Among You Stands One You Do Not Know
THE THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 • Psalm 126 • 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24 • John 1:6-8, 19-28
Apparently, Jesus was there in the background, listening to John the Baptist, maybe as one of John’s disciples. Jesus was probably just another face in the crowd. No reason that he would stand out. An anonymous young man from Galilee. Jesus was there “among them.” But John says to those gathered around him, “Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.”
I can imagine that John's words caused quite a stir. People started looking around. Who is it? Which one of us? I'll bet they started paying attention to one another with a new seriousness. Maybe more than a few of them entertained the possibility, “Could it be me?”
I like the notion that God is among us incognito. God is at work among us even when we don't notice. God is present in and through people that we may not recognize as godly, god-like. Maybe even… God works through you? Maybe in such a quiet way that you may not even recognize God’s presence in yourself.
Part of what we anticipate and seek in the Advent season is the incarnation, the coming of God-with-us. The Church asserts that Christ is always with us, among us, in us. But that's not something that we are always aware of; (like the crowd listening to John the Baptist). We are unaware of Christ’s presence with us / in us. “Oh, that kind of divine presence, that’s only for real religious types. Not me!”
Some people think of monks and nuns as people who have a serene and certain faith. We call monasteries religious communities. And indeed they are. But the monks and nuns who live in monasteries are human beings just like the rest of us. They have their own shadows and doubts.
Kathleen Norris’s book The Cloister Walk narrates her observations while living as a guest of a Benedictine monastery. She tells of an anguished young Trappist monk who expressed some of his insecurities in a question toward the end of a retreat. “We have spoken of the loss of faith in American society,” he said, “but what of loss of faith within the monastery itself?” He then courageously and vulnerably expressed some of his own profound doubts and his own faith-struggles in his life. At times, he said, he felt his life in the monastery was almost unbearable. The retreat leader calmly expressed no surprise. His answer to the young monk was practical and thoroughly monastic: “Of course we are weak, unable to cope. But if we can maintain faith, hope, and charity, it will radiate somehow. And people who come to us may find in us what we can no longer see in ourselves.”
There’s a scene in Georges Bernanos’ touching novel Diary of a Country Priest, where the young priest is summoned to care for a parishioner who has always been a thorn in his side. She has been among the most difficult and antagonistic of his parishioners. Now she is dying. The priest has mixed emotions as he approaches his call to her. Still, he goes through the motions. “Be at peace," he says routinely. To his surprise the woman kneels down before him and receives this peace profoundly. Her entire countenance changes before his eyes. The priest is overwhelmed as he watches her receive more peace than he himself had. “Oh, miracle,” he says, “thus to be able to give what we ourselves do not possess, the sweet miracle of our empty hands.”
Not too long after our first grandchild’s birth, Kathy and I traveled to meet her in Taiwan. Of course, she was the most beautiful girl in the world. Although my son Gray had taken some time off for our visit, on several evenings he still had to go in to work as a teacher. Naturally, we asked him how he was enjoying his teaching. It was good for the most part, he said, but there were days… And there were certain students, who could push his button.
So he went to work one evening, a bit conflicted because he hated to leave his visit with us. But there was something about the joy of the energy of our time with him that had produced some ebullience in his mood. When we picked him up four hours later, he was bouncing and glad to see us. We asked him, “How did it go tonight?” He paused reflecting for a moment before answering. “I’ve noticed,” he said, “that when I go to class feeling good, I tend to have a good session, and the kids respond, and they enjoy what they are learning. And when I go to class in a dark mood, I don’t teach so well, and they always get under my skin and bug me.”
“Among you stands one whom you do not know.”
Inside each of us there is an audience, a crowd of observers, a classroom of kids, each internal observer with its own mood, personality, and interpretation. There is our cynical self, and our hopeful self. Our confident self, and our insecure self. An audience within. But always within us there stands the one whom we often do not know. The very presence of Christ within us.
Sometimes we are surprised like the country priest when something unexpected and graceful occurs through us. “Oh, miracle, thus to be able to give what we ourselves do not possess, the sweet miracle of our empty hands.”
How much more fruitful might we be if we nurtured an Advent awareness that Jesus is as fully within us as he was present as an anonymous Galilean within the crowd listening to John the Baptist.
Imagine John the Baptist looking upon you this day, from a heavenly place where he can see into the depths of your soul. And John the Baptist says to you, “Within you stands one whom you do not know.”
You know WWJD—What would Jesus do?
What would the Jesus who is inside of you do? Through you. As you.
Sometimes a good friend will point out to us our Christ-presence that we may not have recognized within ourselves. Like John the Baptist, sometimes friends can recognize in us the potential that may otherwise seem obscure.
Somewhere I've heard it said that our friends are those who show us God, and our enemies are those who allow us to become more godly, offering us the opportunity to practice the compassion, forgiveness, and mercy of Christ who dwells within us.
We need them both, our friends and our enemies.
Remember what the Trappist retreat leader said, “Of course we are weak, unable to cope. But if we can maintain faith, hope, and charity, it will radiate somehow. And people who come to us may find in us what we can no longer see in ourselves.”
We come here each week, to this holy place, to remember. To gather up the fragments of ourselves and recollect, remember ourselves, and to recall the greatest truth about us—that Christ dwells in each of us, with us, through us.
“Christ in you; the hope of glory” as the letter to the Colossians says.
When we orient ourselves toward Christ within us, toward the good—toward faith, hope and charity—we tend to do good, and “the kids respond, and they enjoy what they are learning.”
© 2023 The Rev. Lowell Grisham
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – Fayetteville, Arkansas