The Mystery of Grace

The town drunk wondered down to the river where he stumbled upon a church gathering.  The pastor was in the water baptizing people by immersion.  On seeing the drunk man, the pastor called out to him, “Do you want to find Jesus?  If so, then come in the river with me.”  The drunk man waded in where the pastor took hold of him and put him under the water saying, “I baptize you in the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”  The pastor lifted up the drunk man and said, “Have you found Jesus?”  “Not yet,” the drunk replied.  So under the water he went a second time.  Again the pastor asked him, “Have you found Jesus?”  “No,” said the drunk.  Another time down and then the same question, “Have you found Jesus yet?”  “No” said the drunk man, “Are you sure this is where he went under?  Perhaps we should search another part of the river.”

In this morning’s Gospel reading we hear again the story of Jesus’ baptism.  It is a transformational moment for him.  Up to this point he has lived a remarkably quiet and unremarkable life.  For one proclaimed at birth to be born King of the Jews, Jesus has done nothing to demonstrate he merits the accolades lavished on him as an infant.  But on this day – at an age approaching his thirties… middle age, at least in that era – Jesus emerges from the Jordon River a changed person.  For him the transformation is not about moving from sinfulness to clean living.  It is about moving from aimlessness to purpose; from a clouded self-perception to a sure and certain identity.  “You are my Son,” he hears a heavenly voice proclaim.  “Beloved.”  “With you I am well pleased.”  This is the moment and this is the experience that launches his public ministry.  Jesus is never the same again.

And while Jesus’ call to be the Messiah is unique, his experience of God is not.  Any and every authentic religious experience is initiated like this one… by God.  Sure, we can help by making ourselves available, by paying attention, by walking into the water and being submerged, but it is always God who reaches out to us first.  It is God who initiates contact and relationship.   And when God reaches out to us, be it through a moment that explodes like fireworks or stills us to a place of profound quiet and peace, life is never the same.

Have you read any of Anne Lamott’s books?  Travelling Mercies, Grace (Eventually), Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essentials of Prayer are just a few of her works.  Her books, which are honest and largely autobiographical, reveal what an interesting life she has led.  She was raised in what can only be described as a dysfunctional family.  By the time she was in her teens Anne was an alcoholic and drug abuser.  Some of her writing chronicles the depths to which her life sank and how she recovered.  She also writes openly about life as a single mother and about how faith weaves in and out through it all.  Reflecting on her experience Lamott writes, “I do not at all understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.”

Perhaps you can relate to that.  Perhaps it is hard for you to articulate exactly just how God reached out to you, but you do know that you are not the person you were before.  I am sure Jesus could say, “The mystery of grace met me in waters of baptism, but it did not leave me there.” 

Where did God’s grace meet you?  Where has God’s grace taken you? 

I suspect that the average person, if asked, would say that being religious is about doing certain things: reading the bible, trying to go to church on Sundays, being a ‘good’ person, helping others… that kind of thing.  They might say that not being religious means you don’t go to church, you don’t pray, you don’t read the bible, you may drink and swear too much, and so on. 

But let’s think about Jesus prior to being baptized.  He grew up reading the Scriptures.  He attended worship in his hometown synagogue.  I think we can assume he lived a fairly good life (he was not a murderer or a thief as best we can tell).  It may surprise you to hear me say prior to his experience at baptism I would not say he was religious; if by religious you mean deeply, authentically spiritually connected to God.  I would say he was devout.  He was doing all the right things as best he could.  The authentic religious experience that grips him at baptism comes from beyond.  He does not initiate it.  God does.  And his life is changed forever.  Yes, Jesus remains devout, but from this point forward his religion is animated by God’s continual presence through the Holy Spirit.  It transforms his prayer, his worship, and his approach to ethics and other people.  And eventually it transforms the world.

As I said, it was for Jesus not a conversion of morality but of identity.  In that moment, when he heard that voice, he came to know and believe that he was God’s Son.  Think about a time when you had what I am calling an authentic, animating religious experience; a time when you were taken hold of by the mystery of grace.  Did that moment call into question how you were living your life or did it challenge you to see yourself in a new way?  Was it about morality or was it about identity?    

