Tag Archives: John the Baptist

18th January 2026 – John 1:29-42

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Over the last few weeks, our lectionary readings have contained a series of revelations about Jesus.

On Christmas Day, we heard John’s revelation of Jesus as “the Word, who from the very beginning was with God and was God but also the Word made flesh living among us.”

At Epiphany, we heard of the wise men and their gifts, showing Jesus to be a king, worthy of worship and one destined to die.

Last week, at Christ’s Baptism we heard God’s revelation: “This is my Son, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

These revelations actually took place over a period of thirty years. But for us, heard in the space of four weeks, they are rather more intense. Each week, we learn more of Jesus’ being and purpose. Today is no different.

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Today John announces to the crowd gathered around him at the Jordan “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” A few sentences later he says that Jesus is “the one who baptises with the Holy Spirit.” And he goes on to remind everyone that Jesus is God’s son. Then Andrew tells his brother that the Messiah, the Anointed has been found.

Jesus’ appearances seem to come thick and fast, quicker and quicker. Chapters 1 and 2 of John’s Gospel seem to emphasise this. So, in today’s reading: v29: the next day John saw Jesus coming; v35: the next day John watched Jesus walk by; then v43: the next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee; and Chapter 2 v 1: On the next day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee!

It is almost as though John, the writer of the Gospel is feeling a great deal of intensity as he writes. “I must get this across,” he says to himself, “I must.” He seems desperate to make sure that his readers know Jesus’ credentials as fully and as quickly as he can relay them.

Indeed, after the opening of the gospel it seems to markedly slow down, the intensity drops and the reader has more time to reflect on who Jesus is – through stories and accounts of Jesus’ conversations.

Next week, we return to Matthew’s gospel for a number of weeks and get chance to see how Jesus’s ministry progresses. It’s also an opportunity to see whether he actually lives up to the titles that have been revealed to us over the last few weeks. So it is almost as though our Gospel reading is asking us to take stock of the names, and roles, that have been showered on Jesus. We are invited to take all this information that we have been given about Jesus, make sure we understand what it means and then use this in the coming weeks to help us understand the unfolding story of the next three years of Jesus= life.

In this article, we can only scratch the surface of what John, the Gospel writer, hopes we will understand about Jesus.

“Lamb of God.” John the Baptist expected his listeners to recall pictures from the Old Testament; the lamb provided by God for Abraham to slaughter, the lamb of Isaiah 53, led to the slaughter for the sins of God’s people; the Passover Lamb from Exodus. The word ‘lamb’, for John’s listeners connected strongly with words like ‘sin’ or ‘atonement’ – the way in which we can be reconciled with God despite our wrongdoing.

This Lamb is given by God – a gift from him. We can’t provide for our own atonement, instead God reaches out to us to draw us back to him.

“The Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the whole world,” says John the Baptist. Jesus will take away all sin, everyone’s sin. There is nothing exclusive or limited. Nothing narrow. No sin too heinous, no wickedness too terrible! Listen to the words of Isaac Watts’ hymn:

Not all the blood of beasts, on Jewish altars slain,

Could give the guilty conscience peace

Or wash away its stain.

But Christ the heavenly Lamb, Takes all our sin away;

A sacrifice of nobler name, And richer blood than they

Believing, we rejoice, To see the curse remove;

We bless the Lamb with cheerful voice, And sing his wondrous love.

“Baptiser with the Spirit.” John the Baptist baptised people into a readiness for the coming of the Messiah. In the early church, baptism initiated people into the family of God. Jesus, however, welcomes us into God’s kingdom by giving the Holy Spirit. Jesus gives us the same gift as he received at his baptism – God’s spirit to guide us and lead us. And this is particularly important every time we baptise someone in our churches. When we baptise we incorporate people into the same family as Jesus, they become children of God, children of the Holy Spirit.

“Son of God.” Jesus’ relationship with God was made explicit at his Baptism. He is loved by God – he is ‘the beloved’. At Jesus baptism we are shown something of the closeness and intimacy between God and Jesus. It is only the one loved by God, the one who was with God, who was God. Only that one can secure salvation – no other.

“Messiah.” At the beginning of the first century, there was intense speculation about the Messiah, the ‘anointed one’. In the Old Testament, anointing was used to describe the way in which people were appointed for special tasks, and given God’s spirit to enable them to carry out this task. People were waiting for a Messiah – a kingly figure embodying God’s rule. Andrew calls Jesus, ‘Messiah’. He recognises Jesus as the long awaited king who would fulfil the Old Testament prophecies and bring about God’s reign on earth.

Lamb of God, Baptiser with the Spirit, Son of God, Messiah – John, the Gospel writer’s names for Jesus. John wants us to carry these names with us as we read his Gospel. It is as though he says to us, “You will only understand my message fully if you realise that this is what I want to show you. Here is the one who by his life and death fulfils these roles and in doing so brings hope.”

