Text: John 1:6-8, 19-28
In the United States, our gymnáziums – we call them high schools – have sports teams. The teams compete for their school against other schools. One of those sports is cross-country running. It is a form of distance running, usually 5 kilometers, that are run on trails or across fields rather than on a track. In one of our nearby towns, there was a girl, Julie, who was quite fast and a good runner. From her first year on the team, she was already winning a lot of races. People began to talk that Julie might not just be good, but great. She could win the top championship not just once, but multiple times, because she was so young.
For the first three years of Julie’s competing, she indeed was the best runner on the team and one of the best in the state. Going into her final year, people were excited. However, there was another girl, Johanna, who started her first year and who also was quite fast. She had a lot of potential and she started to be Julie and many of the other top runners in the state. Suddenly, the talk about success shifted to Johanna and Julie wasn’t as recognized. And even though the team was doing quite well, it was all very difficult for Julie to accept. She had a hard time accepting her role as the second-best runner on the team. Even more tragically, she lost the joy she had for running.
Today, it seems that the expectation is that everyone needs to achieve something great with their lives and that our lives won’t have meaning if we don’t. Actors, athletes, musicians, politicians, and it even includes those who do good for the world. We point to people like Mother Theresa, Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, and others as the standard we need to achieve. Yet, this expectation creates a challenge for us: working for justice and loving all people like Jesus did seems pretty impossible. For ordinary people like you and I, the world’s problems are too big to solve, and it’s unrealistic to think we can fully love and achieve unity with all people. For ordinary people like you and I, it doesn’t just sound impossible, it sounds like a rather joyless life, and more of an obligation.
And that’s why focusing on John the Baptizer seems like a rather strange choice on this third Sunday of Advent and its theme of joy. John was not Jesus. John was not the savior of the world. John wasn’t Elijah. In fact, John wasn’t even a prophet. He was just an ordinary person. John wasn’t the good news. Yet, John has something valuable to teach us about what the good news means for our lives.
“There was a man sent from 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.”
John teaches us that life is not about achieving greatness and that is where our life’s meaning comes from. Instead, our lives have meaning because it is through ordinary people that God proclaims the story and message of salvation and light. We each have a role to play to bear witness to the Light that is Jesus Christ. It is as simple as telling others what Christ has done for us in our moments of struggle and darkness, or how God brought hope and healing to our lives. It is as simple as sharing the light of Christ with those who are going through the same tough times. It can be as simple as singing a song in worship this morning like our praise band or volunteering to read the lessons or collect the offering. We just have to be willing to share.
John also teaches us that such an ordinary life can actually bring us great joy. It can bring us the kind of joy that came at Christmas in a rather ordinary way – a teenage girl, giving birth to a baby in a humble manger….a baby who many had waited for and brought God’s hope, peace, love, and joy into the world. And so, as we enter into this last week and prepare ourselves to celebrate this good news in worship next weekend, may we find great joy in bearing witness to this good news, and joy in that our lives have meaning because of it! Amen.