The writer Evelyn Underhill observed that we humans spend most of our lives conjugating three verbs: to Want, to Have, and to Do.  Our existence, she says, is caught up in craving, clutching, and fussing about things material, political, social, emotional, intellectual and even spiritual.  We are kept, she says, in a state perpetual unrest.  Underhill writes, “None of these verbs have any ultimate significance, except so far as they are transcended by and included in, the fundamental verb, to Be: and that being, not wanting, having, and doing, is the essence of the spiritual life.”

Underhill is on to something deceptively simple but greatly profound about our identity in God’s eyes: It is not what we want, what we have, or what we do that defines us.  It is who we are and who we are is defined first, foremost, and always by God.  We are God’s children, beloved, and pleasing.  Hearing this, accepting this, and learning this – what Underhill calls “being” – is at the heart of the spiritual life and is the inner, transformational fruit of any authentic religious experience. 

Here is something that happens to us all the time: We meet somebody new and have to introduce ourselves.  What do you say to the question ‘who are you?’  Obviously, the first thing we say is our name… I am Keith.  But who are you really?  I am a man, a priest, an American, a father.  But who are you?  I know it is not social custom, but the first answer we should give – and, ultimately, the only answer that really matters – is “I am a child of God, beloved, and pleasing.”  That is the core of who you are.  It is the core of who I am.  It is the only thing about us that cannot be changed or altered. 

What does change and alter is our own awareness of this truth.  Evelyn Underhill writes, “Whatever our small practice, belief, or experience may be, nothing can alter the plain fact that God, the Spirit of spirits, the Life-giving Life, has made or rather is making each person… for Himself; and that our lives will not achieve stability until they are ruled by this truth.”  The mystery of grace meets us where we are but does not leave us where it finds us!

If you have never been encountered by the mystery of grace let me encourage you to continue to be devout.  Come to church.  Read the bible.  Say your prayers.  Do what is right.  I can’t say why God has not reached out to you, but I believe that God will.  God desires to know you deeply and to be known by you.  And whether you know it or not, and even if cannot name it, God is at work in your life, making you, molding you into something to fill a holy purpose.  Perhaps someday God will show you what that is, but never doubt that through devotion you are living into it and moving toward it even now. 

Three Models of Manhood

Alright ladies, let’s start off the new year with a couple of jokes about men:

·      What do you call a man with half a brain?  Gifted.

·      What is the difference between a man and a catfish?  One is a bottom-feeding scum-sucker, and the other is a fish.

·      Why are blonde jokes so short?  So men can remember them.

·      One day a husband decided to wash his sweatshirt.   Seconds after he stepped into the laundry room, he shouted to his wife, “What setting do I use on the washing machine?”  “It depends,” she replied.  “What does it say on your shirt?”   He yelled back, “University of Virginia.”

And finally this little gem: 

·      What does a woman’s perfect breakfast look like?  She is sitting at the kitchen table drinking gourmet coffee.  Her son is on the cover of the Wheaties box, her daughter is on the cover of Business Week, her boyfriend is on the cover of GQ, and her ex-husband is on the back of the milk carton.

What does it mean to be a man in 2014?  If you asked a hundred different people you wouldn’t get a hundred different answers, but it might be close.  Clearly defined gender roles once held that to be a man you needed to be a simple, stoic, breadwinner – nothing more, nothing less.  But once our society began to question its assumptions about the role of women that neat and tidy definition of manhood began to erode.  Today, two-thirds of all men say they that if they could afford to they would make their work schedule more flexible or even stay home full-time in order to be with family.  In fact, a market researcher learned that most men rate providing emotional supportive for the family every bit as important as providing financial support. 

Last year Esquire Magazine put out a photo gallery called the “Life of Men” with interviews and answers to a questionnaire for each subject.   Its goal was to create a “living portrait of the American Man right now.”  Most of the subjects are very accomplished athletes, entertainers, business professionals, or politicians.  It is telling that these alpha males consistently identify their children as being their greatest achievement and the best day of their life as being the day they met their wife.

What does it mean to be a man in 2014?  Well, one direction the answer may take points toward a person who is in relationship with others, values those relationships, and contributes to those relationships in a myriad of meaningful ways. 

Another possible answer is more sobering.  A marketing analyst surveyed ads in magazines aimed at teenager boys and young men, publications such as Maxim, Game Informer and Wired.  The analyst found that these magazines promote what is known as hyper-masculinity, a gender-based ideology of exaggerated beliefs about what it is to be a man.  These exaggerated beliefs focus on four inter-related values:

  Toughness is portrayed as emotional self-control.

