Can I Get a Witness?
Staffing the Advance Team
Rev. Amy Butler
(Audio)
Today is the first Sunday after the Epiphany, the season of the church year when the light of God spills in through the cracks of our limited understanding to illumine this human life we’re living. As we travel through these days of Epiphany we’re steadily looking for the light that the life and ministry of Jesus Christ sheds on our lives, trying to learn what we can about what it means to live in relationship with the God of the Universe.
Of course we didn’t live 2000 years ago and, as far as I know, have not physically crossed paths with Jesus of Nazareth. But what we do have guiding our discovery this Epiphany is the biblical witness, stories of people whose lives were changed by their encounters with God-come-to-earth. We share the humanity of these people and their experience with Jesus Christ is a witness, shedding a little more light on this faith adventure you and I have embarked upon this Epiphany.
Last week we observed the testimony of wise seekers from the East who came from a foreign land, spoke strange languages, worshipped unfamiliar gods and, yet, were welcomed into relationship with Jesus. From their witness we learn: even from the beginning of his life Jesus was setting a standard of radical inclusion, making room even for strange people like you and me to enter into relationship with God.
Today we skip forward to the account of another witness whose life intersected Jesus’: John the Baptist. When we join the narrative recounted here in the Gospel of Matthew John the Baptist has established himself as a pretty well-known religious teacher who spent his time stirring up the people with a message predicting the coming of Messiah.
The event recounted in today’s Gospel is commonly known as “The Baptism of Jesus,” when Jesus walked the dusty path out to the Jordan River where John was preaching and jumped right in to life among us. The baptism of Jesus marks the beginning of Jesus’ official ministry, the intense years in which he preached and preached about the coming of God’s kingdom.
As you might recall, John was the son of Zachariah and Elizabeth, relatives of Mary, Jesus’ mother. Zachariah and Elizabeth had long tried to have children without success, so John’s birth was a miraculous event. Through a series of miraculous events Zachariah and Elizabeth came to believe that John was a special child, born, not as Messiah, but as the one who came to announce the coming of Messiah.
That day in the river as he watched Jesus walk toward him, John was preaching an incredible message that Messiah, who they’d all been waiting for for so long, was on the way.
John was one of the founding members . . . of Jesus’ advance team.
Because of where we live we’re used to news about the political landscape, but you can live in the middle of the most rural outpost this week and not be able to escape news story after news story about politics—more than you ever wanted to know.
U.S. Presidential politics: it’s a concentrated view of how human beings communicate a message and, if you ask anyone who has come anywhere near a campaign, strategy and timing, but most especially the planning and staffing of the advance team, is critical to the successful communication of a candidate’s message.
In the life of a campaign, the advance team is technically the team of people who live the candidate’s schedule two or three hours ahead of the candidate. Building on months of work by others who have gone in ahead of them, the members of the advance team go on immediately ahead of the candidate to make sure everything’s ready, to insure that every little detail of an event has been addressed so that, by the time the candidate arrives, the climate is such that the message will be loud and clear.
Even though we survived Iowa and New Hampshire, I’m afraid it’s only going to heat up from here. Behind all the news reports and flashy campaign ads . . . is a whole host of advance team staff. You can be sure that highly skilled folks have been planning for years for this past week’s events in New Hampshire, and for every week that’s ahead of us this year. There are teams “on the ground” in every major community, doing the preliminary work it takes for a candidate to communicate his message. These folks are critical! Without an effective advance team the candidate and staff end up managing logistics rather than accomplishing the critical political task of communicating the message. Candidates without effective advance teams don’t get their message across and, ultimately, don’t win elections.
The Post has been full of stories of campaign volunteers over the last few weeks. A recent article told the story of a group of about 300 young people who spent their Christmas vacations in Iowa campaigning for Libertarian candidate Ron Paul. For weeks this group lived a nomadic life, traveling crammed into a refurbished school bus they dubbed the “Constitution Coach,” sleeping in YMCA camps with no hot water and eating a steady diet of donuts and cold pizza.
