John the Baptist shows up and does Baptizey things.
Luke 3:1-6; Philippians 1:3-11; Luke 1:68-79; Malachi 3:1-4
You don’t see it too often any more, but movies and TV shows, especially ones set before the 1940s or so, always seem to have the token “paper boy” whose sole job is to advance the plot in a very loud and public way. Usually its a kid standing on the street corner with a stack of newspapers yelling, “Extra! Extra! Read all about it. So-and-so did such-and-such! Extra!”
Now that kid’s job is, basically, to get people to buy this super-special version of the local paper because something important happened between printing of the regular version and the time of his (usually a his, infrequently a her) yelling. That’s what an “Extra” is, an additionally printing, usually with just one or two stories in it.
But this newsboy became the initial point of contact for those walking by on the street. They knew something important had happened, because there was an extra, and they sort of knew what it was, as the newsboy was screaming the headline, but for more info they had to buy the extra. In a way, John the Baptist was doing something similar to that newsboy – I know it’s a little bit of a stretch; I’ll pull it together I promise.
John the Baptist, Luke tells us, is “the voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord…’” He shows up out of the blue somewhere between AD 26 and AD 29, the 15th year of the reign of my favorite emperor, Tiberius. John is hanging out around the Jordan river, “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”
All the while, he’s also telling the people that “one more powerful than [him] will come, the thongs of whose sandals [he] is unworthy to untie.” Just like the newsboy with the Extra, John is giving people a teaser of something else – in John’s case, it’s Jesus, his cousin. He’s the messenger that Malachi talks about in our first lesson.
Now, there is something cute about this prophet, as the opening passage (1:1) can be translated in two ways: “The word of the Lord to Israel through Malachi” (as in the guy’s name was Malachi) or “The word of the Lord to Israel through my messenger” (as in, it’s not a name, but a title). Malachi, or more correctly, Mal’akhi, means “my messenger”.
So when we get to Malachi 3, when he talks about “my messenger” there starts to get a few layers about it, especially as we have a few different messengers. There’s the messenger who wrote this book, the messenger who will prepare the way, and the messenger who is the Lord. That’s several messengers, but it leads me to wonder who else is the Lord’s messenger?
In a way, we are all God’s messengers. Our call, as we talked about a bit last week, is to “embrace God’s word, know Christ’s peace, and share the Spirit’s promise.” The whole sharing idea makes us messengers, working with and through the Holy Spirit to prepare others for God. It’s kind of a big calling, one that we’re not always willing or seemingly prepared to do.
Luckily for us, God is quite aware of that. In a lot of ways, our text from Philippians, which at first might seem a bit out of place with all this messenger talk, is really quite important, as it uses the example of the messenger who is the Lord to show us how to be good messengers. Paul writes for us to not do things for ourselves, but for others, just like Jesus did.
Paul even spells it out for us: Jesus is God, but instead of ruling from on high, he became a servant, humbling himself in obedience leading to death on a cross, though which God raised him up to the highest place of all so that at his name everyone will worship and trust him, to God’s glory.
The key here is that as we go out, it’s not about what we say; it’s not about standing on the street corner yelling, “Extra! Extra! Jesus is kind of awesome and stuff!” It’s about living our lives in a way that puts others first in humility and love, just like Jesus did. Sure some people are really comfortable with the yelling on street corners (I’m not) but I think it’s a safe bet that we can all show people what Jesus is like by how we live our lives, and so be good messengers of God.