02/01/2026
Benton/Chilcutt Worship Service for Sunday, 2-1-26. NOTE: Having computer issues this morning in Vulture Valley. Posting my sermon via text.
Looking forward to being with you next Sunday. We will serve Communion at that service.
Attached is the sermon.
Holding Hands Together John 1:1-9
This church joke proves that kids do pay attention.
A kindergarten teacher gave her class a "show and tell" assignment. Each student was instructed to bring in an object to share with the class that represented their religion.
The first student got up in front of the class and said, "My name is Benjamin and I am Jewish and this is a Star of David."
The second student got up in front of the class and said, "My name is Mary. I'm a Catholic and this is a Rosary."
The third student got in up front of the class and said, "My name is Tommy. I am a Methodist, and this is a casserole."
As different as the four gospels are, they all include John the Baptist. The picture we have of him comes from Matthew and Mark: a wild-eyed prophet in camel’s hair and leather, with locusts and honey on his breath. The 4th gospel offers no visual effects at all. In that account we must deduce who he is from what he says.
Who are you? I am not the Messiah.
Are you Elijah? I am not.
Are you the prophet? No.
Who are you? I am the voice.
Why are you baptizing, if you are a nobody? There is somebody coming after me whom you do not know. The truth is, I don’t know either. All I know is that I am not worthy to fiddle with his shoelaces.
It must have been hard to be John. There he was, set apart by God to do one single thing with his life – to proclaim the coming one – and yet he did not even have a name to shout out loud. He did not know who he was waiting for or when he was coming.
He did not know whether to watch the sky or the earth. Maybe the one he was waiting on would come in a chariot of fire that no one could miss, but it was also possible that he would come incognito, so that only those who were searching for him would know he had arrived.
The net effect of all this unknowingness was that John did not know who he was himself, either. He knew what his job was, all right, but there was no name for him. The priests and Levites who came from Jerusalem tried to put a label on him.
They wanted to fit him into some religious category they knew something about so that they could get a fix upon him, but he utterly escaped them. How could he not?
The one who was coming would defy all categories himself. He would turn the known world upside down, so what could John be but a voice crying out in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of the Lord…the one you do not know…the one who is coming after me.”
Until that one came, John’s life was one long dark night; waiting in the dark for the light, a waiting without knowing for the one thing that would change everything. He could not name it but he knew it was coming, and the knowledge alone was enough to make the wait worthwhile.
On the whole, human beings are not very good at waiting. Maybe you have noticed that. We prefer to reach out and grasp what we want – either that or cross it off our lists – but the truth is that sometimes it is not to be grasped. But men scorn what they can’t grasp. They suffer in their longing for it.
Waiting, we have to admit we are not in charge here. There are things we think we cannot live without that we are denied, and there are things we have given up wanting for ourselves that are suddenly dropped in our laps.
We can say yes and we can say no to these things, but we do not seem to be able to control them. Our lives are formed in the hands of a great mystery that does not ask us for our advice.
So, if waiting is an aggravation, it is at least partly because we do not like being reminded of our limits. We like doing – earning, buying, selling, building, planting, driving, baking – making things happen.
Waiting is essentially a matter of being – stopping, sitting, listening, looking, breathing, wondering, praying. It can feel pretty hopeless waiting for someone or something that is not here yet and that will or will not arrive in its own good time, which is not the same thing as our own good time.
And yet waiting is an essential part of the Christian life. Listen to what we say each time we break bread together – “Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again.” This is the mystery of our faith that we are always waiting for Christ to come to us even though we believe he has already come and that he is coming to us right now in word and sacrament.
Is his coming past, present or future? It is all three, which means our waiting is not a matter of entering into suspended animation. Our waiting is not nothing. It is something – a very big something – because people tend to be shaped by whatever they are waiting for.
Have you noticed that? When you want something very badly, your whole life seems to arrange itself around that goal. For someone, it may be a baby, for someone else a house.
When I was a teenager, it was independence I was waiting for – my own life by my own rules. I got that but at that age did not receive the maturity, a bridled tongue and a contrite heart to accompany the independence. I still wait for things.
How about you? What are you waiting for, and how is it shaping your life? Are you waiting for certainty, for healing, for love? Are you waiting for recognition, for retirement, for enough money to pay the bills?
Whatever it is that our hearts yearn for, chances are that it has something to do with our vision of what it would mean for us to be made whole, to be transformed into people who are not afraid anymore, whose basic needs are met and whose wounds are healed and who are more nearly the people God created us to be.
It is the same vision John the Baptist had, of a great light that was coming into the world to outshine the darkness for once and for all.
We may be right about what will make us whole and we may be wrong, but one big difference between us and John is that he knew he did not know.”Among you stands one whom you do not know” he told the priests and Levites who came to him looking for answers on the mystery. Read on in the Gospel of John and you will hear him say it two more times “I myself did not know him”
John waited without knowing who he was waiting for. He waited in the dark for the light without knowing what his name was or when he would come. He understood that everything else he was waiting for boiled down to waiting for God and he was willing to forgo the details, although that left him without any way to describe himself.
“Who are you?” they asked him, but he could not say.
“Are you the messiah?” No
“Are you Elijah?” No
“Are you the prophet?” No
All he could tell them about himself was that he was the voice sent to clear the way – to erase the board and clean it – so that the unnamed, unknown, unimagined one who was coming after him would have room to work.
What are we waiting for? Let’s tell the truth; sometimes we doubt but are still able to rejoice, because the one who is coming is the one who has come and who is coming to us even now.
We may be short on details, but we are not short on hope or wonder at this mystery whose good hands we are in. Whatever happens to us while we are waiting, however dark it gets before light, this is what we believe; they are good hands.
God is God, and our lives are our lives, and we can love them and give thanks for them or whittle them away with regret. Our dare this morning is to embrace all we have ever been and done and haul it up and lay it on the altar, and there to recognize our lives as sacraments, outward and visible signs on an inward and spiritual grace.
Every single occurrence of our lives is to be understood as an invitation to draw closer to God, to become part of his body and therefore worthy of praise and blessing and thanksgiving.
Think about all the things we ask of God in our prayer lives:
I asked God to take away my habit.
God said, No. It is not for me to take away, but for you to give it up.
I asked God to make my handicapped child whole.
God said, No. His spirit is whole, his body is only temporary..
I asked God to grant me patience.
God said, No. Patience is a byproduct of tribulations;
it isn’t granted, it is learned.
I asked God to give me happiness.
God said, No. I give you blessings; Happiness is up to you.
I asked God to spare me pain.
God said, No. Suffering draws you apart from worldly cares
and brings you closer to Me.
I asked God to make my spirit grow.
God said, No. You must grow on your own, but I will prune you to make you fruitful.
I asked God for all things that I might enjoy life.
God said, No. I will give you life, so that you may enjoy all things.
I ask God to help me LOVE others, as much as He loves me.
God said… Ahhhh, finally you have the idea.
God goes with us and there is no corner of our life he does not inhabit. Let’s all hold hands in the dark. Let us be on the lookout for him and be ready for the chorus. Thanks be to God. Alleluia. Amen
