3rd Johnstide 2020, Burden of Love

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Johnstide

John 1:19-39

This is the testimony of John when the Jewish leaders sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” Freely and openly, he confessed. He did not deny but confessed, “I am not the Christ [the Anointed].”

Then they asked him, “Who are you then? Are you Elijah?” And he said, “No, I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.”

John the Baptist, Hieronymous Bosch

Then they said, “Who are you? What answer are we to give to those who sent us? What do you say about yourself?”

He said in the words of the prophet Isaiah, “I am the voice of one crying in the loneliness: Prepare the way for the Lord [so that the Lord may enter into the inmost soul [self].”

And those who had been sent by the Pharisees asked him, “Why do you baptize if you are neither the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?”

John answered them, “I baptize with water. But someone is standing in your midst whom you do not know, who comes after me although he was before me. I am not worthy even to untie the strap of his sandals.”

This took place in Bethany near the mouth of the Jordan, where John was baptizing.

The next day he [John] sees Jesus coming to him and says, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes upon himself the burden of the sin of the world. He it is of whom I said: ‘After me comes one who was before me, for he is greater than I  [for he is ahead of me].’ [After me comes one who was (generated) before me, for he is the prototype.] Even I did not know him; but for this, I have come, and have baptized with water so that human souls in Israel might become able to experience the revelation of his being.”

And John testified: “I saw how the Spirit descended upon him like a dove from the heavens and remained united with him. I did not know him, but he who sent me

Julia Stankova, Baptism of Christ

to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend so that it remains united with him, he it is who baptizes with the [breath of the] Holy [Healing] Spirit.’ And I saw this, and so I testify that this is God’s Son.”

The next day John was again standing there, and two of his disciples were with him. And as he saw Jesus walking past, he said, “Behold, the [sacrificial] Lamb of God [through whom humanity’s sense of self will be purified.]”

The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. Then Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, “What are you seeking?” They answered, “Rabbi [Teacher], where are you staying [where do you live] [where do you take refuge]?”

He said, “Come, and you will see!” And they came and saw where he stayed [lived], and remained with him all that day. It was about the tenth hour [four o’clock].

3^rd Johnstide

July 12, 2020

John 1:19-34

Tissot, John the Baptist Preaching

Today’s reading begins with questions about identity. The Hebrew leadership asks John the Baptist who he is. In all humility, he acknowledges that he is not the Messiah, the anointed one of God. They ask him if he is Elijah, who was to precede the coming of the Messiah. And although Christ says later that ‘ he is Elijah who was to come,’* either John no longer remembers his previous existence, or else he is making the claim that he is no longer working in the grandiose style of the great prophetic leader of the Hebrews. Instead, he claims to be a single voice, speaking from a lonely and deserted place, saying: Make preparations.  John is who he is; he voices what needs to be said in the moment. He awakens our sense of personal responsibility.

In fact, John the Baptist epitomizes the state of the modern soul. We are who we are, now. We no longer remember previous lives—we may not even remember our current yesterdays! John in us is the single voice in us, speaking in the now, telling ourselves that we must prepare ourselves so that Christ can enter into us and abide in us.

We need to strengthen and create order in our thoughts, in our feeling life, so that an inner space arises, a space that stretches into a path for the entry of the Lamb of God. Christ came as the Lamb in order to carry the burden of human separation from the divine. This separation from the divine has created our capacity for our sins, our failings, our weaknesses. It creates our errors and our denials of the divine.

Christ, the divine Son, the God, would enter our souls so as to overcome our lonely separateness, and to reunite us with humanity’s Father. We open our souls to him. We strengthen and order our souls’ forces so that our thinking, our feeling, and our willing can become strong, weight-bearing, enduring; so that we, with Christ, can peacefully and lovingly carry the burden of the sin of the world. For as the poet says:

The weight of the world

John the Baptist, Anton Mengs

is love.

Under the burden

of solitude,

under the burden

of dissatisfaction

 

the weight,

the weight we carry

is love.**

 

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* Matthew 11:14

** “Song”, Allen Ginsberg, in Collected Poems 1947-1980

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