Live into the Questions

 

I am a big fan of John the Baptizer. And so I am always happy to have him show up in Advent to kick our butts.

But as I was thinking about things at St. Barnabas, where we have had to say good bye to multiple people who are moving away, and the general malaise that seems to be hanging over the nation as we grapple with more and more outrageous news every day, I found myself thinking about John's ranting at the Jordan River as not just a dressing down of those who talk a good game about their faith, but don't show much for it, but also as an invitation to figure out why we don't live up to our ideals, and then what do we need to do to change that. 

The end result was this sermon. See what you think.

Texts: Isaiah 11:1-11; Matt 3: 1-13

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If you’ve ever gone shopping for Christmas cards…you know that you have basically two choices.

You can go either the route that emphasizes secular images of Santa Claus and reindeer….snowflakes.

Or you have the Christian images of the Holy Family and usually a very white Jesus in the manger.

Perhaps you might find some with a bright star of Bethlehem…but that’s pretty much the gamut of the Christmas card rack.

What we never see are Advent cards.

Probably because no one wants to open up a card with John the Baptizer in his camel’s hair shirt and leather belt greeting them with a hearty “Blessed Advent You Brood of Vipers!”

Not the friendliest of holiday greetings.

And for John…he’s not interested in being warm and fuzzy.

Let’s remember who he is.

He’s the son of Elizabeth and Zechariah…a pastor’s kid.

If we recall…his mother was an older woman.

The angel Gabriel told Zechariah while he was in the Temple that his wife was pregnant.

She was going to have a son…and they were to name him John.

 Zechariah was like…

“Hmmmm….I dunno about this. I’m old and she’s old…so…hmmm”

That’s when Gabriel mutes Zechariah…until the time that John is born and at his circumcision…the people wanted to know the child’s name.

Elizabeth told everyone, “His name is John.”

But nobody else in their family line had that name…so the crowd turns to Zechariah.

And Zechariah gets a tablet and writes down that the child’s name is John…and…miracle of miracles…he gets his speech back.

Finally able to speak again…he launches into a proclamation…which we have in our Book of Common Prayer…. the Song of Zechariah….which y’all can find on page 92 if you want to look it up.

It’s one of the many canticles we use weekly in Morning Prayer services.

It’s a loving tribute of father to son…as he makes this prediction about John’s future:

“You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way, to give the people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins.”

Now…I don’t know if Zechariah knew that his son…having grown up with a priest for a dad…was going to become a rebel.

John saw the ways in which the religious institution and those wishing to preserve the institution under a hostile power like the Roman Empire…had been…in his opinion…letting things get corrupted.  

John saw the way that those embedded and invested in the system had not lived up to expectations and he wanted a more pure religion.

This would lead him to start another branch of Judaism…the Essenes.

John went out into the wilderness…to the outskirts of Jerusalem…west of the Dead Sea.

He called upon people to come out to the Jordan River to be baptized…or immersed…in the waters and confess that they’d turned away from keeping God front and center in their lives.

And I don’t know if Zechariah or Elizabeth knew their son would be yelling at other Jewish leaders and calling them a “brood of vipers”….which is a pretty ugly slam on the Sadducees and Pharisees.

A brood is a group of newborn vipers…and newborn vipers were known to eat their way out through the stomachs of their mothers…killing off their mamas in the process.

When these leaders…make an appearance before John for a baptism… John rails against them…accusing them of having eaten away at Judaism in favor of their own comfort and power.

They’ve come to the Jordan for baptism…but he says they haven’t done anything to show they’re ready to turn themselves in a Godward direction…and drop their ego-driven ways and their need for power and self-satisfaction.

John isn’t playing.

Because he knows there’s yet another one coming…one with a baptism that is greater than his own.

A baptism not of water but of fire.

Not a wildfire…burning out of control and scorching the earth.

But more like the fire of blacksmith…melting and warming and refining the people’s souls and refashioning them in the image of God.

Just as Zechariah had a vision of his son’s future…John has a vision of a future that will come with this One whose so great that John doesn’t feel worthy to carry his sandals.

This is the coming of Jesus…the second person of the Trinity…coming to be in the world…living as one of us…and putting into motion a work of teaching us to live into Love.

