Sermon-This is the record that matters

Leonid Pasternak - The Passion of creation

A sermon preached during Sung Holy Communion (BCP) at St Giles-in-the-Fields on Sunday 21 December 2025, the Fourth Sunday of Advent, based on Philippians 4.4-7 and John 1.19-28.

“This is the record of John.”

We’ve heard it said – and later we will hear it sung beautifully to the music of Orlando Gibbons.

Whether we keep a diary or not, we are leaving behind a record of our lives all the time. Some of these records are deliberate: calendar entries, letters or emails, carefully curated social media accounts. Others accumulate quietly in the background. Bank statements that reveal what we spend our money on. The photos on our phones that capture random things we need to remember, alongside moments of beauty or celebration. Health apps that record the number of steps we take, track our movements, our sleep, and all sorts of bodily functions. Then there is the record of the impact our lives have on the world around us – our environmental footprint – which technology does not yet seem to track quite so slavishly. We tune in to hear the record of other people’s lives in song; Desert Island Discs remains the world’s longest-running factual radio programme.

The opening words of our gospel reading today invite reflection on what the record of our own lives might say about us.

If someone announced, “This is the record of Philip – or Tom – or Chris,” which record would it be? And would we recognise ourselves in the person that record describes?

The record of John the Baptist, in this gospel, begins with questions. Priests and Levites are sent into the wilderness to investigate a man who is drawing crowds to be baptised in the River Jordan. What on earth is going on?

Who are you?
Are you the Messiah?
Are you Elijah?
Are you the prophet?

They ask, persistently.

They want to categorise John – to place his identity within, or outside, a framework they recognise – to reduce uncertainty and report back to their superiors.

Labelling people in this way comes naturally to us. And, as it happens, to the other gospel writers, when it came to their record of John; who is portrayed as a bit of a hippy – or hipster.

Mark records John’s rough clothing and his strange diet.

Matthew records his sharp exchange with the Pharisees and Sadducees.

Luke records him as a neonatal athlete, leaping for joy in his mother’s womb when the pregnant Mary comes near.

Perhaps by the time today’s gospel was written, these markers of John’s “otherness” were so well known to the first hearers of it that they no longer needed repeating. Or perhaps these labels were simply not considered important.

That idea remains counter-cultural.

Think of how we usually respond when asked to describe ourselves. It is hard not to do so using labels – ways of placing our identity within, or without, a recognised cultural framework. We describe what we do for a living. Where we come from. Who our people are. We signal identity through what we wear, the shopping bags we carry, the language and style of speech we use.

And yet, from time to time, these labels slip off – or no longer seem to fit – and we may wrestle, often privately, with the question of who we “really” are. Aren’t we more than what we wear, or eat, or do, or who we live with? Who are we, really?

Such questions are part of being human. Because we know that the deep peace of which our epistle reading speaks – the peace that passes understanding – cannot be attained by slavish adherence to such labels. We were made not for definition by ourselves or others, but for belonging – to God.

John the Baptist seems to have done the heavy lifting on that front and come out the other side.

He refuses every label offered to him.

I am not the Messiah.
I am not Elijah.
I am not the prophet.

But when he does speak of who he is, he reaches not for a label but for scripture: “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’”

Pressed again – if he is none of these things, why is he baptising so many people? – John replies:

“There stands one among you whom you do not know; he is the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.”

Who I am, in myself, is irrelevant, John insists.
All that matters is the great “I am.”

In this gospel, John’s identity is defined entirely by his witness to Christ. When we belong to God, no labels are needed.

The Lutheran priest and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer reached a similar conclusion. In his poem Who am I?, written from prison, he reflects on the conflicting records of his life: how others see him, how he presents himself, how he truly feels. Confident and afraid. Strong and weak. Composed – and restless.

“Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today, and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once?”

“Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.”

Bonhoeffer concludes not by choosing one label over another, but by surrendering the question of his identity to God. Because we cannot finally know who we are on our own terms – or on the terms imposed on us by others:

“Whoever I am, thou knowest, O God, I am thine.”

The theologians of the Reformation declared that all true wisdom consists in knowledge of God and knowledge of ourselves. And through Jesus – God made flesh – knowledge of both is fully revealed.

As people of Christ, whose birth we celebrate this week, we also rejoice that the one who comes knows us completely.

Who we are. Not a brand. Not a label. A life called into being and called to follow.

Because, like John the Baptist, we are signposts, not the destination.
We are not the light – but we are called to bear witness to the light.

And so, when the record of our lives is told – not the bank statements, not the minutes of meetings or reports, not the curated versions of ourselves – but the true record – may it be said of us what was said of John: that we pointed beyond ourselves.
That we made straight a way for the Lord.
That we belonged to God.

This is the record that matters.

Image: Leonid Pasternak - The Passion of creation