Why john the baptist matters: advent III...

NOTE: Here are my worship notes for Sunday, December 11, 2011 - Advent III - with a special emphasis on John the Baptist.  If you are in town, please join us at 10:30 am for worship.  We would be delighted to greet you...

At the dawn of this day – the third Sunday of a holy Advent – our tradition asks us to be confronted by the witness and presence of John the Baptist. He stands in our path with a message of confrontation as well as consolation by calling into question everything sentimental about this season. He grabs us where we live, questions nearly everything we hold near and dear about our traditions, challenges our overly spiritualized but simultaneously commercialized expressions of Christmas and defies any sense of God’s reality that isn’t connected to grace and justice.

·     In a word, John the Baptist is literally and figuratively a sacred pain in the ass to all sentimental religion.

·     And like all caustic prophets in every age and spirituality, most of us would rather ignore and refuse him than pay careful attention to his message.

Which is why, of course, the Spirit of the Lord serves him up to us during Advent not just once, but twice: it is like God is saying, “You can run to the malls – you can try to lose yourself in Christmas lights and tinsel – you can play your Bing Crosby, Trisha Yearwood or Take 6 holiday CDs from now until Easter – you can even feast and drink yourself fat and sick at all the Christmas parties you can find  – but you’ll never be able to hide from the soul of my Holy Spirit if you listen to the Baptist.” So, today we’re going to give John a shot and explore why John the Baptizer MATTERS to you and me and our celebration of Christmas.

Now let me confess something important to you: I mostly hate John the Baptist. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that we have a love–hate thing going on. You see, we’ve been wrestling together for most of the 30 years of my ordained ministry and I’m still trying to integrate his message into my life. Early on, right out of seminary, I loved John: like most young preachers committed to a course of social justice, I was totally down with the Baptizer when he called out the hypocrites and shook up the status quo of both religion and politics. (Go out into the congregation, hand someone a Bible and ask them to read Matthew 3: 7-10 out loud.) 

But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume 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. Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

I particularly liked that last line: “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees and every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”  Yeah, baby, now we’re talking! Once, back in the early days of doing urban ministry in Cleveland, I decided to turn my sermon time into a character study of John the Baptist. So I did a ton of research and created a monologue based on John’s spiritual evolution.

You know he was born into a priestly home and was expected to go into his daddy’s business as a priest in the high temple, right? So, I started out in my finest robe – and a clerical collar that I used to wear all the time back then – and then proceeded to get OUT of my religious gear and into the clothes of an itinerant, street corner doomsday preacher.By the end of this monologue, John the Baptist was no longer a child of privilege, he was a wild street person living on the edge.  And just to make this point, I closed my sermon by running down the center aisle of the church waving an ax in the air shouting: “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees and every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” 

Ah… those were the days! No kidding, that really happened – and as a result I wasn’t able to wear a clerical collar again for about 10 years… and three prominent church families and one new guest never came back to worship!  Well, there you go:  John’s message is abrasive and uncompromising – and that’s the fundamental reason why he matters to us – in a bold and prophetic way John the Baptist tears down everything sentimental about Christmas.

Now let me be clear about what I mean when I say sentimentality. My favorite Christian formation writer, Gertrud Mueller-Nelson, put it like this:  “Sentimentality is the emotion we feel when we scoop off part of the truth, that part which we are willing to accept, and slather it like syrup to cover over what we do not want to see.” (To Dance with God, p. 77) She suggests two examples:

+ Feelings of nationalism, “often fostered with rousing anthems and speeches that allow us to promote our own country’s interests over the common interests of all people and to see ourselves as superior and blameless.”

+ She continues saying that sentimental “are those paintings tourists bring back from Mexico done n black velvet which depict a haunted, great eyed waif with a rhinestone tear rolling down her face as though human misery were cute or quaint.”

Are you with me? Can you think of other examples of sentimentality – especially from our Christmas traditions – that keep us from facing the hard and often darker truths of our reality? (Invite insights and comments from the congregation.)

“Sentimentality,” Ms. Mueller-Nelson concludes, “is a half-truth – and a half- truth is a very dangerous thing, because it is a lie.” John the Baptist will not let us lie about ourselves, our religion, our politics or even the way we celebrate Christmas. The poet, Ian Fraser, from the Community of Iona in Scotland expressed the spirituality of John the Baptist like this in something he calls:  “This Year I’m NOT Coming.”