  Violence is manly.

  Danger is exciting.

  Calloused attitudes toward women and sex is normal.

On average, 56% of ads featured at least one aspect of hyper-masculinity, but for one particular magazine it was 90%.  Advertisers don’t use these images because they are trying to shape our culture’s understanding of masculinity.  They use them because it sells.  But, in the process, they are influencing our society in tangible ways.  For instance, the way they portray manhood is a contributing factor in the rise of violence against women.

With the “Life of Men” project at one end of a spectrum and hyper-masculine advertising at another, we begin to see why a hundred different people could come up with a great variety of answers to the question what does it mean to be a man in 2014.

Here is another question: is there a biblical model of manhood and masculinity?  The answer, I think, is not really.  There is no single coherent passage that provides a timeless ideal for all cultures and generations.  In fact, a careful study will reveal how cultural ideals and norms related to masculinity changed throughout the bible.  This should not surprise us, what with it spanning about 2000 years of history and multiple cultural settings.

What the bible does give us is stories about various men who in their day and setting embodied specific ideas about manhood that we can see, understand, and evaluate.  Through this morning’s gospel reading we encounter three different models of manhood.  Each is based on specific values and assumptions and thus each gives us something to ponder.  How could men incorporate or reject these models in our own day and time?

The first model of manhood is presented by the wise men.  They are educated, inquisitive, and open to mystery.  They recognize something is at work in the world that is bigger than us; something spiritual, something profound.  They make a significant commitment to pursue this dimension of life.  I like that they visited King Herod.  It suggests that they expect to encounter goodness in every person they meet.  I like too that they went home another way.  They know who can be trusted and who cannot and they act accordingly.  I like that they visited the king, but worshiped a baby.  Greatness, for them, was not about title or wealth or power.  The gifts they present to Jesus indicate that they are generous and understand the power of symbols. 

What do you take away from their example that you would like to lift up for men in our day?  For me, I value their spiritual awareness; the way they are connected to the things that lie beyond the material world. 

The second model of manhood is presented by King Herod.  In many ways he is the embodiment of hyper-masculinity, isn’t he.  And yet, the first detail we learn about him from the text is this: he was afraid.  That was his reaction to the news that a king had been born to the Jews.  I suspect that anyone who builds their life and their status and their wealth through ruthlessness and treachery will always view everything as a threat to their ill-gotten gain.  They will always view everything through the singular, egocentric prism of how it affects me.  For Herod, no lie and no act of violence is beyond the pale of what is acceptable to defend and to maintain his own place in the world.  What does it tell you that Herod had to inquire of others with regard to where scripture foretold the Messiah’s birth would be?  It tells me that he was not well-educated, or at least he was not intellectually curious.  He reminds us that there is a connection between ignorance, arrogance, and a narrow perspective. 

Ultimately, power and position and authority are neutral values.  They are tools that can be used one way or another.  A businessman or a banker or a politician can use his/her resources to bring to fruition a vision of a better world.  Bill Gates didn’t become the richest person on the planet by ripping off everyone.  He amassed his wealth by creating something that made everyone more productive.  But still there are those Herods out there who have no vision for the world and whose only concern is what is in it for me.  Did you notice that of all the people in today’s reading Herod is the only one who does not receive a message from God?  I don’t think it is because he unworthy.  I think it is because he is too wrapped up in himself to listen to anyone else, especially God.

What do you take away from Herod’s example?  For me, it is a cautionary tale.  Whether you rule a country or a business or a family or just yourself, you have power and authority.  How will you use it to advance yourself?  How will you use it in the service of others?  How can you recognize when you have become abusive?  How do you repent and amend your ways?

The final model of manhood we encounter is found in Joseph.  He foregoes his prerogative to have his fiancé disgraced once he learns that she is pregnant.  He is a man of mercy.  He sets aside his home, his family, and his career in order to get Mary and her son to a safe place in Egypt.  Joseph is selfless.  He uses what power and authority he has to protect the weak and vulnerable.  He embraces the difficult and challenging word he receives from God.  We see these traits lived out through Jesus in his adult life.  What might he have been like without Joseph’s witness?    

What do you take away from Joseph’s example?  For me, I value his relational awareness; the way he is connected to the people around him.  He is a man of character, discipline, integrity, and godliness.  He is also nobody’s fool.  He knows how to read the tea leaves and is decisive in doing what is necessary.