As we read the Gospels let’s use these names to inform our reading and to help us understand for ourselves just who Jesus is: Lamb of God, Baptiser with the Spirit, Son of God, Messiah.

Sunday 14th December 2025 – Matthew 11: 2-11

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How are you doing with your presents? Bought them all yet?

Surprisingly we’ve bought nearly all of ours already – and don’t ask me how much we’ve spent! It is hard work though, isn’t it, trying to pick something that you think someone will appreciate. And then comes that exciting job of wrapping them up – trying to hold three different bits of paper together at the same time as cutting the sellotape; sticking the sellotape onto one finger and trying to fold everything back up, only to discover that a bit of the tape has stuck to the paper and ripped it! Then there’s the present which turns out to be just too big for the largest sheet or roll of wrapping paper you could find.

I find wrapping presents to be is a bind!

And then you sit back a look at your endeavours and it’s still pretty obvious what most things are – it isn’t easy to disguise the shirt with the collar which sticks up above the rest of the pack, a tennis racket is a tennis racket even inside Christmas wrapping, a bottle of wine is a bottle of wine however you try to wrap it – and a mountain bike – well what else could it be?

It is a wonder that anyone is surprised by the presents that they get.

And yet we are, aren’t we. There is always something that comes as a complete surprise – even if we’ve given everyone a list of what we want, we still get that present or presents which are impossible to guess from their wrapping. We look at them and wonder what they might be.

Sometimes the surprise is positive. I’ve had some wonderful unexpected presents. But the surprise can also be negative. … As a teenager in the 1970s, I set my sights on a lovely pair of cowboy boots that had good 3 inch high heels, and 1.5 inch platforms. They were bright orange in colour. I told my parents about them and they assured me that my boots would be waiting for me on Christmas morning.

As teenagers are wont to do, I slithered downstairs on Christmas morning, trying not to betray my excitement. Mum and Dad had always said “No!” to my choice in clothes before and they still held the purse strings!

When we started opening the presents, I was immediately aware that I was going to be disappointed. There were no presents large enough. Still I maintained a slim hope that perhaps the boot calves had been folded over to get them into a smaller box. But no, when I opened the present from Mum and Dad, there were a pair of boots, ankle height, elasticised slip-on boots with half inch heels – Chelsea Boots. How could they have got it so wrong? I thought. I don’t think I wore boots more than once. I was really disappointed!

John the Baptist believed that he was preparing the way for a Jewish Messiah. He had in mind what he wanted. The trouble was that when that Messiah arrived he did not fit John’s idea of a Messiah. God’s gift to Israel was not what it wanted. Not even John the Baptist, who did so much to prepare the way for Jesus had any confidence in what Jesus was doing now that His ministry had started.

I guess John the Baptist was sitting in prison wondering whether his life had been wasted!

In our reading, Jesus has to remind John of passages from Isaiah about the suffering servant.

 Israel, and John the Baptist, had ignored these prophecies about the Messiah and clung onto the one’s they preferred – those that foretold a military messiah, a powerful leader who would free them from the yoke of oppression.

‘No,’ says Jesus, ‘I am here to inaugurate a different kingdom, a kingdom built on justice for all, and peace and healing for the oppressed.’

The thing with God is … that we can never pin God down. We think we have listened. We form our ideas of what God wants, or what God is doing. And then, … well, God does something different. We’ve tried to understand what he wants and yet again we’ve been trapped by our own ideas and our limited understanding of God.

It is wonderful when God surprises us with something new, something different. The incarnation of Jesus, was one of those occasions: the most important of them. In Jesus’ life and death he turned convention on its head, he disturbed the status quo, and out of a shameful death brought new life and hope to the world.

Jesus is God’s present to us this Christmas. ……… But don’t go thinking that you’ll get the present you’ve asked for!

Jesus at work in our lives is more disturbing, more exciting, more wonderful than we can anticipate. I was disappointed with my boots back in the 1970s, but I have never been disappointed with Jesus. Occasionally confused, sometimes disturbed, sometimes bewildered, sometimes wondering what I believe and why, but following Jesus’ lead has taken me all over the place – to University to study Civil Engineering, to different Councils to work as a bridge engineer, to Uganda for a time, into training for the ministry, marriage later in life, into ministry in the Church of England in and around Manchester, and most recently to retirement here in Shropshire! And God continues to change and challenge me – and I am still slow to learn and slow to trust!

Ultimately, John the Baptist died before he could see Jesus come in his glory.

In Jesus’ death, shame became glory. The Bible reminds us that the cross was itself Christ’s glory, Christ’s throne. It was the place where the love of God for the world was revealed.

As Christians, we can look back with gratitude to those days. … For those who lived through them, they were days full of hope …. then of deep disappointment … and then of hope once again. … Days full of shocks and surprises. Their world was truned on its head more than once.

Our God is a God of surprises. God asks for our loyalty and trust. God wants to surprise each of us with God’s presence in Christ this Christmas time. May we be those who are open to those surprises. Amen.