Who do you want: John or Mary?

NOTE: Here are my sermon notes for the second Sunday of Advent 2009: December 6th. As you can see, I am continuing my reflection on Mary during Advent and wrestling with the lectionary texts, too. Please join us if you are in town for worship - at 10:30 am on Sunday - or any other time, too.

I hate pain. I hate everything surrounding pain from its source to its meaning and its cure. Call me a spoiled, 21st century American but I believe that human beings have been constructed by God to hate pain – even when it is telling us something important – and the only way we ever learn to listen to the wisdom of our wounds is through spiritual training.

• Left to ourselves most of us will avoid confronting pain and the potential wisdom of our wounds by any means necessary: we will self-medicate, deny, distract, run away and do harm to ourselves and others over and over again when we are hurting.

• In fact, I would hazard to say that most people will choose to avoid the source and meaning of their pain most of the time because intuitively escape and immediate release makes more sense to us than doing the hard work of listening and learning from the wisdom of our wounds.

No wonder that John the Baptist is often at the heart of Advent preaching: As it is written in the book of the prophet Isaiah, “This is the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: prepare the way of the Lord, make straight the highway of our God; so that every valley shall be lifted up and every mountain and hill made low, the crooked shall be made straight and the rough ways made smooth; for then all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

Advent, as a season in the life of the church, is all about getting ready – it is training time in the best sense of the word – where we are asked to learn about God’s way rather than just our own habits. It is a 28 day course in going deeper, a time for learning to listen to the wisdom of our wounds and the meaning of our pain as well as an occasion for tossing out some of the junk that gets in between us and God’s love.

• Make straight the highway of our God; fill in the valleys and knock down the hills.

• Cast away what is crooked and smooth out the bumps so that you might be embraced by God’s gracious presence in your flesh is what this season is all about.

And in our tradition we are asked to learn how to do this by reflecting on scripture in the company of others. Listening to the Bible together – and discerning and interpreting how to make its words flesh within and among us – is one of the spiritual foundations of the Reformed tradition. We hold that the Bible is most often the best way to understand God’s will for our lives. It takes study and careful conversation with others, to be sure, but we trust that by doing this faithfully the Holy Spirit will guide us into wisdom and healing.

• That’s why we read from the Bible every week at worship and that’s why I spend so much time talking about it with you.

• The Bible can be an objective and thoughtful way of encountering God’s grace; in fact, it is one of the ways that brings us spiritual balance by uniting the head with the heart.

Given this commitment, perhaps it will come as no surprise to you that I find it fascinating that all four of the gospels contain stories about John the Baptist and his ministry of preparation. Think about that: only two – Matthew and Luke – tell us about Christ’s birth, but all four speak of the Baptist. As one scholar says perhaps, “if we want to properly prepare for the coming of Jesus, rather than looking in the manger or decorating trees and houses – or buying and wrapping presents – perhaps we need to listen to John…. for could his preparatory preaching be more important to our spiritual maturity than Jesus' birth?”

It would seem so if we are grounded in scripture, yes? But here’s the challenge: while it is clear that the Bible asks us to wrestle with what John the Baptist has to tell us during Advent – his call to get ourselves ready and do some hard spiritual work – John doesn’t really help us learn how to do that work, ok? John is long on invitation and short on the practicalities of clearing out our junk and making straight the highway of the Lord.

And if I have learned anything over the years it is that most people want and need to take something they can use home with them from church. In the 21st century it isn’t enough to spend an hour listening to pretty music in a lovely setting surrounded by candles and sweet people: we want news we can use!

We want to know how to make sense of our pain. We need to understand the way into the wisdom of our wounds. For each of us yearns for a deep encounter with grace and God’s forgiveness and we ache for help in cultivating an honest and real spiritual life in these overly busy and stressed-out times.

Let’s face it: our lives are full to overflowing. Many, if not most of us, are sleep deprived according to the best medical information. And we are overwhelmed with both the pace of life and the challenge of dealing with it all.

• So if I can be so bold, let me push the envelope to say that most of us want and need to hear how we might become people of faith living in the grace of God.

• Not only do we need some practical insights, we need some assurance that all of this will matter. Otherwise it is just easier – and maybe even more cost effective – to avoid the whole mess.

Which is why I have come to the conclusion that as important as old John the Baptist is is to us as a spiritual kick in the pants, he is not all that helpful as a spiritual practitioner, ok? He calls us to get ready then doesn’t help us do it! But Mary – the Christ-bearer and mother of our Lord – does and let me suggest to you why I think this is true. You see, if you compare and contrast what the Bible teaches us about both John and Mary – if you set their ministries side by side – a few important and practical clues pop up. Let share three that are essential, ok?

