Who is your John the Baptist?

In his 2011 book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, psychologist Stephen Pinker makes the claim that the world is on a positive trend: violence is decreasing, and we’re getting better.

Perhaps hearing claims like this, we might be tempted to pat ourselves on the back, and marvel at how great we are. Like the scribes and the pharisees we might say, “if we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we certainly wouldn’t have joined them in shedding blood.”

This evening we’re looking at the eighth of the “woes” which Christ proclaimed upon the religious leaders, calling out their hypocrisies that kept them from truly following God. This particular hypocrisy is one which I think is easy for us all to fall into: it’s one of self-righteousness, of elevating ourselves through comparison by condemning those with whom we’re associated.

The scribes and pharisees were “building the tombs of the prophets and decorating the graves of the righteous”, those who had been killed by their ancestors. They put on a show of being on the side of the good, of being counted amongst the allies of those who were close to God, and yet they had failed to see the role of John the Baptist as a prophet and had taken a hand in his death, and soon they would be responsible for the death of God’s son the messiah.

Who, or what, is your John the Baptist?

We often look to history, celebrating those who stood up in the face of injustice and unrighteousness. We point to the wrongs of the past and we rightly aim to learn from them and to strive to avoid repeating them. But when injustice occurs from which we benefit, when someone stands up and criticises our own unrighteousness and calls us to repent and change our ways, when the opportunity arises to go against what makes us comfortable and stand up to really do something that brings us closer to God, isn’t it just too easy to react against it, to see it as a threat.

How often do we turn against John the Baptist?

How often do we turn against and crucify the messiah?

As we’ve been seeing, although Christ offered these warnings and condemnations to a specific group of religious leaders in first century Judea, those condemnations reveal particular behaviours that we too are at risk of falling into and which can jeopardise our walk with God.

So what is there that we can learn from this evening’s reading?

First, we can learn humility.

In their pride, the scribes and the pharisees looked to history with a sense of superiority brought through hindsight.

They knew, with hindsight, the importance of the prophets.

They knew, with hindsight, the evils of their ancestors.

They knew, with hindsight, the course of actions that should have been taken.

And they said, with the full knowledge of hindsight, “if we had lived in the times of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in the shedding of the blood of the prophets.”

And in doing so, Christ says, they testified against themselves.

Their ancestors did not have the benefit of hindsight, and so they shed the blood of the prophets. And they would follow those ancestors’ example.

How easy it is for us, with hindsight, to acknowledge those great figures of the past who took the right but unpopular path.

How easy it is for us, with hindsight, to recognise the wrongs of our ancestors

How easy it is for us, with hindsight, to say “if I had been there...”

But our ancestors, flawed as they were, did not have the benefit of hindsight.

When we forget the significance of that hindsight, and imagine ourselves in the past acting righteously to combat the evils of the day, we will ourselves with pride and arrogance. We position ourselves in a state of superiority over our ancestors. And in forgetting the significance of that hindsight, we allow ourselves to be blinded to the way in which we repeat those same evils.

The scribes and the Pharisees could search the scriptures and see plainly the warnings of the prophets, the manner in which those prophecies were fulfilled, and their significance. Plainly there in front of their faces was evidence that these were righteous people, and so they built tombs and decorated their graves to honour them. Likewise we can read history books, or watch documentaries, or listen to stories, and we build monuments and we hold celebrations and we even decorate graves.

And we also, like the scribes and the Pharisees, have scripture. And unlike them, in the four gospel accounts we see the complete story of Christ’s ministry laid out. We know the full account of his ministry. We know of his betrayal, his death, and his ressurection. We know how the story ends!

And with the gospels, we know that Christ is the messiah.

And with the gospels, we know the evils and hypocricies of the scribes and the pharisees.

And with the gospels, we know to follow Christ, and we may be tempted to say “if I had been there, I would have followed him to the cross.”

But Christ’s dsiciples fled when he was arrested. One of his twelve closest disciples would betray him, and another would deny knowing him not once but three times.

And why would we not?

That pride will blind us. Convinced of our own righteousness, how easy it is to fail to recognise the reasons that our ancestors stumbled. To fail to learn from the past. To fail to see the same signs in our own time that the people of the past were blind to in theirs.

To fail to recognise the righteous.

To turn against John the Baptist.

And learning humility, we learn also that we are the descendents of those who murdered the prophets. At least in a sense.

Christ calls us to put our faith in him, and in doing so to be freed from sin. But, that sin doesn’t just go away when we’re saved. We aren’t instantly perfected. We certainly want to stop sinning, and to do what pleases God. But the truth is that pride and jealousy and unrighteous anger and all sorts of sinful attitudes can still easily take hold. We are still tempted towards sin.

And this is the same affliction that all of humanity has to deal with. It’s the same curse that led our ancestors to their worst actions and, if we let it, it will lead us to ours.

If we lack humility, we can easily dismiss those impulses

If we lack humility, we can ignore our similarities to those we judge

If we lack humility, we fail to recognise our sin.

And in failing to recognise our sin, we fall further from righteousness.

We repeat the bloodshed of our ancestors.

We turn against our John the Baptist.

The Lord says to the scribes and Pharisees, “you snakes, you brood of vipers! How can you escape being sentenced to hell?”

These are familiar words. They echo the earlier words of John the Baptist, who asked “who warned you of the wrath to come?”

And we might well ask ourselves those same questions.

Who warned us of the wrath to come?

How can we escape being sentenced to hell?

How do we ensure that we don’t ignore these warnings?

How do we ensure that we don’t turn against John the Baptist?

How do we ensure that we don’t turn against and crucify the messiah?

And the answer to these questions begins with humility.

The humility to acknowledge our sin.

The humility to recognise that we are as flawed and prone to disobey God as were our ancestors.

The humility to recognise the need to follow Christ. To listen to his teachings, and to put them into practice. To obey his commandments. To guard against the pride and hypocrisy that would lead us away from him.

Friends, who -or what- is your John the Baptist? Where is the blind spot in your walk with Christ, the overlooked warning of a need for change?

And when you identify that warning, will you respond by heeding it, by recognising the need to make a change and by putting it into action, by making that small step towards a more Christlike life?

Or will you allow your pride to deny that warning, insisting that you wouldn’t possible fall into such error?

As we seek to follow Christ more closely, let us strive to do so with the uprightness and humility that acknowledges our flaws. That encourages us to recognise the evil that we are prone to commit, or that we do commit. And that leads us to take those sins to Christ to confess, repent, and be forgiven.

Amen