Today’s reading gives us three different models of manhood to ponder.  Throughout the year, as we continue to read from Matthew’s Gospel, we will encounter even more.  Through what Jesus says and what Jesus does we will see what it means to be a Christian man.  Here is a hint – it does not look much like hyper-masculinity.  What it will require is great.  What it will offer is satisfaction, dignity, and peace.

let Me Go There with God's Fierce Love

I continue to read and be challenged by the poetry of the Welsh Anglican priest, R.S. Thomas.  Listen carefully to this piece titled The Coming:

And God held in his hand

A small globe.  Look he said.

The son looked.  Far off,

As through water, he saw

A scorched land of fierce

Colour.  The light burned

There; crusted buildings

Cast their shadows: a bright

Serpent, a river

Uncoiled itself, radiant

With slime.

On a bare

Hill a bare tree saddened

The sky.  Many People

Held out their thin arms

To it, as though waiting

For a vanished April

To return to its crossed

Boughs.  The son watched

Them.  Let me go there, he said.

Through his poem Thomas challenges us to engage with God’s fierce love for this world; a world with slimy rivers, bare trees, and starving people.  This is not a poem for a Hallmark card or Norman Rockwell painting.  It is too grim and gritty for that.  What it is is a reflection of our cultural and societal turmoil of the last century or so; a century of world wars, genocide, disease, and environmental destruction.  The bare tree with the crossed boughs to which all hurting people look is of course the cross.  It is precisely to this location that the Son desires to go. 

In the season of Christmas we encounter a baby wrapped in swaddling cloth and lying in a manger.  It is an image that radiates warmth and brims with sentimentality.  But the baby is here for reasons far beyond this.  This baby is here to bring God’s holy love to a hurting and broken world.  And we who gather this day are invited to let this love dwell in the deepest and darkest parts of our lives because Jesus says (to use Thomas’ words), “Let me go there.”  Then, as God’s love finds a home in us and begins to grow – daily transforming us into something more holy than we could ever be on our own – we are invited to share the love we have found with others.

Steve Garnaas-Holmes, the Methodist pastor whose blogsite Unfolding Light I mentioned in my sermon last Sunday, recently was involved in a ministry to distribute gift bags to inmates at a state prison.  He and eight other people greeted each inmate, shock their hands, and then gave them a bag.  He reports that there were 1380 inmates in the prison.  Garnass-Holmes described the experience this way:

To encounter such a wave of humanity, eye to eye, hand to hand, hit me deeply.  They were in all states of age, race, health, stature and personality.  Some were meek, some imposing; some fit and some in shambles, some appreciative and some aloof.  But they are all neglected, condemned, and treated as less than human.  One guy said, “This is the only touch of normalcy all year.”

For each particular inmate the greeting lasted only a few seconds.  For those doing the greeting the experience took a couple of hours.  It was for Garnass-Holmes a deeply spiritual experience:

I prayed that somehow they might… unconsciously behold some grace, experience some love.  It was like serving communion: one after another of God’s beloved people coming by, each with their own story, needs, wounds, sins and gifts, each getting a little symbolic gift in a brief holy moment, a gift of pure love no matter their past.  You hope they get it.

He goes on to write that just as God asked Joseph to trust that Mary’s child was of God, so too are we asked to trust that God is present and at work in everyone we meet.  Sometimes that easier to do than others, isn’t it.  In the silence before the worship service begins it is easy to sense that God is present and at work as we observe someone light a candle and say a prayer.  It is not as easy when we encounter a person who is rude and disrespectful.  Some of the men in that prison had done horrible things, but Garnass-Holmes holds to the belief that something holy is at work inside each one of them.  He admits that some of them are “pretty rough mangers”, but still Jesus says, “Let me go there.” 

The great challenge of Christmas is twofold.  First, can I accept that God loves me just as I am; that the dark and broken recesses of my heart and my mind and my soul are the exact places where Jesus wants to dwell; the rough manger where he will lay?  And second, can I see that in every person I meet and in every person I try to avoid and in every person I want to ignore and in every person I try to forget and in every person who I abhor that there is something holy at work in them as well?  This is God’s fierce love that cannot be quenched, but it can be disregarded.  It is this love made know through the birth of a baby that we celebrate this season.  It is the reason the Word became flesh and dwelt among.  It is the reason why the Word abides in us even now through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit we receive at baptism. 

