If you believe that the present
world order is just fine:
Kellogg’s Corn flakes for
breakfast
A day at the office with a cup of
Wa-wa Coffee on the way in. A Christmas tree in the Den – afternoon football
game with friends and family, and kids romping in their PJ s on Christmas
morning…
You are in trouble!
Advent is that time of the year
that text from the Bible warns us of a different time.
In Last weeks Gospel, stars are
falling out of the sky and a moon without light.
Today's Gospel introduces us to a
man name John..
A wilderness man is described who
eats grasshoppers and honey.
I’m getting ahead of myself.
The lesson actually begins with
Ch. 1. Vs. 1. “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ”
Some of the oldest accounts of
Mark don’t have “son of God”.
Just think – for many Christians
in the first century… that is where the story of Jesus starts… no Angles
announcing a Bethlehem birth, no wise men from the East, no stable.
But in their place is a wild man
dressed in camel skins – like a Neanderthal… preaching a baptism of repentance.
Three words stand out from this
text: Wilderness – Baptism and repentance.
Wilderness is a recurring theme in
the Bible. It is associated with a time of testing. A time of meeting the Holy..
a meeting with God.
I think of the Israelites
wandering in the wilderness before they entered the Promised Land.
It was in the wilderness that
Moses encountered God, while herding Sheep, in a bush that burned without
burning up.
It was in the wilderness that
Jesus is tempted by Satan to turn stones in to bread
To play Superman and jump off of
the highest tower in the city and to become King of the hill called earth…
Wilderness is the palce where we
encounter God
Wilderness can come in many ways
It can be quite literal like the
time I was dropped off in the middle of Goettingen by the wife of a friend whom
I was visiting.
She agreed to pick me up in two hours where she dropped me off.
Two hours later after wandering
around the quaint old city in the dead of winter… I was cold, lost and scared.
By a stroke of luck I had parked
myself on a street corner where she later found me. It was a time of
vulnerability, although acknowledging my own complicity in getting myself into a
mess.
Far away from home, with no street
address or phone number with only my passport to keep me company… I knew I was
in trouble.
Wilderness can be a divorce, a
death in the family, a job loss, an accident, a financial crisis.
As a nation and maybe as a world
community we are fast approaching such a time.
Deserts are a place that is
strange, where the old maps don’t work, where all the familiar landmarks are
gone.
The Bible was written in a time
and place far removed from Cape May NJ and Dennis Township.
But what makes these words from
the Gospel still relevant is that they transcend time and place and geography…
and provide a road map that will take us through the wilderness of life and
bring us to a new place where we can find a home.
All of us have wilderness times
and places
Moments when we are vulnerable,
and scared and disoriented… when we are more open to new learning, new ways of
being and acting than we would normally be… when we are willing to risk
something different… when we are open to the beating of Angel’s wings… to use a
metaphor for God.
In those moments we know that life
is fragile and that all that stands between God and us is the Abyss…
Wilderness is a reality that calls
us to stop, look and listen.
Calls us to make a U turn; that is
what repent means...
So I want you to forget what you
have heard about repenting as a pre-condition for Salvation..
The text doesn’t say that
Repentance precedes baptism – it says that John proclaimed a Baptism of
repentance…
I don’t know about you, but I do
know that when I am forced by circumstances to acknowledge that I am scared out
of my wits – It is then most often that I realize that I’d better “stop, look,
and listen.”
It is then that I take a deep
breath and look into my soul and in that moment I know that God is waiting to
show me the way... not my way but his way. And usually it is quite simple and
direct.
If my crisis is financial – My
repentance means an honest assessment of needs and wants. My wants for the most
part are motivated by greed, by ego… a bigger car, in my case a bigger ham
radio.
Repentance means stop look and
listen – at my priorities.
Is my financial crisis... my
wilderness moment, God’s attempt to get me to take a look at my road map – or
GPS and turn around?
If my wilderness moment is a
crisis of faith – then I need to be honest and ask is what I believe based on a
map that is outdated. Maybe it worked for me when I was a kid but the adult
world in which I now live is so much more complicated and my picture of God has
never changed. I have equated God with my own limited world view and God is
calling me to “stop look and listen” as he reprograms my GPS to take in a much
different world than the one of my confirmation days- you get the picture?
