The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee



Monday in the Third Week of Advent, December 12, 2011, St. Andrew’s-Sewanee School

“John answered them, ‘I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know…” (Jo. 1:26).

There’s a central question in our Gospel today, “Who are you?” (Jo. 1:22). It’s a question addressed to John the Baptist by those who were sent from the Pharisees, and it’s a question that cuts two ways. First, the questioners are seeking information; they want to know who John is. Second, the question is an invitation for John himself to figure out who he is; as a follow-on question puts it, “What do you say about yourself?” (Jo. 1:22). So there’s the question we ask about others, and the question we ask about ourselves. We seek to know both ourselves and others.

This might be a good way for us to frame the educational endeavor itself, something that occupies a large part of the lives of both students and teachers at St Andrew’s-Sewanee School. In seeking knowledge we seek to come to know ourselves and others more deeply, to understand our world and the place we have in it. Think about the role played by the classical curriculum in education. Philosophy makes the question of who we are fairly explicit, through the Philosopher’s dictum, “Know thyself,” but it’s also true for the other arts and sciences. If we read a novel in English class we are trying to extend our perspective by entering sympathetically into the world of another, the fictionalized character or characters; along with this there is the perspective of the author, of course, which may be more or less concealed. So there’s the question we ask about others; but it’s also the case that in assuming these perspectives we are really coming to understand ourselves more fully. This also happens in the study of History, where we learn about other societies and other times within our own so that we can come to know our own society and our own time more completely. Foreign languages work this way too because they reveal to us how other people think and express themselves. And of course, the study of the Physical Sciences and Mathematics place us within our context, as we learn about the shape of reality and the structure of our world. We want to know who we are and who others are, and the nature of the universe we all inhabit. That’s why we’re here.

But there’s a third question that’s partially concealed in our Gospel today because it does not take the form of a question. John makes it a part of his response to his own questioners. “John answered them, ‘I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know…”. We want to know who we are and who others are, and the nature of our world, but John is telling his questioners that there is another they do not know, but who they ought to know. The one standing in their midst who they do not know is Jesus Christ himself. It’s a form of the question that Jesus addresses to the disciples in the synoptic Gospels, “But who do you say that I am?” (Mk 8:29), only here not as a question but as an assertion that there is One they do not know.

Now the knowledge of Jesus Christ that John the Baptist is prescribing here is not simply a matter of the head (the “facts in a book” sort of knowledge), but something more intimate and internal, a matter of the heart. It’s a specific sort of knowledge, as well, that’s prescribed for Christians. Critic and writer Clive James says somewhere that, even though he has given up Christian belief he still regards Jesus as his Master, if not his Redeemer (Cultural Amnesia, p. 490). James has a firm handle on what actually constitutes Christian belief, even though he cannot follow: the belief in a Savior, the “heart” knowledge of One who gives himself for us so that we might have life, and whose own identity may even provide the key to the puzzle of who we are, and what our world’s about.

Today this community gets to witness folks at St Andrew’s-Sewanee School who are ready to answer the big questions of who they are and who Jesus is as well. These students are fulfilling an important role today, answering important questions that remind all of us what those questions are. Each of us must answer these questions for our self, which is sort of the point of why we are here, but our confirmands are helping to point forward the way. I’m grateful for their witness.

One point further before we end. Jesus teaches us in his Summary of the Law that we must love God, and love our neighbor as our self. Here the language used is the language of love rather than the language of knowledge, but we may take the point as the same one. We are seeking to love God and our neighbor as our self, a commandment that encompasses the answer to the questions of “Who am I?” and “Who are you?” and “Who is Jesus Christ?”. It’s a matter of the heart, and not simply of the mind, and we are called to answer these questions by the giving of ourselves.

- The Rt. Rev’d John Bauerschmidt, Bishop of Tennessee

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