Joel D. Kline
December 7, 2003
Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren
The Second Sunday of Advent
In this morning’s Gospel lesson, Luke sets the context for the ministry of John the Baptist by providing a roll call of the high and mighty of the day: the emperor of Rome, Tiberius; the governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate; Herod, ruler or tetrarch of Galilee; and Annas and Caiaphas, high priests in Jerusalem. Yet as the Gospel story unfolds, proclaiming a new perspective on power, it is more often the lowly and the obscure—rather than the high and mighty—who play key roles. Indeed, the unfailing orientation of Luke’s Gospel, as John Killinger asserts in his Devotional Guide to Luke, “is toward the weak, the lost, and the despised,” and the kingdom of God being announced in the Gospel is “aimed at restoring dignity and hope to the poor and neglected.”
In contrast to the list of dignitaries Luke cites as he begins chapter three, John the Baptist would appear to have little to offer. Certainly he lacks the material wealth and temporal power of the veritable list of “who’s who” cited by Luke. And yet it is the Baptist, not the powerful elite, who occupies center stage as the gospel story begins—this rather bizarre figure subsisting in the wilderness on a starvation diet, wearing clothes that even the rummage sale people wouldn’t take, preaching fire and brimstone to all who would listen.
Some years ago I remember hearing of a sermon entitled “God, How Do You Pick Your Heroes?” What kind of gospel is it that chooses such unusual characters as John the Baptist for its heroes and models? Perhaps it is a gospel that recognizes that we are most reachable, not when we have it all together, not when our material comforts help us live in the illusion that we are self-sufficient, but when we are in fact most vulnerable, most cognizant of our need for God.
I’ve shared before that Beacon Heights, the congregation I formerly served in Fort Wayne, has a partner congregation in Managua, Nicaragua. I remember the first time I was visiting that congregation, located in one of the poorest barrios in the city of Managua, how struck I was by the fact that that small and struggling group of Christians was asking similar questions as those we are likely to ask here in our more comfortable settings. Questions such as: What does it mean to experience, here and now, life in the kingdom or realm of God? How do we more fully embrace the journey of discipleship with Jesus? How do we live and serve as salt and light in the world around us? And yet these same questions take on a markedly different quality when asked from the perspective of the poor, the oppressed, and the broken.
We who have more food than we can consume, larger houses than most of us need, and more material resources than we deserve—do we not generally find it difficult to acknowledge our dependence upon God, our interconnectedness with one another, and our own experiences of brokenness? Instead, we are prone to act as if we can go it all alone in life, as if we are fully self-sufficient. But then along comes a time of crisis, a time when the neatly-ordered foundation of our lives begins to crumble.
I recall a young man involved in one of the congregations I previously served, who had built a web of deception around his life. There were significant issues in his marriage, and the fellow had become involved in an affair with another woman. Eventually he found the deception to be more than he could handle, and he took the risk of acknowledging to me as his pastor the failure and pain of his life. The young man made himself vulnerable, and he discovered the truth of the gospel, that we are often most reachable at those boundary moments of life when we are most vulnerable.
It may be for us a time of protracted illness, when we can no longer handle all that we had become accustomed to doing on our own, when we are so weakened that we must depend upon the care and help of others to meet our most basic needs. It may be a season of failure and utter despair, when the job we thought would always be ours is gone, or a loved one abandons us, walking out of our life forever. It may be in the shadows of grief, when another’s death empties our world and nothing seems to matter much in the awful loneliness that threatens to consume us. Perhaps a sense of vulnerability comes to us as we realize that what we have worked so hard to get is not what we most deeply need, that achievement and success in life ultimately do not satisfy our most heartfelt longings. At moments like these, as we embrace our vulnerability and our need, we become more reachable and the gospel speaks to us.
William Willimon, dean of the chapel at Duke University, reminds us that “it takes a certain amount of courage and conviction to admit to yearning. In order to see the fragile light of Christmas, one first has to become accustomed to the dark. In order to see the stars in highest heavens, one must sit for a while in the darkness here on earth.” And then Willimon goes on to question, “Are we up to such honesty?”
John the Baptist, crying in the wilderness, urged his listeners to confess honestly their need for repentance, to move beyond current levels of comfort, to take the risk of embracing a new way of seeing and experiencing life, a new way of living and relating. Jesus, you will remember, echoes John’s admonition, beginning his ministry with the challenge, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17), a verse that Clarence Jordan paraphrases, “Reshape your lives, for God’s new order of the Spirit is confronting you.”
Reshape your lives. Jim Wallis in The Call to Conversion reminds us:
Faith is turning to belief, hope and trust … Faith opens us to the future by restoring our sight, softening our hearts, bringing light into our darkness. We are converted to compassion, justice and peace as we take our stand as citizens of Christ’s new order. We see, hear, and feel as never before.
