A Sermon Preached on the Third Sunday of Advent, December 14, 2014

by the Rev’d Canon Dane E. Boston, Trinity Cathedral Columbia, South Carolina

Texts: Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; John 1:6-8, 19-28

May I speak in the Name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Who are you?

That’s the deceptively simple question posed by the priests and Levites in today’s Gospel passage. They have come down from Jerusalem—down from the precincts of the Temple and from the carefully ordered life of the Holy City—into the wilderness. They have come down to ask John the Baptist that three-word question: “Who are you?”

But the very fact that they have come all this way—the fact that they have left the seat of their own power and prestige to interrogate a wild prophet in a wild place—shows just how important the question is, and how much is…