Every one of us, I expect, has had the experience of searching for someone we know in a crowded place. I found myself doing it just the other day at Macy’s after the Boys & Girls Choir had sung carols before the light show began, and the crowd had grown thick. But I’ve had the same experience lots of times elsewhere: in a concert hall, at Times Square, at a train station, even on the beach: trying to recognize some feature of someone I know among a sea of unknown faces and bodies. I’m sure that you can also think of plenty of times that you have been looking for someone you know in a crowded place. You ask yourself if you happen to remember what they are wearing. If they are tall, you know that will work in your favor; and if not, oh well. With any luck they are wearing a hat that you can look for, or at least there is some distinctive feature to search out. Because, it’s important to find this person. I don’t know why, but you do; that’s why you are looking for them.
It’s harder, of course, to find someone you don’t know, in a crowded place: nothing to recognize. But most of us have had this experience, too. You go to pick up your husband’s cousin, whom you’ve never met, at the airport; or the exchange student just arriving from Denmark; or the job applicant coming into town for an interview. It’s a little easier these days than it used to be, since pictures are so much easier to share, but it can still be a challenge to find someone you don’t know in a crowded place. But, once again, it’s important to find the person; you know this, and so you have a strategy. Meet me under the lamp post with the No Parking sign. I’ll be one with two Labradors.
What’s hardest of all, is finding someone you do not know, when you are not looking for them. And that is the challenge that John the Baptist poses for those who will listen to him, as we are being asked to listen to him today. How do you find someone you do not know, when you are not looking for them?
This is how John the Baptist puts it: “Among you stands one whom you do not know.” Or, as the King James Version put it, “There standeth one among you whom ye know not.”
Among you stands one whom you do not know. The church has spent so much time and energy and money trying to negate this statement through the ages: to render it as thoroughly untrue as we possibly could. It’s as though we thought that if we couldn’t demonstrate in the church that that was then, but this is now, we had failed or somehow offended. That the spread of the Gospel and the Christian religion was a counter-argument to John the Baptist.
And so, if you didn’t know Jesus, then we would beat you with him until you got to know him. We would waterboard you until you knew him, and we’d call it baptism. We wanted to prove that we had heard John the Baptist, and that we had progressed beyond those early days of tentative faith (ours, not his). We wanted to take over the world, so that no one would ever have to find a Savior they did not know, even when they weren’t looking for him. We didn’t want there to be a time or a place where people wouldn’t know that Jesus was in the room. We hated the idea that someone might not be looking for Jesus, or that we might have failed in some way to bring him with us wherever we went, as though it was up to us to do so, as though his call was to “carry me,” as opposed to “follow me.” All this seemed like a problem to us, as if we were the the first-born child, we took the responsibility on our own shoulders, as if it was ours to bear, as if we really were the first-born. (We’re not; he is.)
How do you find someone you do not know when you are not looking for them?
Building Christendom was the very real response to John the Baptist’s call. We heard him say, “Make straight the way of the Lord,” and we took it a little too literally. For one thing, we forgot that it was the way of the Lord that John called to be made straight, not everybody he might encounter along the way.
How do you find someone you do not know when you are not looking for them?
These days, the question seems quite real again, since building Christendom has, in many ways, backfired on us. There are a lot of people out there who aren’t looking for someone whom they do not know, and they think that’s just fine. There are many people who do not know Jesus, and are not interested in meeting him. And the church can no longer assert with a straight face that the waterboarding we sometimes did was enhancing anything. We are returning to a climate in which the words of the Baptist have renewed meaning: Among you stands one whom you do not know.
This statement contains what sounds to me like both good news and bad news.
Let’s start with the bad news: that so many people do not know Jesus. I say this is bad news because if you don’t know Jesus, then you may never be converted to a sincere desire for peace; you may never be convinced of the holiness of every human person; you may never seek and accept the forgiveness you need in your life, nor offer the forgiveness you need to offer; and you may never discover that everything in life is a gift, and the best things you’ll ever do with your life will involve the things you give away. Without knowing Jesus, you may be convinced (wrongly) that there are only two kinds of people in the world. So, from my perspective, it’s pretty bad news to conclude that so many people in the world do not know Jesus, quite apart from any latent desire of mine to rebuild Christendom.
But, now, for the good news: “Among you stands one.” The profound good news in John the Baptist’s simple declaration is that Jesus is among us; God the Son is with us; the eternal Word of the Father is with us; Emmanuel; God with us! The Baptist’s cry is a near-perfect expression of the mystery of the Incarnation: among you stands the One, as long as we know who “the One” is, and have some idea of what that means.
Among you stands the One.
“Among” is an interesting word. It comes from Old English and seems to have entered the lexicon in the 12th century, meaning “in the midst of.” The “mong” part of “among” comes from a word that meant, not only “to mingle,” but also, “to knead,” as in kneading dough, so as to bring the dough together, and allow it to develop into more than the sum of its parts. Among you stands the One... whom you do not know.
How do you find someone you do not know, when you are not looking for them?
Pay attention to how selective John is in his quotation of Isaiah: “Make straight the way of the Lord.” It’s the way of Jesus that John is concerned about; it’s the space for Jesus that needs to be identified and marked. You clear a path for Jesus, because it’s Jesus’ way that needs to be opened up in the world. Your own path might still be crooked and jagged. But if we want people to find someone they do not know, when they are not necessarily even looking for him, what’s needed is a clear and straight path for Jesus. Because the good news is that he is already among us. That was the import of John the Baptist’s call: the Messiah is already here… but you do not know it yet!
“Make straight the way of the Lord!” For so long, we have made this part of the project harder than it has to be: making straight the way of the Lord, because we thought it implied that Jesus wanted us to do the hard work of salvation.
You and I are not capable of doing the hard work of salvation: we haven’t got what it takes. Jesus is the one who does the hard work of salvation: which is forgiveness, sacrifice, and grace, poured into our lives. Our job is to make straight the way, so that more grace pours directly into our lives than runs off the side of the road. How do you find someone you do not know when you are not looking for them? You open yourself up: you unlock the doors, fling wide the gates, throw open the windows, and you sweep the path, making it straight as possible as you do, for among you stands one whom you do not know.
I’d never noticed before, how in John’s Gospel, this declaration of John the Baptist, that comes so near the beginning of the story, is echoed again very near the end of the story, when Mary Magdalene stands weeping outside Jesus’ tomb, but just near her, among her and the garden, you might say, among her stands one she does not know: the resurrected Christ, whom she mistakes for the gardener. It is not Mary’s initiative that brings about the revelation that here stands the risen Jesus. It’s Jesus’ initiative to call her by name, and show himself for who and what he is: the risen Lord of Life.
Among you stands one whom you do not know. But he is always taking the initiative to call each and every one of us by name, and show us who he is: the risen Lord of Life. What we have to do is unlock the doors, fling wide the gates, throw open the windows, and sweep the path, making it straight as possible as we do, so that more grace pours directly into our lives than runs off the side of the road.
There is no point in trying to rebuild Christendom: it was probably never a good idea anyway. But there is every possible reason to unlock the doors, fling wide the gates, throw open the windows, and sweep the path, making it straight as possible as we do.
For, there standeth one among you whom ye know not. Thanks be to God!
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
17 December 2023
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia
