Transition to a New Mentor

3 Advent b      December 14, 2014

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 Psalm 126

1 Thessalonians 5:16-24 John 1:6-8,19-28

 Lectionary Link

      History is always after the facts.   It is an attempt to explain what and why things happened.   It is written in hindsight.  An event is written about because one knows what happened after the event about which one is writing.  History is never final because there will be histories written about histories.  So contemporary journals or news reports of eye witness events will be different than the history of events.

  The Gospel writings are collections of historical writings.  They are histories of histories about the life of Jesus.   A person who writing at the end of the first century about Jesus was writing from historical fragments of the previous seven decades.  It is likely that during the time of Jesus, the community of followers of John the Baptist was larger in number than the community of followers of Jesus of Nazareth.

  But by the end of the first century, the followers of Jesus Christ within the cities of the Roman Empire grew and the followers of John the Baptist who were more limited to geographical area of Palestine diminished.

  In the history of the Jesus Movement, there are the accounts about how some of the earliest followers of Jesus first had been followers of John the Baptist.

  At the end of the first century in the community from which came the Gospel of the John, the writers could reflect upon 7-8 decades of transpiring events.  They could write about the significance of John the Baptist as a transitional figure between the more established schools of Judaism, like the Pharisees and Sadducees and the new rabbinical movements such as the school of Jesus of Nazareth.  Why would I say the school of Jesus of Nazareth?  Because Jesus had pupil, called disciples.  The master/pupil relationship was the standard mode of formal religious education.

  What had happened by the end of the first century?  John the Baptist preceded Jesus in his death.  The movement of John the Baptist diminished in numbers, even more so after the Romans destroyed the Temple in the year 70 and forced the various religious communities into exile from the region of Palestine.  Some followers of John the Baptist had become leaders in the early Christian Movement and they believed that their former mentor John the Baptist had proclaimed Jesus as his logical successor.

  Within the Christian Movement, John the Baptist was assigned the role as the one who set the stage to introduce Jesus of Nazareth.

  The writer or writers who wrote the Gospel of John lived knowing the success of the Jesus Movement within the cities of the Roman Empire.  They observed that the more exclusive synagogue communities did not grow because they limited their communities to person mainly from Jewish families.  While proselytes to Judaism were to be found, one could hardly find that the Jewish communities appealed in a significant way to those outside of their own ethnic heritage.  What made the Jesus Movement different is that it was successful in bringing Gentile members into their residential gatherings within Roman cities.  Other Jewish movements and the movement of John the Baptist could not match this appeal that Jesus of Nazareth had to people who were not Jews.

  The writer of the Gospel of John had to try to explain the roots of the Jesus Movement within Judaism and as the successor of the Movement of John the Baptist.  The writer of the Gospel of John was writing within a community which had become composed mainly Gentile Christians, but what made Christian movement distinctive and attractive is that one could follow Jesus without fulfilling all of the  ethnic religious customs of Judaism.  So the Christian movement became a Christ-centered Judaism which very early became to be an innovative departure from traditional Judaism.

  John the Baptist was compelling enough as a prophetic figure to have people wonder about his identity.  In a time of great public depression for the Jewish people of Palestine, the hope for a Messiah and other apocalyptic intervening figures was very much a part of the religious and political discussion.

  Who was John the Baptist?  Was he the messiah?  Did his method of baptism and the success of his movement mean that he could be the Messiah or a reincarnation of Elijah or some other prophet?

  If the followers of John the Baptist were discouraged after the death of John the Baptist, what would be the future of the John the Baptist movement? 

  The followers of Jesus made this appeal to the followers of John the Baptist.  John was the cousin of Jesus.  John was a mentor of Jesus.   John baptized Jesus in the Jordan.  John launched the ministry of Jesus.  John recommended that his followers switch their allegiance to Jesus as their new teacher.

  One of the hardest events in life is the experience of graduation.  We call graduation commencement because something new begins.

  The transition for many people from John as their mentor to Jesus as their new mentor was a significant transition.  How do I honor the teachers in past and yet obey the new teachers who are providing vital new insights for my life now?

  Advent is a season when we work at the integration our past life experience with our current life experience.  Sometimes when we feel like to leave a former view of life we have to demonize those who are associated with such perspectives.  If I were to count all of the successive influences in teachers and schools of thought that I have had since childhood, it would include quite a significant number.  So how can I honors the lights in my life in the past and yet be open to receive the light and wisdom of new insights from new people, teachers and mentors?  What do I do with a book which highly benefited me in the past when I have come to read another book which provides more adequate answers than the previous book?  Our life involves the continuous re-assignment of the relevance of the past influences of our lives.

  In our world of religious quarrels and disagreement, we sometimes diminish each other in order to justify why we believe and practice the way in which we do now.

  I think the example of John the Baptist and Jesus is an example of the necessary transition which we have to go through as we grow from one expression of faith to another more adequate expression of faith to take into account the new things which have happened in our world and life.

  Let this Advent season be for us an affirmation of the process of always surpassing ourselves in a future state because we are repenting, we are becoming more educated in the insights of God.  The light of Christ means that we can reconcile our new insights with our former insights without anger or bitterness.  We can leave former understandings without being bitter about the times when these understandings and the people who held these views seem to lose their telling relevance to our lives.

  Advent is a time of the anticipation of future coming events.  Are you preparing for the next significant new insight in your life?  Do you anticipate another insight which will change your life and be more adequate to the tasks of living?  John the Baptist saw another significant event on his horizon; the event for him was Christ as the light of the world.

  Let us during this season understand that Christ as the Light of the world will and can be made known as we make the transition to new understandings and new events of insights.  I wish and pray for all of us, new insights which will change our lives.  Amen.