Match of the Day

 Luke 3:7-18

One of my weekly indulgences when time allows is to listen to the BBC Sport podcast Match of the Day Top 10. Each week Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer and Micah Richards rank their top ten….whatevers in the world of football; be it best teams, greatest captains or best foreign players. One such edition ranked the best strikers in premier league history. Those whose job it was to put the ball in the back of the net.

For those of you who are football fans a list of familiar names made up the top ten….players such as Harry Kane, Thierry Henry, Cristiano Ronaldo and Alan Shearer himself all made the grade. A little lower down the list however, was Wayne Rooney. It was agreed that, despite being Manchester United’s record goalscorer and an undoubted superstar, he wasn’t quite as ruthless in front of goal as some of the others already mentioned.

Then a question came just before the end of the episode…..

“So, we’ve decided who’s number one, but which of these players would you most want to play alongside in an imaginary team?”

The response was pretty emphatic….”Oh, without doubt it’d Wayne Rooney.”

Despite not being quite the goal machine other players were, Rooney’s all round play and ability made him the obvious choice as a strike partner.

Quite simply Rooney wasn’t always the headline act, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t integral the proceedings at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon.

Today, we hear about John the Baptist. John is a complicated man. I imagine him (rightly or wrongly) to be a bit of an oddball. We know he liked to wander the desert, eating wild honey and locusts. He wore some rather unorthodox clothing, opting for the never fashionable camel hair garments with leather belt look that has so often been cruelly overlooked at London Fashion Week.

And yet, despite John’s ‘quirkiness’, he plays an integral part in the story of Jesus. His ‘preparing of the way’ for Jesus that we heard about last week is arguably as instrumental in Jesus’s ministry as that of any of His twelve disciples or apostles after the resurrection.

John’s preaching and teaching starts before Jesus’s does. We hear in other gospels that, whilst John speaks to the crowd, Jesus is in amongst them somewhere; watching, waiting, biding His time for the right moment to begin His earthly ministry. And it’s in that context that the crowds have come to see this wild desert wanderer; a man with much charisma and attraction.

John’s style is rather direct isn’t it. He doesn’t lure the crowd in gently with a nice story about Wayne Rooney? No, he goes for it from the first moment. As the crowd are all listening, he says to them:

“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.”

Imagine that! Imagine me starting my sermon today by saying, ‘You’re all a bunch of snakes you lot! What are you all doing here?”

I imagine the Bishop’s phone would be buzzing before we got to the intercessions.

But despite John’s directness, the message He preaches is one of a simple life; of honesty and generosity, of looking out for one another rather than one’s own interests. In response the crowd ask him:

‘What should we do then?’

John said, ‘Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.’

The Tax Collectors also came forward to be baptised, and said ‘what should we do?’

‘Don’t collect any more than you are required to,’ he told them.

Then some soldiers asked him, ‘And what should we do?’

He replied, ‘Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely – be content with your pay.’!

Basically, stop taking advantage of people. John’s message is pretty straightforward; a message that it’s hard to see why anyone wouldn’t want to follow. A message on which our society’s principles and countless others across the world is built upon. A message of kindness towards others. Of living within our means and not to great levels of excess. Of sharing what we have, not so that we go without, but so that others might have enough.

It is stunningly simple and it leads to the crowd beginning to question John’s true identity.

“The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Messiah.”

I wonder if there was a moment in his mind when John questioned what he was going to say to them. Do you think there was a moment when he thought ‘Gosh, maybe I am the messiah? Maybe I am the big one that everyone’s been waiting for?’

I’m pretty confident John knew that he wasn’t the messiah, of course, but people have convinced themselves of stranger things when power and notoriety are at stake.

He had a choice to make.

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“So why would you want to play alongside Wayne Rooney then, and not a better goalscorer? Someone more prolific for the team?”

Despite his undoubted talent as a goalscorer, our podcast participants chose to play alongside Rooney because he was far more selfless than other players. Not only did he do the job of scoring goals and winning games, he also tackled, he chased back, he defended, he passed, he ran, he looked up and, (now this is the crucial bit), he realised that it wasn’t all about him.

John looked up at the crowd, recognising that it wasn’t all about him and answered them, ‘I baptise you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

John the Baptist's job was to point people towards Jesus. He undoubtedly did integral work. He preached, he called people to repent of their sins and turn from their error strewn ways. He spoke of a society which would be better for everyone, not just those with money and influence. He baptised people and welcomed them into God’s family.

But crucially, he knew it wasn’t all about him. It was about Jesus.

I suspect that we need to be far more like John the Baptist than we realise. We’ve heard a lot this week about practising what we preach, haven’t we? About living to the standards that we are called to. Of not having more than we need. Of not taking unfair advantage of people who are vulnerable. Of calling out hypocrisy and unfairness in our society. Of not telling people to go into lockdown and then cracking open the prosecco and the cheese board.

John’s job was the same as our job. To realise that it’s not all about us and point people towards Jesus.

It’s a stunningly simple and yet an incredibly hard thing to do. But it is what we as Christians are called to do. So, on this third Sunday of Advent let us raise a glass of wine and piece of Wensleydale, to John the Baptist, the one who was even more selfless than Wayne Rooney.

Amen.