This is what’s at play during this season of Advent.

While the world around us is encouraging us to buy more stuff…go to more parties…and listen to holiday music as we move around the grocery store…John is yelling at us to prepare our inner house…our hearts…for a greater gift…the gift of God coming to us through Jesus and realigning our lives to God’s will.

To take care of one another.

To pay attention to those around us.

To show kindness…mercy…and compassion to ourselves and those who are on this journey with us.

That’s what “repentance” really means.

Like it’s sister season of Lent…Advent is the invitation for all of us to step back and do a self-assessment and take stock of how we’re doing during this time…what are the things that are feeding us and leading us in the direction of that peaceable kingdom we heard in the Isaiah reading.

What are those prejudices…jealousies…and desires to control others that are interfering with us living into a life where we model the love of God as known to us through the life of Jesus?

John’s voice in the wilderness is an echo to us here in the 21^st century to slow down and pay attention and not treat this inbreaking of God into the world as a one-off or a fad.

But to see this as a chance to do some reflecting on where we might not be living up to our promises made at baptism…those ideals of “seeking and serving Christ in all people” and…”striving for justice and peace among all people.” This is our chance to do a course correction.

Now that might feel like…”Sheesh! Yet another thing during this hyper busy time of the year!

But it’s really not meant to be taken that way.

Advent is about a beginning.

This is the season to ask those questions of ourselves…and to ponder them…and NOT to answer them right away…but rather to live into those questions as we progress along toward Christmas.

During this season…we can receive this message from John the Baptizer…and hear it as an invitation.

Consider it as an opportunity to do some weeding and pruning of those things that keep us from experiencing that Love which comes to us each year.

Use this as a time to sit with questions…and pray for the guidance we need to bear that good fruit of our lives and to be the best versions of our beloved selves.

Ponder and prepare…as we draw nearer to this Love of God in Christ.

In the name of our One Holy and Undivided Trinity.

 

The Hope of Advent

 

Well, here we are again at the beginning of another cycle. And as bleak as things are in the nation, with our Secretary of Defense on the defensive for ordering the extrajudicial killing of two people whose fishing boat the U.S. had bombed on suspicion that they were drug smugglers...I am not hopeless.

I feel something is coming...which is strange to have that feeling in a true sense about our nation at the same time that we, who believe in the story of Jesus and determination of God to get us to come back to Love, are in the season of Advent. Advent is about beginning. It's about the build up and anticipation of God with Us...Emmanuel. 

Even as things are not all positive and happy, I still sense that we are moving toward a turn toward a truly new thing in the United States as more and more people are getting fed up with the status quo that leaves them in the status of NO.

Buckle up. Here we go! 

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Happy New Year!

Yes…it is a new year…a new season…as we move into this time called “Advent”…a time of expectation and waiting.

We also transition into hearing more readings from the Gospel of Matthew.

We will be getting a little more Luke…and a smattering of the Gospel of John toward the end of the month.

But in this new cycle of the church year…the primary evangelist we’ll be hearing from is Matthew.

Like all our Gospels…Matthew has a particular way of looking at the life and ministry of Jesus.

Where Luke wants to give an orderly account of our Messiah…and has a keen focus on God’s concern for the disenfranchised and the poor….Matthew’s Gospel wants us to know that Jesus is most definitely the fulfillment of all the dreams of the Jewish prophets.

Matthew will remind us that whatever we hear and read about Jesus and the things Jesus is doing…it’s because Isaiah or Jeremiah told us so first.

Matthew also wants us to be good students…as he emphasizes Jesus as a teacher.

The Sermon on the Mount is the master class in how we are to live and move and have our being.

The Jesus of Matthew gets into many arguments with the Pharisees over interpretation of the Torah.

In that way…we might understand that Jesus really is a rabbi’s rabbi.

And Matthew’s Gospel gives us the birth narrative as seen through the experience of Joseph.

We hear the story of the Holy Family as refugees…and a father following messages in dreams to take his young family into a foreign land and away from the danger of the bullies and tyrants of the Roman Empire.

Matthew gets placed first in the roster of the Gospels …largely because Matthew’s version of Jesus’s life was the most popularly shared by the very early Christian church.

