Third Sunday of Advent; 17 December 2023; Advent 3B (RCL); Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; Psalm 126; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8; 19-28.
Before John’s Gospel can move on to the question of who Jesus is (a question at play throughout the entire Gospel), it must settle the question of who John the Baptist is. The Evangelist uses the device of having the Pharisees question the Baptist (the rabbis would have been successors to the Pharisees, and it was to the rabbis that the Evangelist’s community had to make its defense). The Baptist begins by telling us who he is not, in emphatic terms, using the ego eimi formula (with a negative) that Jesus will use in the great I AM statements.
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