First, John is a hot head while Mary practices and cultivates patience. Let me be very practical with you: who is more helpful when times are tough – someone who shoots her mouth off or someone who knows how to listen – someone who explodes with their opinions or someone who takes in all the information and prayerfully sorts things out?

Listen to the words of the Baptist when people come from the city seeking his baptism for the repentance of sins by the River Jordan: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.”

Now listen to what Mary says when told that her body is going to be filled with the Holy Spirit causing her to bear a child out of wedlock in an aggressively patriarchal culture: "My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for God has been mindful of the humble state of his servant… and brought me blessings.”

• Let me suggest that this difference is not just about gender and disposition: it is about spiritual training. John nourished the spirit of the prophet – one who cries out against the status quo in the wilderness – while Mary nurtured the soul of a servant.

• There is a big difference – and in our overly (maybe even pathologically) independent culture where we celebrate and anoint free will writ large – to such an extent that people are given carte blanche to say stupid and mean-spirited things with impunity… my hunch is that Mary’s wisdom and insights are much more healing than the way of John.

Just look at how John organizes his life in response to God’s invitation which is my second point: when inspired by God to challenge the status quo, John flees from his family and surroundings and takes up a wild man’s existence in the wilderness. Remember, John was the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth, yes? He was the son of a priest of the temple in Jerusalem.

• This was the family business for male children and John had been trained to take up a ministry much like his father’s. Now I am not saying that John should have followed the rules, but his actions were pretty extreme.

• After receiving the best education possible, he fled for the desert and gave up all the affects of comfort for living in the wild as a homeless itinerant preacher. If one of our own children did this we might not only be confused and hurt, we might wonder if they needed medication.

But not Mary: when she was inspired by God to challenge the status quo scripture tells us that she waited and let God’s word mature within her. She pondered all of God’s mysteries in her heart as the Bible says and didn’t rush to judgment.

When you put the two spiritualities back to back like this, I can’t help but be attracted to Mary and almost repelled by John. Don’t get me wrong: there is a role for the prophet in every generation – they help us name and say the things that often frighten and confuse us – but let’s also be clear that this happens at a great cost. And most of the time – and I really think this is true – most of the time we need Mary around us much more than John the Baptist.

And that leads me to the third distinction: John is always pushing and demanding for extreme action while Mary cultivates a much more gradual conversion. John is a revolutionary while Mary is a baker – and a mother – and a woman of prayer. In the gospel lesson we’ll read next week, when the people who have been baptized by John ask what they should do next, he tells them:

Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?” He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.”

Now let me ask you something very seriously: have you ever tried to make a dramatic change in your life? Change direction profoundly? Maybe it is because of health – or politic – or family conditions or even employment? Sometimes life confronts with the need to make bold and aggressive changes – for a variety of good and important reasons – and here’s the thing: no matter what the catalyst, in the end almost all of us wind up back where we started. Crash diets don’t work – revolutions end up becoming as oppressive as the oppressors – and most New Year’s resolutions are broken by the third day in January.

But not so with the way of Mary – who ponders the challenges of life in her heart for a long, long time before acting – and almost always selects a simple act of kindness over harsh words or bold deeds. Mary asks Jesus to make the party better with new wine. She follows him faithfully even when she doesn’t fully understand. And she is there at the end – at the Cross – when most of the bolder and more demanding disciples have fled in fear. Next week I am going to give you a broad survey of Mary’s actual deeds and words in scripture and I think you will be pleasantly surprised and awakened to her powerful witness as a disciple.

But for now let me remind you of what the Reformed theologian, Jaraslov Pelikan, of Yale Divinity School said: Mary is the most important woman in the Bible – and for Protestants – also the most invisible. So we need to look at her more carefully. Rosemary Radford Reuther, a Roman Catholic theologian, put it like this:

There is the Mary of the monks, who venerate her primarily as a virgin and shape her doctrines in an antisexual mold. But there is also the Mary of the people who is still the earth mother and who is venerated for her power… It is she who helps the woman through her birthpangs, who assures the farmer of his new corps, new rains and new lambs. For she is the maternal image of the divine who understands ordinary people in all our broken and wounded ways… (in Truly Our Sister by Elizabeth Johnson)

And, I might add in conclusion, she offers a much more helpful and healing spirituality than our brother John the Baptist. At this moment in my life and ministry, not only do I want to become more like Mary, but I hope to find a whole lot more of Mary’s spirit with me in the church as we seek ways to serve the Lord in our generation. Because, let’s face, John can be a real... pain. And there is already enough of that to go around.

That’s the good news for today as I have heard it so let those who have ears to hear: hear.