perfection of God.’

“Make straight the way of the Lord!” Said John the Baptist.
He says it to you also. Make it straight by renouncing sin and receiving baptism to signify your forgiveness, and receive from God the accreditation of perfection.

Gospel according to John Chapter 1 verse 19 - 24