There was a man named John sent by God, who came as a witness to testify to the light, so that through him all men might believe--but only to testify to the light, for he himself was not the light.

The testimony John gave when the Jews sent priests and Levites from jerusalem to ask "Who are you?" was the absolute statement, "I am not the Messiah." They questioned him further, "Who, then? Elijah?" "I am not Elijah," he answered. "Are you the prophet?" "No," he replied.

Finally they said to him, "Tell us who you are, so that we can give some answer to those who sent us. What do you have to say for yourself?" He said, quoting the prophet Isaiah, "I am `a voice in the desert, crying out: Make straight the way of the Lord!" Those whom the Pharisees had sent proceeded to question him further: "If you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet, why do you baptize?" John answered them: "I baptize with water. There is one among you whom you do not recognize--the one who is to come after me--the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to unfasten." This happened in Bethany, across the Jordan, where John was baptizing. (John 1:6-8, 19-28)

Years ago, when the abbot didn't have anything for me to do, after I had finished a job for the Federation, he suggested I just take the year off, and I took him up on that suggestion. I thought it would be rather nice to have a year in which I didn't have to do a blessed thing. But then the question arose, what was I going to do with my time? I happened to be the chaplain that year, decided the Sisters of Mercy in Nashville, Tennessee needed a priest to say mass for them and it meant a warm place to sleep, food, so I said I would do it.

It so happened that just about seven or eight blocks down 21st Avenue South in Nashville was Vanderbilt Divinity School at Vanderbilt University, and so I decided to take myself down to sit in on some Scripture classes at Vanderbilt Divinity School. And as I went into some of the classes, I started hearing some of the professors, very good professors I might say, start talking about omniscient narrator, plot (as opposed to story line). I started hearing them talk about third-person narrator, first-person narrator. And as I listened more and more, the thought came to me, "I've heard all of this before," and it suddenly dawned on me that all of a sudden one of the great contributions of American Biblical scholars to Biblical study is what we call "narrative criticism." In other words, it means not looking at the text to try to get back to the most authentic text that we can have, not looking at translation criticism to see which is the best or the better translation among many translations, not even looking at what we could call "higher criticism" of the Germans--which is the authentic words of Jesus and which are not. What narrative criticism means is that you look at each of the books of Scripture, particularly the Gospels, as a complete, whole literary work within itself. And then you look at that with all the apparatus that you would look, say, at a work of literature, and you begin to see what it can tell you.

When you do that you go to it and you say, "Is there plot here or is there story line here?" Now what do we mean by "story line"? A very simple definition of a story line would be, "The queen died; the king died"--just a statement of facts. Plot arises when you introduce cause: "The queen died; two months later the king died because he was in mourning for the queen. He died of a broken heart." All of a sudden you see you've made a plot--simple, but it's a plot, because you've introduced causality.

One of the things you notice when you start studying a work of literature and you start looking at the plot, the causes of things, the reasons for things. There are always arises the question, which is the greater, the characters in a story where there is plot, or is the plot greater? In other words, does the plot propel the characters, or do the characters propel the plot? Do the characters make things happen, or is the plot, the causality, the thing that makes the characters act. That's a very important question in what we could call literacy criticism.

When you think of the fourth gospel, it all applies. There is a plot there, and there are many themes that develop the plot. But there are also many characters there. And one of the things that you begin to realize as you read the fourth Gospel with this in mind is that the person of Jesus is delineated or defined by the other characters in the novel, or in the Gospel, who they say they are, who they say they are not, what they do, and how they relate, or do not relate, to Jesus. And that propels, in a sense, the action of the Gospel.

Now look at our passage this morning: very few verses. But John, the cousin of Jesus, is one of the first characters propelled on the scene. What do we learn about John as it relates to Jesus, as it helps to delineate Jesus for us? First of all, we learn that John is sent from God, therefore he is a divine witness. He's a witness who has been given a commission, he's been given a commission by God. But what is he to witness? Not himself. We know that by the questions put to him by the delegation which comes out from Jerusalem--which, by the way, it's almost as if John were giving a deposition for a trial. "Who are you? Are you the Messiah?" "No, I am not the Messiah." "Are you Elijah?" "No, I am not Elijah." "Are you the prophet?" "No, I am not the prophet. "Who are you? Why do you baptize?"

All of John's deposition, all of John's testimony, begins to tell us something about this person whom John has come to prepare the way for, to announce. Even before that person of Jesus enters on the stage, is placed before us. We learn a great deal about John (who he is not and who he is), but for the author of the fourth Gospel, the most important thing about John is he's a witness, that's his total function. And you notice you don't even have the nickname here for John. He's not known as the Baptizer. He's simply "John, a witness sent from God to testify to the light." And we know that even before the light appears on the scene.

And later on John will give testimony to his own disciples and some of his own disciples will abandon him to follow Jesus because of John's testimony. But what we see here, as I say, is a person. And the character of John begins to propel the plot, begins to propel the action. But there's a great deal more that we see here.

I already mentioned that one of the things that we begin to see here is that John is asked to give a deposition. If you've ever gone to a court trial or asked to give a deposition for a court trial or a law case, you know what I mean. "What is your name? Where do you live? How do you know this? How do you not know this?" And that starts the whole motif, or I should say, a motif which occurs again and again in the Gospel, the deposition or the forensic or the witness motif. And you can almost read the Gospel of John looking to see who is being called to witness. What witness is being born and how is that witness being accepted or rejected?

And of course then you come to the point where the greatest witness of all is Jesus himself. And that the whole story in the fourth gospel, the whole plot in the fourth Gospel is a plot of Jesus giving a deposition. "Who are you? Where do you come from? How can you give us your flesh to eat and your blood to drink?" And all the time witness is being borne by Jesus, witness is being taken from Jesus, and all the time it is being sifted. And in that sifting there is this opposition that is coming, until ultimately Jesus has to face the final test: life itself. But even with his death he does not cease to give witness, because his resurrection is the final deposition. Now what does this tell us about ourselves?

Witnessing to Jesus, witnessing to the Father, does not cease at Jesus' death and resurrection. Depositions are still being taken and you and I are the ones giving the deposition by what we say and what we do. Just as Jesus came to do the works of the father, and to teach what the father had taught him, just as John comes as a witness to testify to the light to give a deposition of who he is not and who he is in relation to Jesus the Incarnate Light, so you and I, so the church and the world, are constantly giving a deposition or a witness to Jesus. We know how John the Baptizer's witnessing and deposition turned out. We know how Jesus' deposition and witnessing turned out. But we yet do not know how our deposition and witnessing will turn out.

The story doesn't cease at the end of John's gospel. The story, the plot, is still going on. And as I say, testimony is still being collected. How will our testimony end? That is the question which none of us knows at present, and none of us will know until the end of time.