A reading of the holy gospel according to John. Notice that both readings are from John. The first reading was from his first letter, and this is from his gospel. Now we are dealing here with two John's, John the evangelist and John the Baptist. And it's John the Baptist who will be speaking in what we now read.
When John the Baptist caught sight of Jesus coming toward him, he explained he exclaimed, look there, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. It is of him that I said, after me is to come a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me. I admit, I did not recognize him. Though the very reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed. John gave this testimony also.
This is John the Baptist speaking. I saw the spirit descend like a dove from the sky, and the dove came to rest upon him, that is upon Jesus. But I did not recognize him. The one who sent me to baptize with water said said to me, when you see the spirit descend and rest on someone, it is he who is to baptize with the Holy Spirit. Now I have seen for myself and have testified this is God's chosen one, and this is the gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus. In the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. These are not simple texts to deal with. The message that they transmit is not a simple message from some points of view. From other points of view it may be extremely simple.
But all of us realize that the progress we make from complexity to simplicity is not always one of intensified understanding. That's the irony of of the situation. Now, obviously, what we have read here in this account that Saint John the Evangelist gives of what happened to set to John the Baptizer and his relationships to Jesus and this matter of baptizing with water and the Holy Spirit. We must recognize that there there's a lot that which isn't said here. We're only getting the superficial narrative, which is true of so much of what we have in the New Testament, and especially when we deal with the epistles.
It's like listening to a telephone conversation from one end. But there's certainly one aspect that comes through clearly that we can take to heart for ourselves. And that's this matter of faith. Matter of faith. Again, here we're dealing with something that we all think we know what we're talking about.
We use the word promiscuously. We toss it around almost as much as we toss around the word love. And as long as no one asks us, what do you mean? Which of course can be mighty insulting. We think we know what we're talking about.
When we come to this matter of faith, it is no less complex than this item of love, as we use the word, and what it can mean, all its various meanings. But there's one thing that is clear from John the Baptizer. This was not just a mental and intellectual assent to a truth, which has no practical consequences, which doesn't involve the whole man, which is simply one of a judgment which I perceive to be the right judgment, but which leaves me emotionally detached. I have seen very few people get emotionally upset over a theorem of geometry. Matter of fact, I it's safe to say I have never seen a hot argument over any accepted theory of geometry, and yet it's the truth.
And yet I've seen plenty of hot arguments over this matter of faith. Multitudes of men and women have put their lives on the dotted line for this thing we call faith. Well, what is it? What is it? I think the first thing we have to say, it has various meanings.
It isn't something you can just tie down with one neat little definition. Another consideration which seems to me important is this, that we should distinguish between, let us say, an academic definition and what I would call a real and practical application of the definition. Now here you have John the baptizer. Something happened. Now remember, this happens after he baptized Christ.
But notice he had gotten the message. Somebody or something or somehow he had been told that when he baptized the person whose sandal he was not fit to loosen, that a dove would descend upon. John says that. So here he was given a promise. Now notice that.
He was given a promise that we don't know what it was exactly, but he says he had it. He got it. And then it happened. Now you don't have to be an Aristotelian to put those two things together. Because here you have the fulfillment, a very unusual fulfillment, of a promise.
And that's enough in many instances to convince us. Of course, today we would say, Oh yes, that's a mere matter of coincidence. And we are and the world is full of coincidences. That's possible. Then we get out our book of statistics and we work along the mathematical lines to show the probability of something happening.
We're great at that these days. We could do it very successfully. But the point that seems to me significant here is that you're dealing here not with someone who's relying on a passing fancy. John isn't speaking out of an emotional situation. There's a history behind this, and he's telling us what that history is.
In other words, he's giving us, for what they're worth, motives of credibility. Not merely motives for trust and confidence, but motives appealing to my intelligence for assent. And this is where we get these two basic different concepts of faith. Where you have on the one hand faith meaning trust and confidence, and this has been largely, largely the idea of faith since Luther's time. Luther interpreted faith exclusively as this, faith and confidence born of my direct personal relationship with God.
On the other hand, traditionally, the Catholic church has maintained that faith is a matter of intellectual assent based upon motives of credibility. It's just what happened to Paul, it's what happened to Mary, it's what happened to Joseph. In every one of these instances, brief as the gospels are, we are give given strong motives of credibility. And I've stressed that more many a morning from this pulpit. And it's a mighty strange thing that it should be that way.
So I want to add one more point. This is a matter of time. When John wrote this gospel, when this was distributed among the faithful, and remember, it was distributed by word-of-mouth before it was put down in writing. You're dealing with less than a than fifty years after fifty or sixty years after Christ's death. And so what has happened?
All the all these narratives we have about Elizabeth and Mary and Joseph and John the baptizer. Remember, you're not that was not ancient history to John who wrote this gospel. And it was far from ancient history for to the people who read it. They were only one or two generations removed from it, from the from the events. Keep that in the back of your head.
And what does this all add up to? It adds up to an affirmation of our faith. Not merely of our trust confidence. Remember that they are emotional and I respect emotions profoundly. But if there's anything you can say about an emotion is it passes.
It passes. It isn't solid stuff. People will lay their lives down for it. I know that. But but that doesn't prove truth.
That only proves conviction. And so here we have the church time and again hammering it home to us. Your faith is built on a solid rock. It isn't a matter of wishful thinking. It's not a mere matter of creating nice concepts.
It in in a way to satisfy human needs. These theories have all been put abroad in our time. Well, a little early than our time, but they're very much around still. The church is giving us these solid, calm, hard rock facts, facts, to justify our act of faith. That when we come to adore the son of Mary, born truly a man, we can indeed say, my lord and my god.
That's a tremendous thing to say. It's even more tremendous to believe and act upon it. In the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit. Amen.