Who Are You?
John 1:6-8, 19-28
Pr. Tom Schoenherr
Dec. 14, 2008

“Is there someone who can help us?”, cries a woman who has been evicted from her home. With her husband and two children, she wonders what will become of them. Who will be the messiah who can help them in this terrible time in the wilderness?

He goes to work and is told that he is no longer needed. He can’t even go to clean out his office or to take personal items from his desk. He is escorted from the building to his car and told that they will deliver his belongings to him in the next few days. He is numb as he sits in his car wondering what just happened to him in the wilderness.

John the Baptist is sent by God to the wilderness to testify to the light. “He himself is not the light, but he came to testify to the light.”

We are living in a wilderness time when we are being asked “Who are you?” “What are you made of? What is your mission in life, and how will you keep going in the face of recession, loss of jobs and homes, and a lack of trust in people and even in God.

People come to question john in the wilderness. “Who are you?” they ask. John says clearly, “I am not the Messiah.” “Are you Elijah; the one who is to return before the Messiah comes?” “I am not” says John. “Are you the prophet?” “I am not.” “Then who are you?” “I am a voice crying in the wilderness and pointing to the Christ, the Messiah, the light who is coming to enlighten our darkness.”

People are looking for messiahs in this financial and spiritual wilderness, someone who will come and fix the problems. The expectations placed on President-elect Obama must be overwhelming. But he is not the Messiah! We look to government buy-outs and tax incentives, but they are not the Messiah! We look to ourselves, thinking that we can solve and fix the problems. But we are not the Messiah! We are thrashing around in the wilderness, and without Jesus Christ, the light of the world, we are hopeless and fearful in the darkness.

John the Baptist discovers his own identity in the midst of the problems that he is dealing with in the wilderness. He keeps pointing away from himself to Jesus Christ who is the lasting light to being hope to people. Jesus Christ is the one we believe in. “Who are you, John?” “I am the voice crying in this wilderness, pointing to Jesus, the one who gives his life and rises from the dead that we may have the promise of God’s hope and new life.

Who are you? What do we discover about ourselves and our identity in the mdst of crises? We are reminded that we are children of God through baptism. That does not solve all of the problems. It doesn’t give us a job or a house, but it gives us a promise that we are in God’s family and that he will not abandon us.

We discover that we are the church, sent as individuals and as a congregation, by God into the wilderness, where we cry out, pointing to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has come and is coming into our hearts and lives. He brings light to our darkness.

I remember a boy, maybe 12-13 years old, in our congregation in Indianapolis. He lived just a block away form the church in what was becoming a blighted neighborhood of the city. Many people in our neighborhood felt left out, rejected, powerless by the rest of the city. He was angry when he came to Sunday school that day. He didn’t like anything that was going on in class and he punched another boy. The teacher came to me asking if I could do something. I walked with him into the sanctuary, but I could tell that he would have punched me too. Sunday school was in between two services, and the empty sanctuary was decorated for Christmas.

We walked to the nativity scene and I began telling the story of Jesus, born to Mary and Joseph, who had to live under the domination of the Roman soldiers and government. They represented a people who were powerless, left out , rejected. Jesus is born into a broken and divided world, where people are angry at the Romans and life is hard, lived at the whim of a dictator.

Into this world Jesus comes because he loves us so much. He doesn’t promise to make life better for us right away, but he does promise that we are loved by God and that he is our brother. Jesus came to suffer and die and rise again from the dead. He does not reject us. He loves you and your family.

He said, “That sounds great but it does make life any easier for me or my family. What difference does Jesus make?”

“That’s a hard question, and there are many of us who may be asking it. Maybe Jesus makes a difference, not by taking us out of our life situation, but to give us another story to remember and tell. It is a story of God who walks with us through the trouble, who assures us that we are not alone, who speaks to us to say that the wilderness is not all there is,” I said.

You may be one whose job is uncertain or you know someone who is losing their job. You may be losing you house or know of someone who is being evicted. We are aware of the trouble that people here and in many other parts of the world are facing. We live in that wilderness.

As we share the story and point to Christ, we have an answer to the question, “Who are you?” God is lighting a fire in us that needs to be proclaimed and shared. Who are you? We are a voice crying in the wilderness, and God gives us a story to share, opening doors for the coming of Jesus Christ, the light in the darkness. Amen.