Listen

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is the one about whom I said, ‘He who comes after me is really greater than me because he existed before me.’ Even I didn’t recognize him, but I came baptizing with water so that he might be made known to Israel.” John testified, “I saw the Spirit coming down from heaven like a dove, and it rested on him. Even I didn’t recognize him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘The one on whom you see the Spirit coming down and resting is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ I have seen and testified that this one is God’s Son.”

John 1:29-34

Think

John the Baptist comes into the Gospel story with a roar! “I am the voice crying out in the wilderness,” John told religious leaders. But John is not crying out about himself; instead, he tells his many followers to watch for the coming of God’s own Son, the “true light.”

Despite his loud voice and his confidence when being questioned, John the Baptist confesses that he didn’t even recognize Jesus as the Son of God at first! John had to trust God to reveal Jesus’s true nature. John remembers exactly what God says, and repeats it in this passage: “The one on whom you see the Spirit coming down and resting is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.”

Have there been times when you have not recognized the face of Jesus in someone else? I am sure that there have been times like that for me. Like John, we need to be alert and listening for God’s voice that points us to the presence of Jesus.

Jane Claspy Nesmith

Pray

Help me to trust you, God, when I am unable to see your presence.

Open my ears to your voice as you remind me that you are with me.

Amen.

Go

Lord your summons echoes true when you but call my name.
Let me turn and follow you and never be the same.
In Your company I’ll go where Your love and footsteps show.
Thus I’ll move and live and grow in you and you in me.

John Bell in “The Summons” (1987)