This is the challenge we face this Advent season, and indeed, throughout the Christian life—to reshape our lives; to see, hear and feel as never before. John the Baptist points us in this radical, life-changing direction, but the Baptist does not fully grasp the character of Jesus and the shape of the life of discipleship to which we are called. John is convinced that the louder he screams, the more he intones words of judgment, the more he seeks to stir a sense of fear—that all this will lead persons to make genuine changes in their lives. Jesus, on the other hand, reminds us that lasting and thoroughgoing change comes through firsthand encounter with transforming love.
In a book entitled Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who’s Who Frederick Buechner contrasts the ministries of John the Baptist and Jesus. Writes Buechner,
Where John preached grim justice and pictured God as a steely-eyed thresher of grain, Jesus preached forgiving love and pictured God as the host at a marvelous party or a father who can’t bring himself to throw his children out even when they spit in his eye. Where John said people had better save their skins before it was too late, Jesus said it was God who saved their skins, and even if your blew your whole bankroll on liquor and sex like the Prodigal Son, it still wasn’t too late. Where John ate locusts and honey in the wilderness with the church crowd, Jesus ate what he felt like in Jerusalem with as sleazy a crowd as you could expect to find. Where John crossed to the other side of the street if he saw any sinners heading his way, Jesus seems to have preferred their company to the WCTU, the Stewardship Committee, and the World Council of Churches rolled into one. Where John baptized, Jesus healed.
Jesus not only spoke of a life of healing and transforming love, Jesus modeled love. Jesus incarnated love. I read the story of Birch Foraker, who years ago was president of Bell Telephone Company in New York City. Apparently with some frequency Foraker, while in formal attire on the way to the theater, would excuse himself from his friends and climb down a manhole in the middle of the street. It was Foraker’s way of expressing appreciation and offering encouragement to company workers on emergency jobs.
Foraker was modeling incarnation, identifying with his employees and entering into their personal situation. And at its heart, is this not the power of Christ’s incarnation, of Jesus becoming one with humankind, entering into the human predicament, sharing our hurts and woes while offering us an alternative vision for the future.
Alfred Delp was a Jesuit priest during the Nazi years, imprisoned because he openly dared to envision the shape that the social order might take after the hoped-for collapse of the Nazi regime. One of the few human gestures of kindness Delp experienced during the days of his imprisonment came from a jailer who left Delp’s shackles just loose enough that he could slip one hand free. And so Father Delp was able to pen a series of Advent meditations from his prison cell, meditations which begin with this assertion:
Advent is a time for rousing. Human beings are shaken to the very depths, so that they may wake up to the truth of themselves. The primary condition for a fruitful and rewarding Advent is renunciation, surrender … a shattering awakening … Life only begins when the whole framework is shaken.
When the whole framework of our lives is shaken, we see, hear, and feel as never before. We put on a new level of honesty and integrity in our relationships with God, with one another, and with ourselves. We find ourselves filled with a new level of sensitivity for the broken, the lost, the hurting, the lonely, the neglected. Our hearts are softened, our lives are reshaped, and we are converted to compassion, justice and peace as we take our stand our stand as citizens of Christ’s new order.
This Advent season, are we ready to see and experience life as never before? May God make it so for us. Amen.
Holy God, what a busy time of the year this is. There are family gatherings to plan, presents to purchase and wrap, open houses and concerts to attend, cards to prepare, cookies to bake, neighbors to greet, carols to sing. The list goes on, and in the midst of these busy—and often exciting times—we yearn for a sense of peace, the peace only you can give, that peace which passes all human understanding.
In the midst of scurrying folks impatient with slower-paced folks who do not quickly get out of the way, in the midst of advertisements that equate Christmas with opulent gifts threatening to drown the simplicity of the season, in the midst of hordes of irritable shoppers, remind us, O God, that there is so much more to this season. In our busyness, gracious God, we come praying for a fresh taste of your peace …
God, we know that for many, this is a season of pain rather than joy, discouragement rather than joy, discord rather than peace. For some of us here this morning, grief is fresh. The sting of the loss of a loved one is very real. Yet others of us find Christmas to be a time for reliving broken hearts; some of us associate times of sadness with the holiday season. Still others of us are fearful this season—fearful of losing jobs, fearful of brokenness in significant relationships, fearful of what the future holds. Gracious God, hear us now as we pray for those who are in pain this Advent season … .
Holy God, in the very midst of life’s struggles and hurts, remind us of your blessings. Place a song of joy in our hearts, and guide us to a deeper experience of life in your realm of justice and compassion, of hope and peace, of genuine life and love.
Hear us now, O God, as we celebrate the beginnings of marriage for Sara and James, and as we remember now those in special need of your healing touch …
God of peace, feed us on peaceful things. You who took a towel rather than a sword—you continue to call all humanity to peace. This week, whenever world leaders might consider life’s conflicts, may peace be in their thoughts and conversations and interactions. Let them be as the lion and the lamb, living together in peace.
We pray in the name and spirit of the One who came among us, full of grace and truth, as a Prince of Peace, Jesus the Christ. Amen.