This year I’m not coming (said the Lord.)
I’m not coming because I’m fed up with coming every year.
On your earth no one listens to me. I speak of friendship and you kill each other.
I told you to help each other and instead you think only of yourselves.
I told you to become poor and instead you always strive to become rich.
I told you to break bread with the hungry and you exploit them.
How can I come to earth – which I gave you?

First and fundamentally John the Baptist matters to us because more than anyone in our Christian tradition, he goes out of his way to challenge the ugly lies of sentimentality. Yes, he was strident – poverty is painful. To be sure, he was abrasive – how else can he be heard above all the commercials and noise? And without a doubt he gets under our skin – but only for our own good, yes?  Today’s gospel tells us:

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.  And here is John’s testimony: when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, "Who are you?" He confessed, "I am not the Messiah…I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, 'Make straight the way of the Lord,'" as the prophet Isaiah said.

You see, John is the voice of repentance – change the direction of your life so that you get right with God – and nobody likes to be challenged, right? We all believe that we’re the masters of our own destiny, women and men called to be ruggedly individual as we embrace life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  And then along comes John: the sacred pain in the ass…

That’s the part I hate about the Baptist – his insistence on repentance – but that is what everybody hates about John. Because, you see, our hatred is just our sin and selfishness speaking out loud. No wonder St. Paul told us in our second reading: “Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil… and rejoice in the Lord always!” (I Thessalonians 5)

And I’ve come to trust and experience that John the Baptist actually can help us rejoice in the Lord always and in all ways if we’re willing to be a little creative. He is not ONLY a pain in the ass, he is also a spirit-filled lover of the Lord and let me give you three illustrations of the beautiful and joyous ways John the Baptist can help us.

First, although Bible scholars insist it is apocryphal, do you know the story in Luke’s gospel of what happened when the mother of our Lord, the Virgin Mary, went to visit her cousin, Elizabeth?  With a truth much deeper than mere facts we read:

In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country – that is she left Pittsfield and headed out to Hinsdale or maybe even Beckett – where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting – while still outside – the little baby in her womb – John the Baptist – leaped for joy. And Liz was filled with the Holy Spirit singing out loud:  Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

OMG I love that story! Little baby John the Baptist – while still in his momma’s womb – starts to dance and boogie and shake his body in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ.

+ Not only do we get one of the most important prayers in all of Christendom from this story – the Ave Maria or Hail Mary – but we also get a glimpse that repentance is not really about shame and ashes and sackcloth.

+ Rather repentance is more like a dance that leads us back into right relationships with God and one another.

The first thing John the Baptist wants to teach us is that faithful living is less about wallowing in our woes and more about rejoicing in the Lord always, yes? Repentance is more about gratitude and grace than obligation and heavy-hearts, so let’s get dancing!  Questions?

Second, the Baptist makes clear that God’s spirit cannot be domesticated or refined or even rendered polite. His words are not gentle. His manners are not pretty. And there is almost nothing soothing about him because where does the young preacher go when he leaves the sophisticated world of his father’s temple in Jerusalem to start his own ministry?

+ To the suburbs? A gated community? A successful and well-resourced congregation? No, he goes to the desert – the wilderness – the periphery of civilization.

+ So let’s recall some of the events that took place out in the desert so that we might see what the wilderness symbolizes in the imagination of our tradition, ok?

A key story is the Exodus – the journey of freedom from slavery and oppression for Israel – that also includes 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, right? Do you know that scholars have concluded that it should have only taken Moses and the children of Israel 11 days to get to the border of the Promised Land from Egypt? To go from Horeb to Kadesh Barnea on foot involves a journey of about a week and a half but… apparently God’s people are slow learners so a whole lot of things had to be sorted out in the desert.

That’s one story; why else is the wilderness important in our sacred imagination?

+ We received the 10 Commandments – and God’s covenant – in the wilderness, right?  Could it be that the desert is a place where spiritual and ethical wisdom are to be found?

+ Some of the key leaders of the Old Testament were tried and tested in the wilderness, too. It is where they were strengthened and their faith matured which marks the desert as a school for sacred living and learning. Remember that Jesus also wandered off into the wilderness for 40 days – and was tempted by Satan – before the start of his public ministry.