 

A Faithful Partner to Mystery

Years before the 1992 release of John Gray’s book Women are from Venus and Men are from Mars, I knew there was something very different about me and my sister.  I think my awareness first came into focus after a middle school youth activity at the church where we grew up.  When we got home my mom asked me what I thought of the event.  “It was fine,” I said.  “Did you have fun,” she asked?  “Yes,” I said.  Then she asked my sister what she though and my sister spent the next two and a half hours describing a church function that lasted only an hour and a half.  Flash forward twenty years and I found myself serving as a priest in a parish when a dear woman made one of the most quotable remarks I have ever heard, “If you can’t talk to my husband about golf or the weather you are going to have a very short conversation!”

This morning we heard about the birth of Jesus as described by Matthew’s gospel.   On Tuesday night we will hear the same event as told by Luke.  Luke follows the story from Mary’s perspective while Matthew traces it through Joseph.  True to all the stereotypes about men and women, Luke’s gospel has detail and drama and flourish and feeling.  Matthew’s gospel follows the model of a ‘Joe Friday’ police report – just the facts mame.  We heard a spiel about Joseph’s anxiety dream and then the basic facts.  This definitely is the way a guy would tell the story.

In spite of this minimalist approach to storytelling, Joseph has been, and remains, a character whose life is well explored; sometimes in surprising ways.  A little while back, the rock group The New Pornographers (whose lyrics, I feel confident, never before have been quoted from this pulpit until now) released a song from Joseph’s perspective:   

Rumors are flying
All over Galilee these days
And Mary, I’m trying 
To be cool

When my friends walk by
They cannot look at me 
In the eye
Baby, I’m trying

You’re asking me to believe in too many things

I know this child
Was sent here to heal our broken time
And some things are bigger
Than we know…

You’re asking me to believe in so many things

And then there is this song released a couple of years by The Killers (a group whose songs I am sure you hum to yourself as you drive home from church):

Well, your eyes just haven’t been the same, Joseph…

Are the rumors eating you alive, Joseph?

When the holy night is upon you

Will you do what's right, the position is yours…

When they’ve driven you so far that you think you’re gonna drop

Do you wish you were back there at the carpenter shop?

With the plane and the lathe, the work never drove you mad

You’re a maker, a creator, not just somebody’s dad

From the temple walls to the New York night

Our decisions rest on a man.

Both songs explore how difficult it would have been to be in Joseph’s position.

Steve Garnaas-Holmes, a Methodist pastor, publishes a daily meditation on his blogsite called Unfolding Light.  This is his reflection from earlier this week:

Joseph
in the dumb background,
saint of the detour,
of the unknown road,
no belief or wisdom is asked of you,
only your willingness.

Much is taken;
that divine thief in the darkness
has stripped you of your desire,
your hand upon the tool,
your way,
the plan in your head
with which you needed no other plan.

Now you are asked
to become a tool without knowledge,
faithful partner to a mystery.

“A faithful partner to mystery.”  I like that a lot.  When I think about that husband whose conversations were limited to golf and the weather I remember him as being a faithful partner to mystery.  His wife, she was the spiritual one: loving, nurturing, prayerful, reflective.  He was none of these things, but he knew how and when to sit, stand, and kneel during the service and he knew how to stand by his wife and how to support his family and how to contribute to the work and mission of the parish.  There was more than a little bit of Joseph in him.

During a 1936 lecture on the spiritual life, the writer Evelyn Underhill gave credence to what I am saying.  Listen carefully to what she said:

The riches and beauty of the spiritual landscape are not disclosed to us in order that we may sit in the sun parlor, be grateful for the excellent hospitality, and contemplate the glorious view.  Some people suppose that the spiritual life mainly consists in doing that.  God provides the spectacle.  We gaze with reverent appreciation from our comfortable seats, and call this proceeding Worship.

No idea of our situation could be more mistaken than this.  Our place is not the [sanctuary] but the stage­ – or as the case may be, the field, workshop, study, laboratory – ­because we ourselves form part of the creative apparatus of God, or at least are meant to form part of the creative apparatus of God.  He made us in order to use us, and use us in the most profitable way; for His purpose, not ours… 

Underhill goes on to say that sometimes we know how God is using us while other times we don’t.  Other times we are content with what we are doing, but it gets taken away and we are called to do something else.  And then there are those of us labor at the same task for years and years.  None of it – not a bit – may seem particularly holy or spiritual, but Underhill points out that everything we do in life – from our vocation to our volunteer efforts to simply being a part of a family and a community – can be used by God (as she says) in a profitable way.  No matter what the circumstances, she describes our response as having “all self-willed choices and obstinacy drained out of what we thought to be our work; so that it becomes more and more God’s work in us.”

