On Wednesday
we witnessed a wonderful event in our community as the Olympic Torch passed
through our town. Huge crowds turned out to see the torch and the whole
atmosphere was really electric with people cheering and applauding and it was
one of those occasions that really brought the town together. And during the
course of its journey around the UK there will be 8000 torchbearers taking it
in turns to carry the Olympic flame. And what a proud experience that must be
for all of them taking that flame to the people in their community.
So it seems
particularly appropriate that today should be the day in the church’s calendar
when we remember the birth of another great torchbearer, John the Baptist. In
that wonderful reading from Isaiah John’s coming is foretold:
“ A voice cries out in the wilderness prepare
the way of the Lord,
Make straight in the desert a highway for our
God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
And every mountain and hill be made low;
The uneven ground shall become level,
And the rough places a plain.
Then shall the glory of the Lord be
revealed.”
The passage
of the Olympic Torch through our town was a wonderful event but all of us know
that the arrival of the torch was not the big event itself. The torch passed
through our town as a herald telling us that something better is on its way.
Because if we turned out to watch the passage of the Olympic torch and then
took no interest in the Olympic games themselves we would be missing the point.
It’s the games themselves that matters, the torch relay is merely part of the
preparation for the games, it serves to get people ready for what is to come.
And that is
exactly the function that John the Baptist was born to fulfill. If we
worshipped John the Baptist we would be completely missing the point of his
ministry. And that is exactly what happens to some of John’s disciples when in
John 3 they go to him and say:
“the one who was with you across the Jordan,
to whom you testified, here he is baptizing, and all are going to him”
The
disciples are clearly a bit miffed that people are now following Jesus instead
of John and John has to remind them of what his role is when he says:
“You yourselves are my witnesses that I said
“I am not the Messiah” but I have been sent ahead of him.”
And earlier
on John had said;
“One who is more powerful is coming after me,
I am not worthy to carry his sandals.”
John knew
that his role was to get people ready for the person that would come after him.
Like an Olympic torchbearer he is a herald of something great that is going to
happen soon. But John’s role is more than just to tell people about the event
that is coming he encourages them to get ready for the event. Now imagine this
situation. What if one of the Olympic torchbearers had stopped next to you the
other day and starting asking you a lot of questions to see if you ready for
the arrival of the games.
What if they
had asked you if you bought a copy of Radio Times so that you could plan what
you were going to watch, what if they asked you if you had enough beer and
crisps in for the duration or if you were mentally and physically prepared for
the rigours of watching the games, you would have found all that a bit odd
really.
But that is
exactly what John the Baptist as torchbearer for Jesus does. He tells people
that the Messiah is coming and he challenges them as to what they are going to
do to get ready for his arrival. He calls on people to repent and be baptized.
Matthew’s Gospel tells us that John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of
Judea proclaiming:
“Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come
near ”
And John is
not gentle with people. When some of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to him
for baptism he says to them:
“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee
from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say
to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our ancestor” for I tell you, God is able
from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.”
John is
warning that he is the torchbearer for a new and very different event. The
things that people relied on in the past such as ancestry were no longer good
enough. If they were going to be ready to meet the messiah they were going to
have to make radical changes to their lives. And John’s message obviously had
an effect on the people because Luke’s gospel tells us that they started to ask
John what else they needed to do to prepare for the Messiah’s arrival.
And John
gave them some practical advice. He said share what you have got with other people
such as coats and food and deal honestly with others. He said to the tax
collectors “collect no more than the amount prescribed for you. And he said to
the soldiers don’t extort money from people with threats. In other words he was
saying to people “put your lives in order so that you can be ready for the
coming of the messiah.”
Another
thing about torchbearers of course is that they bring light. The effect of that
was rather lost on us last Wednesday because the Olympic torch came through
Northallerton on a very sunny day. But if the torch had come through in the
middle of the night with all the street lights turned off the effect would have
been very different. The torch would have lit up the places and people it
passed by, it would have brought light into the darkness. And as torchbearer
John the Baptist not only brought light but he pointed the way to a much
greater light. We are reminded of this
by the beautiful passage at the start of John’s Gospel:
“There was a man sent by God whose name was John.
He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through
him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The
true light which enlightens everyone was coming into the world.”
John knew
that his principle function in life was to point towards Jesus, to hold up his
torch so that people could see the Son of God. John knew that the light from
his own torch was puny compared to that great light that was coming into the
world. A light that, as John’s gospel says, would be the light of all people
and a light that would shine in the darkness and the darkness would not be able
to overcome it. John was pointing to Jesus who would bring light and hope to
the dark places of the world.
As the
Olympic torch came along the high street on Wednesday there was a point at
which the torchbearer stopped and then lit the torch of the next torchbearer
who was waiting there. And that process
will be repeated for all the 8000 torchbearers who will carry the torch in the
UK.
And what
happened there on Northallerton’s High Street reminds us that the role of the
torchbearer is an important but transitory one. A torch bearer only carries the
torch for a short time and then they pass the torch on to someone else. And there’s a wonderful example of this in
John’s Gospel. John the Baptist is
standing with two of his disciples when Jesus walks by and he says to them,
“Look here
is the lamb of God”
And those
two disciples then followed Jesus and one of them was Andrew and he went and
found his brother Simon Peter and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” The
process of handing on the torch had begun and you can imagine that John the
Baptist rejoiced when his two disciples left him to follow Jesus because he
knew that he was accomplishing the purpose for which he had been sent. And the
torch has continued to be handed on down the generations since then. The
apostles handed the torch on to the next generation and they handed it on to
their successors. But the message has always been that same message that John
proclaimed and that Andrew told to Simon Peter, “We have found the Messiah”
And that
idea of the torch being passed on from one generation to another is very
relevant for us today because we are now the torchbearers in that great
tradition of John the Baptist, the apostles, the martyrs and the whole cloud of
Christian Witness that has gone before us.
It is now
our responsibility to take the torch to our generation. It is our
responsibility to take light to those who live in darkness and to proclaim to
people that we have found the messiah and his name is Jesus Christ and through
him salvation has been opened up to the whole world. It is our responsibility
as John the Baptist did to call people to repent and turn to Christ and be
baptized. It is our responsibility to point to Christ and to prepare people to
encounter him in their lives.
That is the
torch that has been passed to us and it is a torch that we rejoice in taking up
and carrying.