And that very early Christian church…the one of 80CE…was so moved by the First Advent of Jesus…his birth and life among them…that they anxiously were awaiting Jesus’s return.

Which brings us back around to this season of Advent…and today’s odd Gospel reading on this First Sunday of Advent.

It’s a little strange that as we are preparing for Christmas….what we heard this morning was a reading where Jesus is in one of his teaching moments…preparing his followers for the dangerous trek into Jerusalem.

This talk of staying awake…being prepared…people being taken and others left behind…sounds more like an ending than a beginning.

We’re starting this new year not with a baby shower…but with a reminder of what was the experience of God’s people…what now is…and what will be.

For those of us sitting here today…this all may sound strange.

But this was important to those first hearers of this Gospel… a people who had been conquered multiple times…and are now reeling from yet-another war and the destruction of their main institution: the Temple of Jerusalem.

They’ve been waiting and wondering what’s been taking Jesus so long to come back?

When is the Messiah coming to help us?

I think we can relate to those feelings.

How many of us at one time or another have looked at things happening around us….the news reports that come to us every night…the realities of wars happening around the world…our own country’s participation in violence…and senseless shootings on the streets and in public spaces… that have us asking that question:

“How long, O Lord, how long?”

When chaos seems to be the rule of the day…we can feel our faith getting tried and tested.

That’s where Matthew’s Jesus steps in.

Jesus is here to remind us that God is aware…and is not idly standing by…and will make things right…by us…through us…and with us.

God hasn’t forgotten the covenant made with humanity…the promise to Noah not to drown us,

Jesus didn’t fail in teaching us to love and care for one another…if we…you and me together…trust and keep putting forth the effort to seek and serve Christ in each other….and strive for justice…peace…mercy and compassion.

That’s the encouragement we hear in this Gospel message.

We don’t know when Jesus’ Second Coming…the Second Advent…will come.

And we aren’t supposed to know.

And we also aren’t supposed to sit around….parsing ancient texts and developing formulas to figure out when Jesus is coming back.

We have all heard and seen the countless stories of people predicting Jesus’ return.

And in the words of the great theologian Rocky the Flying Squirrel…”That trick never works.”

Instead…we are to take in a reality that has already been…that Jesus came into the world…ministered to the needs of a beleaguered and oppressed people…taught and showed those who would listen how to love…died for committing the crime of love…and ultimately proved that death doesn’t defeat God’s purposes…and Love always wins.

And Love shows up in our lives in the most unpredictable ways.

There’s a story that the theologian Howard Thurman tells about the time when he was heading off to a boarding school.

Because Thurman was black…there were no educational opportunities available to him in Daytona Florida during the early part of the 20^th century.

Schooling for black children ended at the eighth grade.

But his teachers saw something in him and he was given this chance to go to a high school and live with relatives in Jacksonville..

He had the money to buy his train ticket.

But when he arrived at the station with his trunk…he found out that he would also have to pay a fee for his luggage.

The fourteen year-old Thurman was crushed.

He had no money.

He sat on a bench weeping as he thought about his dreams fading away.

That’s when a stranger dressed in overalls came along.

He saw Thurman and asked him why he was so distressed.

And when the stranger heard that Thurman was penniless and couldn’t pay the fee to put his luggage on the train….this stranger pulled out his wallet and paid the fare.

That act of kindness was all it took to help Howard Thurman live into his dream of getting an education which led him to follow his calling to become one of the influential religious thinkers of the 20^th century.

Not only did that stranger help a distraught teenaged Thurman…his generosity benefitted all of us.

It’s these types of small but consequential actions that help to bring more light into the world.

Advent invites us to into considering how we…doing our best each day to live into that hope and that trust in Love…can help shed light back out into our broader communities.

Our Jewish relatives have a term for this: tikkun olam: the repairing of the world.

And it’s a constant task set before us.

It’s what we mean when we pray “thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.”

By living into the way of Love and hope…we are doing our part to keep building a better future and a more just society…both in the giving and the receiving.

In this season of expectation and preparation…may we stay awake to ourselves and those around us…as we continue our journey in grace…peace and love.

In the name of our One Holy and Undivided Trinity.