We may not have thought about this before, but both John and Mark do not write about the birth of Jesus in their gospels. Those stories are found in Matthew and Luke. John does say more than Mark about his origins, but they both jump right into the days of Jesus' ministry, bypassing the Christmas story. After John's introduction to Jesus as the divine Word made flesh, he takes us to the public confession of John the Baptist under the interrogation of the Jews. This confession took place after the baptism and temptation of Christ. How do we know this? The next day, John declares Jesus to be the Lamb of God and that he knew he was so because he had already seen the Spirit come upon Him in His baptism. Also, since Jesus went immediately to His tempation after his baptism, then He is obviously back from the temptation, ready to begin His ministry.Now John tells the Jews, in effect: "There stands one among you whom you do not know and he is more important than I am." That had to be disturbing to the Jews. John was highly respected. He was recognised by the whole nation as a true prophet of God. He has now told them that there is already in their midst someone who is the Messiah, or Elijah, or the prophet foretold by Moses. Yet they do not know who he is. Imagine the excitement that these words would bring. Would there not be an uncanny feeling among them, a fearful feeling, a suspense. "Who is it then?" they would ask. "When will He show himself? Why has he not done so already?" "What is he thinking? What does he have up his sleeve?" The questions started by John's words would go on and on.
John, however, was exulting in all of this. The Messiah has come! He's been waiting for him all his life and now he knows who he is: Jesus of Nazareth. Of all people! John's purpose for coming into the world is now being fulfilled before his very eyes. The fact that this One foretold now stands among his people is not something foreboding, not something eerie, but something strengthening, something assuring, something wonderful. It's what he's longed for all his life.
John told the Jews about Jesus standing among them, and we can speak today, as the church of Jesus Christ, of our Lord standing among us. There are two senses in which He stands among us. One is simply the truth of his constant presence, established by the Father. The word "stand" leads us to think of an established position. Jesus Christ, by virtue of His faithful fulfillment of His mission given Him by the Father, now is established as the head of the Church. As He promised in the Upper Room to his disciples, He has come to us by His Spirit and He promises never, ever, to leave His people. We are His temple. We are His dwelling place. He is therefore always present. This is very comforting, is it not? There are times when we feel he has left us, for whatever reason. But we are never to believe that. We are to always remember that leaving us is the last thing He will ever do.
The other sense of standing, though, is the occasion of His manifestly helping us when we are in need. There are times when he stands with us in a special way; when he manifests his power on our behalf. Paul speaks of this experience in 2 Tim. 4. He tells of the first time he had to stand before Nero in that last series of his appearances before him. He writes to Timothy:
At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me: I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge. Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me; that by me the preaching might be fully known, and that all the Gentiles might hear: and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion.
Thus the Lord stands among us, both in the sense that he is always present with us and that he also aids us when we are in need.
While all this is true and encouraging, there is nevertheless something of the same uncanniness about it which the Jews must have felt at John's words, for, after all, He is who he is. He is the Lord. He is the Holy One of God. He is present with us to bless us, but he does have His own agenda. He's not for us the way we normally think of people being for us.
Recall His conversation with Joshua. In Joshua 5, the children of Israel have passed over the Jordan river and encamped at Gilgal. Here they keep the Passover and the mannah ceases, for they begin to eat of the fruit of the land. At some time during this, Joshua was near Jericho - we suppose reconnoitering the city - when the Bible says a man appeared before him with a drawn sword. Joshua approaches this man and asks, "Are you for us or for our adversaries?" And what is the answer? "No, but as Comander of the army of the LORD I have now come." In other words, I'm not necessarily for either; I serve someone else. Now, if we had been Joshua, would this have been comforting or threatening? It's comforting if we know we too serve the LORD, but it is also threatening because it runs against the passion of our sense of self-interest and self-survival. We are suddenly aware that the one who stands among us may have an agenda that is not always safe for us. We may find his higher purposes leading us to sacrifice.
There's another aspect to the uncanniness of Jesus standing among us and that is the fact that there's always a sense in which we, like the Jews of John's day, do not know him. We certainly know Him better than they did! He has revealed Himself to us and we have the New Testament and hundreds of years of biblical learning to delve into and the ever present Holy Spirit to teach us how wonderful and good He is and all the wonderful things He's done for us. Yes, we know much, and hopefully we are continuing to learn, for after all, we are to be always growing in the grace and knowledge of Christ. But, at the same time, as Paul says in 1 Cor. 8:2, no man knows anything as he ought, and, as Moses said, the secret things belong to God. No matter how much we learn, our thoughts are still not His thoughts in an absolute sense. Jesus can stump us just as much as He ever did his disciples. He is always about things of which we know nothing and do not understand. And there are always things about ourselves that we have not yet recognised that He is trying to bring to our attention. Thus, there stands one among us whom we do not know. Yes, we know who he is, we know a lot about him, but we do not have absolute knowledge and that's the thing that can bother us. That's the thing about Him that can bring an uncanniness to the way we feel about His presence. We can find ourselves asking the same kind of questions the Jew's asked: "What is he thinking about us?" "What does He have up his sleeve?" "What is there that He knows I should know by now but I keep on being hard-headed and dull about it? What is there that he's trying to teach me that I ought to be doing but I still haven't gotten the idea? Where is he being patient with me because I still haven't seen myself in this or that light or because I still have all these heretical ideas that I think are so wise and biblical?" Our Lord stands among us, and that is wonderful - it's a blessing without which we could not live. But, being who He is, and our knowledge of Him being limited, there is something uncomfortable about it that we have to get used to.
This aspect of our relationship with the Lord is the same which C. S. Lewis tries to bring out in one of his Narnia novels. When a Narnian is asked if Aslan was safe, the creature answered, "He's not a tame lion." This fact lends an edge, as it were, to all the other nice things we learn about Aslan in the story. There is a degree of unpredictability added to his character, and even danger, for wild lions are not what we would call safe. And he may do something or ask someone to do something we feel is a little wild.
In the same way, there is one who stands among us, who is who he is and the way he is, and we do not really know him. He is not what we would call predictable. Merely compare the grand expectations of the Jews for the Messiah and the scene in the manger in Bethlehem. That was not the way men thought the Messiah would come.
This fact gives us a great reason to keep humble and open minds. We never know when we will find ourselves so very confident in what we are thinking or doing, only to find Him rebuking us and challenging us.
Therefore, when it comes to our doctrines and our convictions, we hold them with a humility that is ready to be instructed. We are ready for our doctrines and convictions to be improved. And we always know they need improving in some way or another and we are ready to have our Lord intervene in our lives to bring about these improvements. And we certainly never take pride in moral achievements. After all, He's been standing there the whole time and we know he knows the real story behind it all. We know that we would have gotten no where in service or in grace unless he had not been present with us, if he had not heard our cry and speedily helped and delivered us as we ran, in a fashion, the race that He has set before us.
Living in the presence of this one who stands among us is something we really cannot fully comprehend but it is the most important thing in the world to do. Yes, it can be scary at times, but it is also the most blessed thing, for in the presence of the LORD is fullness of joy and at His right hand are pleasures for evermore.
Jesus, stand among us In Thy risen power;
Let this time of worship Be a hallowed hour.
Breathe the Holy Spirit Into every heart;
Bid the fears and sorrows From each soul depart.
Thus with quickened footsteps We pursue our way,
Watching for the dawning Of eternal day.
W. Pennefather, c. 1855.
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