Know Jesus

Advent 3 B 17

John said, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me . . .”

On December 8, 1941 Japan invaded the Philippines. After the fall of Corregidor  May 2, 1942 they interned more than 3,000 civilians, Americans, British, and others in classroom buildings at the University of St. Thomas in Manilla. Interning foreign nationals is common in war time. Some Germans spent parts of 1917 and 1918 at Hot Springs, NC. From 1942-45 the United States interned more than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry, even though 62% of them were American citizens. Canada interned about 21,000 people, 2/3 of whom had been born in Canada. We have a friend at Deerfield who was interned as a young child.

I tell you all this to introduce an internment Christmas story I once heard.  Over the bed an internee had hung a crucifix and on a table below had made a crèche with sticks and scraps of cloth. A Japanese guard pointed questioningly at the figure of the child in the manger and was told, “Jesus.” Then the guard pointed at the crucifix and was told, “Jesus.” He put his hands together, bowed, and said, “So sorry!”    

This same Jesus whose birth we remember at Christmas is our crucified and risen Lord, our crucified and risen Lord whom we love and serve. We love him, we serve him, but do we know him?  In St. John’s gospel we read how John the Baptist, as he was questioned by the Jewish authorities, spoke to the crowd, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me . . .”

Do we know Jesus?  Is it as true for us as it was for those who heard John the Baptist, that Jesus is “one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me . . .”   Bishop Tim Smith of the NC Synod wrote this year in an Advent meditation, “A simple philosophical exercise: “Who am I?” Immediately we must ask, in order to answer that, “Who tells me who I am?” The answer to that second question is everybody, from parents to teachers to pastors to politicians to advertisers and more.” 

We know a lot about Jesus, the babe in the manger, the crucified and risen Lord, the itinerant preacher whose teachings reveal God to us. Jesus wants us to know him. He stands at the doors of our life waiting for our invitation to come in. When we open the door of faith he does come in and makes himself known.  So in the quiet times I encourage you to get to know Jesus as Jesus makes himself known to you.

As you get to know him, be alert to Jesus as John spoke of him, “one among you whom you do not know.”  First semester in seminary we were assigned Albert Schweitzer’s Quest of the Historical Jesus. Schweitzer was born in 1875, a Lutheran pastor’s son from Alsace, a gifted organist interpreter and biographer of Johan Sebastian Bach. He was a theologian, ordained, and later served as a medical missionary in west Africa In 1952 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He died at his hospital in Gabon, west Africa, in 1965.

 The  Quest of the Historical Jesus examines all the 19^th century biographies of Jesus and shows how much the Jesus they portray looks like the  biographer. Then Schweitzer wrote a biography that looks like Schweitzer. Every biography of Jesus since tells us much about the writer.

We want to believe in a Jesus who is like us. But Jesus calls us to be like him.

As you get to know Jesus in your prayers and meditations and Bible study be alert to the strangeness of Jesus, be alert to the ways he is different, be alert to the ways Jesus calls us out of spiritual comfort into new life.

John said, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me . . .”