The wilderness is clearly a place of waiting and wandering, sorting out and testing, getting in touch with the natural and awesome rhythms of nature so that in God’s time – not our own – we might discover a new and healthier way of living. That’s what salvation is mostly about – deep health – from the Latin salvere.

So what John insists upon, as I interpret him, is that whenever our religion become too pretty – too encumbered with buildings and traditions rather than grace and justice for people – too full of itself, it is no longer healthy. And when that happens, as it does over and over again, God raises up a voice who cries out from the wilderness – that wild place of the Spirit’s deepest joys and sorrows – with a song of repentance. And while I don’t know about you, I think I hear some of the Baptist’s wilderness cry in the songs being sung by those young people down at Occupy Wall Street.

I disagree with Newt and Rick Santorum and Mitt – no matter what their theological pedigree – for I sense something of John the Baptist’s invitation to salvation in those encampments. One of our United Church of Christ preachers, the Reverend Donna Schaper – who used to be one of our Association Ministers in this region and was ordained into ministry in Tucson and now serves Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village – wrote earlier this week of a meeting that took place in NYC:

That morning a dozen occupiers addressed forty or so clergy. We clergy were all somewhat skeptical of their demand for public space and you could hear the ministerial, rabbinical hrumph, hrumph in the room. (Most of us had never occupied Zucotti Park and a downward trend in temperature wasn’t going to improve on that.) But the occupiers edged toward the theological as they articulated a need for communal, inspirational, face-to-face contact in which they could “appear” to one another.

Towards the end of their conversation, Schaper says that the occupiers articulated their movement as a new monasticism:

A completely nonviolent movement does not need to be penned up for its own good (they said.  And then) spoke of a new monasticism, in which people have given up everything to jump to a future they can only imagine. In the most recent newsletter posted by Occupy Theory occupiers describe how sad they were about their lives, both present and future, until they found each other. If you were worried before about young people today, you will be terrified after you read about the emptiness, the bought-and-soldness, the futility, the lack of any place to be or person to be.  Paul Mayer, a friend of the Berrigans, was at our meeting and he said, “Be sure to read Thomas Merton’s essay on Marxism and Monasticism. It will explain to you what they are saying about the need to separate in order to enter.”

There is more to be said, of course, but it is increasingly clear to me that John the Baptist’s is down there and thoroughly at home with those kids. In our generation they are the ones calling for repentance in the hope that dancing and true justice – dare I say salvation – might return to our common life rather than the mean-spirited charade that currently passes for politics.

So first, the Baptist matters because he does the dance of repentance; second, he calls us to renew our intimacy with the wildness of God’s grace in the desert.  And third John the Baptist matters because of his fierce loyalty to Jesus Christ. He is selfless and humble – always pointing to the Christ – saying with a conviction that is sacramental: “I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal; I am not Elijah, I am not the prophet and I am not the Messiah: behold, there is Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

In the Old Testament, when Moses asked for a personal or maybe even intimate name to call the Lord who promised salvation and freedom, do you recall God’s reply? “I am who I am – I will be who I will be” is how the Bible puts it. And while we sometimes transliterate this into Yahweh, the sound is ultimately a mystery – I am who I am – is the best we can do.

When St. John wrote his gospel, he made certain to describe our Lord Jesus Christ with is 7 different “I AM” passages:  I am the bread of life – I am the light of the world – I am the gate of salvation – I am the good shepherd – I am the resurrection and the life – I am the way, the truth and the life – and I am the true vine.  Seven, of course, was considered to be the perfect number:  for the Lord created the world and the heavens in six days but rested on the Sabbath. 

So John’s gospel builds on this understanding to help us see just how saturated Jesus was in God’s Holy Spirit of grace and justice.  And always – always – John the Baptist says… what?  “I am NOT…”  John matters because he is a model of humble discipleship to Jesus Christ.  Lord, may it be so with us as well.

Pray with me: Lord, in the spirit and presence of Jesus, form us into a faith community – a living body shaped by the Christ we follow – a place where we joyfully pick up one another’s burdens and where sacrificial giving and living is the norm. For we recognize and embrace that in Christ Jesus God sacrificed all for us.  Amen.

credits:
1) eons.com
2) modernartimages.com
3)
4) metafilter.com
5)
6) Robert Lentz
7) Mako Fujimora
8) Occupy
9) Mako