It seems to me that every Mary needs a Joseph.  Every person whom God calls to do great things needs someone – actually, more like many, many people – who will be faithful partners to mystery.  These people, like Joseph, are not the ones through whom God acts dramatically, but their role is still significant and their participation necessary.  They may only be able to talk about golf and the weather but their contribution is measured not in words, but rather through deeds. 

The holy mystery that was present in Mary needed a faithful partner.  It found this partner in the person of Joseph.  Who bears God’s mystery in your life?  How are you a faithful partner?

 

John the Disillusioned

The doorbell rang and when the homeowner went to answer it he encountered a tearful man with a bucket who said, “I am trying to raise money for a family in desperate need.  The father has been out of work for year and the mother suffers from a chronic illness.  They have five children and almost no food to eat.  If that isn’t bad enough, their landlord is about to kick them out of their house.  The entire family could be out on the street in a matter of days.”  Well, the person who answered the door was quite moved by this story and asked how much money was needed to pay the rent.  “Exactly $4,000,” said the man with the bucket.  Pulling out his checkbook and a pen, the homeowner said, “I have been very blessed all my life and I’d like to pay off their debt myself.”  “That is so wonderful of you,” the tearful man replied.  Handing over the check the owner asked, “How have you come to know so much about this family and their situation?”  The now-relieved man with the bucket responded, “Oh, they are my tenants.”

Think about a time when you were down and out; a time when life really laid you low.  Someone once quipped that just when I thought I had hit rock bottom a person standing above me tossed me a shovel and ordered me to start digging.  Very few of us manage to get through life without having an episode or two like that. 

This is the exact place we find John the Baptist in today’s gospel reading.  He is in prison, having been arrested for criticizing publically King Herod’s adulterous marriage to his brother’s wife.  Last week we heard about John’s wilderness ministry of calling people to repent and to prepare.  He believed that God’s Messiah was coming and coming soon.  This person, as John conceived it, would lead the people with a baptism of fire.  This person would take a winnowing fork to everything in society that needed to be cut down.  In short, John believed that the Messiah was going to lead a revolution that would overthrow Roman rule and restore the kingship of David’s royal line. 

John proclaimed that Jesus was the person God had raised up for this messianic role.  He baptized Jesus and then he waited for Jesus to act.  And he waited.  And he waited.  And he waited.  And then he was arrested and imprisoned.  And then he waited some more. 

But eventually he could wait no longer.  He sends a few of his followers to ask Jesus if he is going to fulfill his duty of Messiah (as John understood it), or should John start looking around for someone else to do the job.  You can imagine John sitting in a prison cell with his life hanging in the balance thinking to himself that now might be a good time to get the revolution going.  He must have looked out the cell’s window each morning wondering if this would be the day that Jesus was going to lead an overthrowing mob to rise up and free him.  But all he hears about Jesus is that he blesses little children, parties with sinners, and has a penchant for telling perplexing stories about something called the ‘Kingdom of Heaven.’  John is at rock bottom and he is being told to pick up a shovel and dig even deeper.

Again, think about what it was like when your life was at point like this.  Looking back on it now can you see how discouragement and disillusionment worked hand in hand?  Discouragement: nothing that you tried seemed to work.  Disillusionment: everything you had come to believe about life and how it is supposed to unfold turned out to be wrong.  Think about the future that John envisioned and how he dedicated his life for it.  How discouraged and disillusioned must he have been as he sat in that cell? 

John had good reason to be disillusioned because, frankly, he was wrong.  He was operating out of an old and outdated theological worldview.  He held that God cared only about the people of Israel.  He held that the role of the Messiah was to start a rebellion in order to rule from an earthly throne.  And he held that the only work required of the people of Israel was to purify themselves in preparation for the restoration of something from the glorious past.

