This Third Sunday of Advent, Rev David Diller preached “First, Know Yourself” from John 1:6-8, 19-28.  Symbols are a silent witness or testimony.  During this Advent season, all the beautiful colored lights are symbols pointing to Jesus.  In John’s Gospel, John, the forerunner of Jesus, becomes a symbol pointing beyond himself.   The Fourth Evangelist submerges the role of the John as the Baptist by focusing instead on his role as “John the Witness” or “John the Testifier.”  John is “the voice” in the wilderness of life that helps us journey through the wilderness by pointing beyond himself to Jesus.   The other figures appearing in this part of the Fourth Gospel, the religious investigators who come from Jerusalem to question John are really critics who do not respect John as a person or care about the One to whom he points. 

Are we religious investigators & critics, or are we, like John, symbols who point those in the wilderness of life to God’s love in Jesus?  Do we understand & help others to understand “the true light of the world” by living deeply within & from the Christian community?   Do others know us as voices that testify & witness to God’s love out of a personal relationship with the risen & living Jesus? 

Before we can be valid witnesses, we must know ourselves in Christ.