Witnessing Like John the Baptist

The Reverend Rebecca Justice Schunior, Assistant Rector

Some of you may be like me – you desire to use Advent as a time of spiritual reflection. Advent is a counter cultural time when we try to resist the busyness and commercialization of Christmas. I always feel like I and others can do better at this. So, I’m trying to pay particular attention to what the spirit is saying to us in these Advent readings. It doesn’t matter how many Advents I experience, but I am always surprised by the amount of time we spend on John the Baptist.  And so for some reason, he must have something particular to teach us about how to be present during this season.

And this week’s reading struck me as particularly odd. This week, he is not John as we may remember him in other gospels. We don’t get the family history. He is not the child of Mary’s cousin Elizabeth. If you remember, that child was born to Elizabeth in her old age and both the young Mary and the older Elizabeth rejoice over their unexpected pregnancies. He is not the angry prophet telling us the end is near and even now the axe is at the tree. Neither is he is the counter cultural character. Really counter cultural – the whole desert hermit, camel skin wearing, locust eating lifestyle. If I were to have lived primarily on a diet of bugs, I’d definitely want a side of honey.

            But in John’s gospel – the gospel we hear today, there are no such colorful details. This week it is even harder to cozy up to John. He just doesn’t give us much information – except he apparently like to say the word “no”. No, he is not the Messiah; no, he is not the one who is coming into the world, no, he isn’t the prophet Elijah, and no he isn’t any prophet at all. So what is he? And why does he matter to us?

            Maybe this is perverse, but I like to imagine a Christmas pageant based on John’s gopsel. Think of the savings in effort and money. There would be no angels, no shepherds, no stars, no wise men. Only a mysterious word and a guy who can’t seem to explain who he is. It would be quite a stark production – as stark as cold rock and bare branches that we see around our nave.

            Yes, John’s character in this story is stripped down. He is no one. Not messiah, or prophet, or wise man. He is, he says, only witness. That’s what John is. He is a witness – a martyr. The word martyr comes from the Greek work Martus meaning witness.

            John says only that he is called to witness to the light – the true light – that is coming into the world. And so we also are called to be witnesses, nothing more than witnesses to truth and light. But sometimes the lights in our world shine so very brightly, especially during this season, that it’s hard to see what we need to see – it’s hard to tell what is true and what, in fact we need to bear witness to.

            Does this sound like a paradox? It’s easiest to see light when it’s in the midst of darkness. Just as when we find ourselves in a remote area away from the city and suddenly realize the beauty of a brilliantly lit starry night. In other words, it might be easiest to see the light we need to see when we turn down the other lights. Light shines brightest when in it is in the midst of brutal starkness.         

Some years ago, I took a series of classes with a group committed to social justice and Christian community. In small groups we visited different suffering places in Asheville, North Carolina. One particular group visited the town dump. They watched as people discarded their trash and unwanted goods. They were witnesses as people left behind their possessions in heaps of trash. Plastic bags floated through the air like leaves and a sickly smell wafted on the breeze.

This group decided watching people throw away their junk was not enough. They realized this was the end of the story. They wanted to see other side of the story, or the beginning of the story. They continued from the dump to the local mall, already decorated for Christmas in early November.

            They stopped by a Victoria’s Secret. One of the group, spotting a perfume called “Very Sexy” asked a sales woman, “‘Very Sexy’, that may be a little too sexy for me. Do you have anything ‘just sexy enough’?” Another woman, considerably plus sized asked, in a confident tone of voice, “do you have anything that would fit me?”

            I don’t think these women went to the mall to be mean. And most certainly they didn’t go to the mall to throw cold water on Christmas joy. There was nothing dour about their antics. But I do think they were witnesses to certain kind of painful wastefulness. A wastefulness that tells a woman her worth is in disposable products that will just end up in some trash heap.

There are all kinds of light in this season. Bu as witnesses, as Advent martyrs, part of our work is to turn down the light so that we can see more clearly. So that we can see better in dark places. Those dark places that are deeply closeted within the human heart. The bright lights of this season’s merriment can often blind us to the hidden addiction, the marriage on the verge of collapse, the depression we desperately want to hide, the abuse only barely domesticated, the job opportunity not offered, the loneliness so overwhelming it threatens to snuff out any light.

            In our work as witnesses we may feel like we are only seeing cold stones and bare branches, but we can at least tell the truth. We can tell the truth and not lie to each other under the cover of merriment and good cheer. A holiday party, a stiff drink, a parade of lights cannot solve the ache in our hearts.

            This is a depressing end to the Sunday in Advent dedicated to joy. But in the words of my beloved George Eliot “what we call despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.” Telling truth is only the beginning. Truth telling allows change to happen. Like my friends in their mischievous trip to the mall, witnessing doesn’t have to make us dour or holiday kill joys.

We are called to reflect light with our very being. We are called to go into the dark places of our hearts and our world and act as witnesses so that the pain and grief we find there will never go unheeded.  If light is going to come into this dark world, it will shine when we uncover our pain so that we can, in the light, be healed.