John came to this view through a narrow reading of Scripture and a heavy dose of cultural influence.  You can pick and choose your way through the bible and paste together a series of verses that point exactly to what John expected.  But this is something akin to looking at a rich, colorful mosaic and focusing only on the green tiles.  If you do that you see something very different and very distorted.  And messianic distortion was rampant in John’s day.  Individuals and groups popped up everywhere predicting this and that.  John himself seems to have joined a commune known as the Essenes who retreated to the wilderness to prepare for the arrival of God’s chosen one and the establishment of a new Israel.

But God’s plan was not to have the Messiah perpetuate a centuries-old cycle of violence in order recreate a geographical kingdom.  What God desired was to renew a loving relationship with the entire human family, to do away with death, and to vanquish the horrible affects of sin.  The author Rob Bell gets it right when he says, “God is not behind us dragging us backwards into some primitive, regressive state.  God has always been ahead of us pulling us forward, into greater and greater peace, integration, wholeness and love.”  Perhaps the single greatest difference between Jesus and John was that John found his vision of the future by looking to the past whereas Jesus’ vision of the future was something entirely new and never before seen.  John’s hope was to recover something lost whereas Jesus’ hope was in something to come that no one had yet imagined.

So John’s followers come to Jesus with John’s question: “Are you the Messiah or are we to wait for another.”  Jesus answers them by saying this: “Go and tell John what you see and hear: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”  His words have the effect of encouraging John to relook at Scripture in order to take note of the blues and the yellows and the reds and the golds.  God’s plan and deep desire is right there.  It has always been there.  We just haven’t noticed it yet.

Matthew’s Gospel does not tell us how John received this answer.  It is also little unclear as to how much or how little time passed between this episode and when Herod had him beheaded.  We will never know if John had time to do the revisioning work Jesus encouraged him to do, or if he was still discouraged and disillusioned when he was executed. 

But I like that today’s reading ends with Jesus proclaiming first that there is no person born of a woman greater than John.  By this Jesus highlights the important role John played in the coming of God’s Kingdom and that he played his role well.  Jesus then adds paradoxically that even the least person in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than John; indicating how blessed you and I are by our understanding of God’s work in Christ (when we get it right).

What a blessing it is to see the world as it truly is and to have some accurate sense of where God is calling it to go.  The actor Michael J. Fox, when asked what it is like to live with Parkinson’s, said, “My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations.”  If he was given the time, I think John the Baptist might have said just the same thing:  My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance of what Jesus is doing, and in inverse proportion to my expectations.”

John managed to do great things but did not have life figured out and it tore him up.  He was discouraged and disillusioned.  He needed to learn that finding the Kingdom of God has much to do with laying aside your expectations and accepting what you hear and see God doing.  Where are you in all of this?  When have you been like John?  In what ways are you still like him?  When and how have you been able to let go of your expectations and accept the Kingdom of God for what it is? 

Advent & Social Distance

I knew Tyler when he was in his mid thirties.  He is from the fourth generation of a banking family in a small Iowa town.  Tyler graduated from Stanford University, where he lettered on the school’s exceptional swim team.  He is smart, athletic, personable, and well-off financially.  On nice days Tyler walks fifteen blocks from his home on Grand Ave. overlooking the Mississippi River to the family bank on Main Street.  Not only is it good exercise, but I think the walk does something else important for Tyler: it keeps him in touch with the community he serves.  I use the word ‘serve’ very intentionally because Tyler says the bank exists not to make money, but to help the town.  He holds that as the community prospers the bank prospers. 

Back when I knew him, Tyler’s office was situated by the front door and opened to the teller’s stations.  This too was important.  Tyler knew who was coming into the bank, both in a particular sense, but also in a general sense.  He knew the gas station attendant coming in to make a deposit.  He knew the home nursing aid who stopped by to pay a bill.  He knew the widow whose life-savings were invested through his institution.  His office location and his daily walk keep him in touch with the community’s diversity.  He is aware of his blessings, conscious of his responsibilities, and mindful of the impact his life has on many, many people.

Contrast that with this.  It has been over a decade now since the Enron scandal broke.  It is such a sad tale made possible in large part because its executives lived and worked in isolation and exclusion from the rest of the world.  Their offices were located on the top floors of the headquarters.  They enjoyed an exclusive food service, private elevators, and a dedicated parking deck.  At the end of the day, executives drove luxury cars on superhighways to their opulent homes in gated communities with members only country clubs.  Enron’s executives were elitists in every sense of the word.  In fact, they were so isolated that they had no idea anyone anywhere lived differently than they did.  Greed and corruption were rampant at Enron because that is what executives did to maintain their ‘normal’ lifestyle.  When it all came crashing down the executives were stunned that thousands lost jobs and millions of investors suffered financial loss.  Whatever their moral failings were before they started working at Enron they were exacerbated by isolation from the rest of the world.