Pounding the pavement, fingers numb from the cold, volunteers who were interviewed said their candidate made them feel hopeful about the future of the country. And since they believed his message so much, well, wind-chapped cheeks and lack of sleep are not much to pay for the privilege of getting folks ready to hear the message they believed in.
I was curious to know more so I asked a couple of political types this week: what kind of person do you want on the candidate’s advance team?
Without exception folks said you want to look for a zealot, someone who believes so much in the cause that there’s no question of allegiance. You want to find, they told me, the most detail-oriented, organized, passionate people you can possibly find. You need folks who won’t think twice about long work hours, poor working conditions, lack of amenities and dinner out of the snack machine. You need people who are determined, hardened soldiers for the cause, who believe with all their hearts in the message and person of the candidate.
In short, an ideal member of the advance team is willing to do anything—anything—for the cause. Whatever it takes to get the job done is what these volunteers will do.
John the Baptist was, in effect, the advance team for Jesus. John knew his life had a purpose and he’d devoted his whole life to insuring that he could effectively prepare the way for Jesus to come in and deliver his gospel message of hope.
Just think about it: John fits every description of and advance team member. John lived out in the desert—likely not the most luxurious of living situations. He ate locusts and honey, which certainly would qualify as convenience food for a desert dweller. And he went around absolutely convinced of the message he was promoting. No matter what it took, he was willing to do it to get the people ready for Messiah.
John the Baptist is a witness to what can happen to you and me when we encounter this man Jesus and allow relationship with him to change our lives. We become the ones who are helping to usher in the kingdom of God, proclaiming the Gospel message in a world largely unaware of the reign of God coming to be. You and I are advance team members, folks so sold out for the cause that we would do anything . . . anything it takes to create conditions in which the message can be heard by a world so deeply in need of its hearing.
To serve as staff on an advance team—well, that takes a lot of dedication and commitment. But more than that, it takes a connection with the candidate and his message. After all, without a life-transforming connection there are few who would put up with the hardships of staffing the advance team.
Now, keep in mind that the folks gathered on the riverbank that day, listening to the hellfire and brimstone preaching of John the Baptist, had a view of God that was very removed. God to them was a far-off, all-powerful force that was totally inaccessible by the average joe. You went to synagogue and followed the rules, made the appropriate sacrifices and did what the rabbis said, but among those standing and listening there was no sense that God was among them. To even talk to God had to be done through the priests at the temple, who entered into the Holy of Holies very rarely and, when they did it was with much trepidation. God was someone to be scared of . . . not talked to. God was something bigger than they could imagine . . . not a physical presence standing in front of them. God was a force whose interaction with the world was never personal, only corporate . . . not intimate or individual.
But Jesus . . . Jesus was something altogether different. The unique and audacious claim that Jesus was God-with-us, a tangible expression of God in human form who came to live and work among us, to inspire commitment and connection among the advance team, to give you and me a personal reason to invest—well, this was a new and radical understanding of God and God’s work in the world.
Now remember, Matthew was a devout Jew writing to Jewish Christians who certainly had never experienced God in human form. By the time Matthew’s memoirs appeared the little groups of individuals who heard the message and believed it were trying hard to create some semblance of structure to keep the message going.
Perhaps Matthew knew that the further we got from the historical witness the more we would try to white-wash Jesus’ ministry, to create a slickly-packaged view of Jesus that would fit nicely into our existing understanding of God. So Matthew insisted, and wrote his memories to reflect, that Jesus was God come to live among us, a new and radical way for God to bring healing, wholeness . . . the kingdom of God . . . to be right here on earth.
