MLC –
Pr H. Fege, D.Min.
John 1:6-13, 19-28
Think about one of those cops and robbers shows in which a
victim of blackmail or extortion pulls into some out-of-the-way parking lot.
There is a wait, and then a car pulls cautiously up beside
the victim's car.
The blackmailer pulls his gun and tells the victim to hand
over the dough.
Suddenly Police cars pull in from all sides with blue lights
flashing and tires squealing, and uniformed officers hop out with guns drawn.
The guy who turns out
really to be on the spot is not the victim, but the blackmailer himself.
That is the kind of picture we have in todays Gospel.
Big shots from the Jerusalem come down and put John the
Baptist on the spot.
"Just who do you think you are, anyway?"
John says, "Well, I'm not the Messiah, if that's what
you think I am claiming. "
"Well, who are you?"
"Elijah?"
"No."
"The prophet?"
"No."
"Who then?"
John says, "I am
just the introducer, of one who is going to make me look small by comparison.
I'm just wetting
people down with water.
He's going to set them
on fire.
You come down here putting me on the spot, and already among
us is the one who is going to put you and the whole world on the spot!"
That same dynamic is at work in the account of Jesus before
Pilate.
Pilate stands there with his hands on his hips, looking at
this pathetic figure with briars on his head and trickles of blood running down
his face.
All around the room brawny soldiers with scabbarded swords and
folded arms smirk and wonder which of them is going to be tapped to drag this
one out for execution.
It is only from our vantage point that we know who was
really on the spot in that tableau. And it was not Jesus.
Willard was a gentle, self-effacing, unpretentious young Presbyterian minister who had received
a call from a little Alabama congregation and was being examined for admission
to our presbytery in which that congregation was located.
His unwillingness to affirm with certitude that there were some people who were going
to be eternally damned to hell had gotten him into hot water with champions of
orthodoxy who had him on the spot and were rubbing their hands over it.
"Mr. Snavely," the questioner thundered, "are you telling us that you are a...universalist?
(gasp) Are you telling us that you
believe everybody is going to be saved?"
A hundred or more commissioners to the presbytery leaned
forward waited for an answer from the young man sitting alone on a
straight-backed chair. You could have heard a pin drop.Willard looked at the
floor, then looked up and said with a rural twang, "Well, to tell you the truth, I believe if God could save me he can save
anybody."
There was a moment of silence, and then the whole place
exploded in a burst of laughter and cheering. The tables had been completely
turned. "Uh...uh...I have no further questions," mumbled the
interrogator, sitting down quickly, as his face turned fiery red.
"Just who do you think you are?" the Pope demanded
of Martin Luther.
"Who do you think you are?"
the Salvadoran death squad members asked contemptuously
before they raped and murdered the Roman Catholic women from
Lech Walensa became the spokesman for the Polish workers
aspiring to a measure of economic power and freedom. "Who do you think you
are?" the government responded, putting him on the spot.
We can echo that question with the workes Window frame factory who staged a sit in. .
telling the media we ain’t moving until justice is done.. BOA got millions..
BOA did not loan our empolyer the $$ to pay us…
"Who do you think you are?"
some of Jane's
classmates asked, putting her on the spot when it became known that she had
reported someone for cheating.
"Well, just who do you think you are?"
Al's buddies asked when he refused to take part in the
initiation stunt they had cooked up for one of the fraternity pledges.
What made it possible for John the Baptist to stand firm
when he was put on the spot, even when it led to his being beheaded?
What made it possible for Jesus to remain quietly when put
on the spot?
How can you and I
take the heat without caving in?
We can do it because we know who is really on the spot, and
we know it is not us!
In a book entitled Liturgies and Trials, Richard K.
Fenn comments that: "the question of whether it is God or Caesar who is on
trial is at the heart of the biblical tradition."
Expanding on this thought, Tom Long writes in his book, Shepherds and Bathrobes:
Christians are
persuaded that it is the world which
is finally on trial, and they give their testimony accordingly.
Placing their trust in the Christ who will
come to judge the quick and the dead,' the Christian community has been bold to
face all worldly accusers, whether they come from Rome with swords, from
Birmingham with police dogs, from Warsaw with a rifle, from Hollywood with a
sneer, or from Washington with a court order from homeland security.
A fraternity member who is in tune with the God who has
infiltrated our human life in Christ knows that reckless cruelty is going to be
swallowed up by kindness.
A girl who is in tune with that God knows that if she is
honest and does her part to protect honesty she is on the side which determines
the future.
There was a time when we did not know that.
There was a time when we were just as much in the dark as
everybody else.
There is a wonderful Christmas spiritual which continues to
touch our hearts because it reminds us of that time:
“Sweet little Jesus boy, We didn't know who you was”.
Just seems like we can’t do right;
Look
how we treated you.
But please, Sir, forgive us, Lord;
We didn’t know ’twas you.
But we learned.
We learned that his manger contained a time bomb.
We learned that he would speak to demons and cast them out.
. .
even out of us.
We learned that he could hold his hand out over troubled
waters and still the wild waves. . . even those which sweep us to and fro.
We learned that the whole sky would turn black and the whole
earth shake in revulsion at the enormity of our sin which murdered him so
hideously.
We learned that no stone, however large, could seal up GOD!
In the next two weeks you will probably go in some big
department store where a lady in an cheap coat will be standing at the entrance
ringing a bell beside a Salvation Army collection kettle.
And you will feel a twinge of embarrassment for her.
She seems to be out of step with you and me and all of the
hundreds of happy people moving through the doors behind her.
She seems small,
and the little pile of bills and coins in the kettle
probably would not buy one suit off the
racks inside.
I'm not asking you when you walk by that lady to stop and
put something in the kettle.
It's fine if you choose to do that,
but it should not cause you any great discomfort if you do
not.
You cannot respond to all good appeals, and you are
responding generously to some...
probably to many.
I want you to do, when you walk by that lady is to listen to the bell and remember for
whom it tolls.
Then, as you walk into the bright and bustling store,
instead of shaking off your puzzlement as to why anyone
would let herself be put on the spot like that, standing for hours in the cold
wind,
wrap your mind for a few seconds around the question,
"Who's really on the spot?"
"He was in the world, and the world was made through
him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home, and his own people
received him not. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he
gave power to become children of God" (John 1:10-12).
Based
in part on a work by
J.
Harold McKeithen, Jr.