In this morning’s Gospel reading we hear again about the ministry of John the Baptist.  He was a curious person with a curious appearance who had a curious diet while engaging in a curious ministry in a curious place – the wilderness.  Perhaps the most curious thing about it all was its popularity.  Mark’s Gospel tells us that people from all over the Judean countryside and from the city of Jerusalem went out to John’s remote location to hear him preach and to be baptized.  Think how different Americans who live in rural areas are from those who live in urban centers.  Think  about how little people from these diverse backgrounds have an opportunity to interact.  What John accomplished, in effect, was the equivalent of getting people from red states and blue states to gather together, to have contact with one another, and to engage one another.

When John saw that corrupt religious leaders were in the crowd, Matthew records him as calling them a brood of vipers who needed to bear fruit worthy of repentance; in other words, it was time for them to change their ways.  Interestingly, Luke records it a little differently.  In Luke’s Gospel John refers to everyone in the crowd as a brood of vipers.  They then ask him what they should do to repent and he gives specific counsel to ordinary folks, to tax collectors, and to soldiers; again indicating the diverse nature of those gathered.

So in addition to encountering a prophet and beyond the religious experience of having your life transformed through baptism, John’s ministry did something else that was very significant.  It created contact between groups of people whose worlds seldom mixed.  The worth of this is easy to overlook and its value cannot be overstated.  Social distance was then, as it is now, a corrosive force in society.

We live in an unimaginable age communication.  There are hundreds of ways for us to connect with people all around the world.  Yet in spite of this technological revolution social distance between groups and classes of people is expanding.  Would you like an example?  Earlier in the year I saw this facebook post from a person I know who lives in the Midwest: “I don’t know what the big deal is.  I don’t know a single person whose life has been negatively effected by sequestration.”  That is social distance.  It leads us to believe that if I personally don’t know someone effected by something than it must have no effect on anyone at all.  It is the principle is at work with the federal cuts to food stamps.  If I don’t know a particular person who hurt by this then no one is hurt by it.  Right?

Social distance makes it easier for people to exaggerate small differences between groups and classes while ignoring the more significant ways we humans are related to one another.  Thomas Pettigrew, a researcher at the University of California, has done work analyzing ethnic hatred.  He has verified that extensive interpersonal contact counteracts prejudice by letting people from hostile groups get to know one another as individuals and even friends.  Even in regions where ethnic groups experience significant conflict, those individuals who have close friends in the other group exhibit little or no prejudice.  They are not able to demonize “others” because at some level they know them to be “just like me.” 

Let me tell you two unlikely people who have stepped out of a world of privilege and isolation in order to learn about the lives of the world’s poor – Bill and Melinda Gates.  I’m sure you know that they have put the majority of their considerable wealth into a trust aimed at eliminating poverty around the world.  The couple has visited dozens of countries and hundreds of villages were they have met more people than most of us will meet in a lifetime.  These contacts have helped the Gates to understand the many, many significant ways we humans are connected to one another.  They make it impossible for them to turn a blind eye to the suffering they see and has led them to respond with their wealth and with their lives.

The Gates Endowment releases a yearly report that chronicles the work of the fund.  Much of it is aimed at improving agriculture because Gates believes this is the best method of fighting hunger and poverty while making life better for billions of people.  The report also criticizes countries and conglomerations that are not doing their part in this work.  Bill Gates is on record as saying, “I am willing to be viewed as a troublemaker by people who are happy with the status quo.”  That is a quote worthy of John the Baptist himself.

Well, you and I don’t have the wealth of Bill Gates.  But here is the thing: it is not how much you have that matters, it is what you do with what you have.  At this time of year, with its focus on family and getting together, the annual advent of John the Baptist reminds us to look out beyond ourselves.  It calls us to gather in some way with the community in which we live.  It encourages us to look around and to recognize the sameness we share with those who might seem different by some other, inconsequential standard.  John invites us to close social distance and to step out of isolation.  He invites us to have contact with people we about whom we have ieas, but no real experience.  From this coming together John knows our hearts will be challenged and changed and we will begin to bear fruit worthy of repentance.