That was critical, because for John and the first disciples, for Jewish Christians on the riverbank that day and for the first few centuries of believers, for those who gave their lives as martyrs for the Gospel message and even for you and me . . . well, it’s essential for us to know that God understands what it means to be us . . . that is, if we’re going to be radically invested members of the advance team that John the Baptist witnessed for us. We need to KNOW that this man Jesus felt what it feels like to be you and me if we’re ever going to live believing the audacious hope that we might someday be like him.
Folks have been asking me all week for my response to the shocking news that Hillary Clinton got a little misty-eyed when someone asked her how she was doing. A huge news media debate ensued, and reports came in that her staff was trying to downplay the incident. You don’t want to appear to be weak; folks might not think you can compete in presidential politics, especially if you’re breaking new ground.
Yet to the surprise of many commentators and even her own chief strategists, Hillary’s momentary display of emotion seems to have accomplished something they’ve been scrambling to achieve for months: voters finally connected with her.
Who would have thought? All this time the task was to prove without a doubt that she could swim with the sharks. Well-placed advertising; hard-hitting debates; well-crafted sound bites . . . none of these accomplished what it seems turned the political tide in New Hampshire this week, when unprecedented numbers of women turned out at the polls, many saying they were voting for Hillary Clinton because seeing her emotions made them feel like they knew her, like she might know on some level what their lives are like.
Matthew’s doing the same thing here for us. Take a look: when Jesus came out to meet John in the desert, at first John was a little surprised. It would be, I suppose, like canvassing Des Moines for a month then heading out from the YMCA camp where you’re staying for another say knocking on doors, only to be joined by Ron Paul himself. You can see John’s surprise in his response to Jesus: why are you asking me to baptize you, when I am really the one who should be asking YOU? I’m just the messenger!
God, in his mind, is not one who gets down and dirty with the crowd. God is not throwing his cloak down on the riverbank and wading through the mud to join John out in the river!
But Jesus knew that staffing his advance team wasn’t going to be the easiest undertaking. John the Baptist was tough and unusual, but I’ll bet Jesus looked out over the crowds of regular folks gathered on the riverbank, folks like you and me, and he knew that for them to join up to spread the message . . . well, they were going to have to have a strong connection with him.
Jesus knew the people on the riverbank had never considered a God so accessible, but that’s what he was. He told John firmly: we’ve got to go ahead with this baptism, because we’re sending a message for God when we do, showing the people who’ve come to hear a message that God’s righteous campaign for this world is coming to be.
It was in this very moment that Jesus joined hands with John and stepped into the unheard of promise of God-with-us. And by doing that, Jesus sent a message loud and clear: that the kingdom of God is coming to be, ushered in with the help of . . . all of us. We’re invited, by a God who knows exactly what it’s like to be us, to join the advance team preparing for the coming of God’s Kingdom on earth.
Then, a few minutes later, after John went ahead and baptized Jesus, a voice from heaven proclaimed a message. And in keeping with Matthew’s radical new depiction of God in human form, God’s pronouncement of blessing comes, not just as a whispered affirmation only Jesus could hear, but as a loud voice from heaven declaring to everybody standing there: “This is my son, the Beloved, in whom I am well-pleased.”
Here I am, God announces, not to the priests, but to everyone.
Here I am, soaked to the skin in muddy river water, shivering just like you.
Here I am, extending a hand—a human hand—to all of you who never imagined before this moment that you might sign over your life to serve on the advance team of God-come-to-earth.
Today as we walk a little further on this journey of faith, following Jesus Christ, we open our eyes and perk up our ears to observe the witness of John the Baptist: God has come to live among us and to usher in God’s kingdom. Because of Jesus, John would tell us, we are no longer ineffectual observers standing on the river bank, coincidentally caught up in some great divine campaign.
No, we’ve been offered positions on the advance team, a chance to hop on the bus and, like John, prepare the way for God’s redemptive work among us.
No more are we strangers; God has called us friends. And friendship with the God of the Universe is enough to make us sign up with everything we are, to spread the news of God’s redeeming love. Thanks be to God, Amen.