Maybe my picture of God is too
provincial to myopic – maybe I have equated God with the liturgy the way my
grandmother knew it, or god forbid, unless we have 3 blue candles and one pink
one for advent – god is not pleased… or unless there is steeple on the roof our
building is not a church.
Too often we equate that which is
familiar with God. JB Phillips the great New Testament scholar who gave us the
JB Phillips translation of the NT also wrote a book with the tile “when your God
is too small”.
Let us remember that we do not
worship a book called the Bible… it is the bible that points us to a map that
leads to God..
This advent let us be reminded
that the economic down turn did not happen in a vacuum… There is more than
enough blame to go around… from CEOs with golden parachutes to those of us who
maxed out our credit cards and gave no thought about tomorrow. To those who
refinanced our houses for bigger houses..
Deserts are scary paces, which
force us to “stop look and listen”
Stop before we fall into the abyss
Look – at our spiritual GPS
Listen for the voice of God most
often heard in the wind of the desert of our lives…
Repent means – to re-orient, to
get back to basics, like eating honey and locus… which can be translated into a
diet of Scripture, home cooked meals instead of fast foods and making do with
what we have.
It means remembering that Advent
is about God’s gift not a pile of colored packages five feet deep under a tree.
It is being honest enough to admit that like children we are more interested in
the wrapping- the way we worship, the trappings of tradition, or whether it is
“Lutheran” than the gift that Advent proclaims.
So what happens – but that rather
non “Lutheran” looking preacher dressed not an alb or chasuble but in camels
skins with a wild-eyed look and a raspy voice calling to us from across 2000
years from an Arabian Desert. . to R E P E N T!
We like our message quite
traditional “thank you.”
We don’t like surprises
We don’t like change… so whom does
the Bishop recommend for MLC But Hartmut Fege – who wants to use Power Point
instead of ELW’s and keyboard instead of organ music – who sometimes wears a
robe and sometimes not…
We certainly don’t like to be told
to repent
To change our ways. But Mark’s
wilderness prophet tells us that is exactly what we must do, if we are to
connect with HOLY.
We may argue about the color of
Advent whether the manger, with it’s wood cut outs figures has a place in the
public arena…
The color OF Advent IS neither
blue or pink or purple... The Color of Advent is the sandy color of desert and
wilderness.
The color of advent is the color
of repentance of Stop – look – listen!
If you have seen the 1994 film
“Road to Freedom: the Vernon Johns story” you will recall it is the true story
of a 20th century Baptist from Montgomery Ala. Set in the late 40’s
and early 50’s.
He preached about middle class
blacks in Montgomery who where satisfied with the status quo… his congregation
tried to get him to tone it down… because of his fiery temper and blunt talk,
Rev. Johnes more often then not served as an itinerant rather than resident
preacher… despite his eccentricities (he sometimes preached in muddy shoes and
overalls after working in a field), the elite African American Church in
Montgomery Alabama called him to be their pastor – but when a deacon is murders
by whites and a girl is raped – Jones really gets angry at those in his
congregation who meekly accept the unwillingness of the law to do anything… When
he attempts to integrate the city buses they began to see him as a troublemaker.
Eventually they ask him to leave…
the film ends with the church deacons breathing a sigh of relief that the he
gone and life will be back to normal again.
Oh yes, we learn that the church
is Dexter Ave Baptist Church, and we see their new choice to follow the Rev. Dr.
Jones is waiting near by. He is the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
We will all leave here to go to
our homes and families.
We will wonder for whom we still
need to buy a present or send a card.
Some of you will wonder if you
still have a job to go to by the end of the year or if your retirement income
will be enough to pay the Medicare deductible or make the mortgage payment.
In the midst of it all stands a
word from the Lord
“the beginning of the Good News of
Jesus Christ…”
And you will remember that it is
in the wilderness of our comings and goings that we encounter words that point
to a reality that transcends the everydayness of life.
Words that shatter the cacophony
of merchants hawking a Christmas of brightly wrapped packages that do not fill
the emptiness of our days – but rather drive us deeper into the wilderness.
Don’t be seduced by the hymns of
Burl Ives and the white Christmas of Being Crosby…
Or the Little Drummer Boy beating
his drum into the ear of a sleeping baby in Bethlehem while His heavenly father
Must resort to earl plugs to sleep
at night.
So, keep it simple
And may the wonder and beauty of
it overshadow the darkness as you “stop look and listen” for God in the
wilderness of your moments.
Amen
