St.
Alban's Episcopal Church
Austin, Texas
|
Austin, Texas
|
|
From the Pulpit:
I guess it’s mostly in magazine interviews that I’ve heard of people being asked to name a guest list for their imaginary dinner party. You know, the kind where time and place and whether the people would actually come to your house or are even alive are not an issue. I suppose who you choose to invite is rather revealing. If it’s John Lennon, Janis Joplin and Elvis you’re somewhat different than if it’s Mother Theresa, Desmond Tutu and Jesus. But even in the infinite world of imagined dinner guests, I don’t suppose John the Baptist is going to show up on many lists. There’s the issue of appetites…what he’s going to do to yours and the other guests. Damp camel’s wool can’t smell all that good. And he’s a picky eater himself. Gluten allergy or vegetarianism I’ll be happy to accommodate, but locusts and wild honey? That’s way too much to ask. And even if you could get past the food issues, there’s general pleasantness at stake. Apparently his mama did not harp on him as mine did that you get more flies with honey than with vinegar. Calling people a brood of vipers…really! No, it’s solo takeout for John. Actually, I don’t imagine many of the prophets would make it onto those invitation lists. Amos would be singularly distressing. We’re listening to Isaiah on a good day today, but he can’t be counted on. Ezekiel? Jeremiah? You’d be hesitant to use your good china at the very least. Nope, no prophets at my party. And yet, here is John always blocking the doorway just when we’re ready to get to the baby Jesus. We’re going to get there, to the stable in Bethlehem and the sweet baby and the shepherds and kings…you do know that that is mushing together Matthew and Luke’s gospels, but we’re allowed to play fast and loose with our crèches…anyway, there’s John making a scene that we can’t avoid. Even though they may be poor prospects for dinner guests, prophets are a misunderstood lot. John stands in the tradition of Isaiah and the rest of the Old Testament prophets. They had a big job. When the kingdom of David and Solomon was divided into Israel in the north and Judah in the south, the prophets were called by God to try to avert disaster. They were given special visions, special speech, the permission to act outrageously to get people’s attention in order to get them to straighten up and fly right. Prophets are spokesmen for God, not fortune tellers. They remind people of the patterns of God’s behavior. Those of you who have children have undoubtedly been prophets. “Remember what happened the last time you left your school project for the last night? Remember what happened the last time you left your bike out in the rain?” Oh, if only they would listen. There are consequences to behavior, and the prophets are the ones who shout from the housetops that you already know what happens when you worship idols. And it happens. First the northern kingdom falls to Assyria. Then the southern kingdom falls to Babylon. It’s a 50-year time out known as the Babylonian Exile. If only they’d listened to the prophets. But then, as we said, the prophets were not popular. And John is in their tradition. He looks a whole lot like they did, especially like Elijah. The people who come out to be baptized think maybe he is Elijah. Remember Elijah? He was the 9th century prophet in the northern kingdom who got so crosswise with evil Queen Jezebel that he had to hide out in a cave to avoid her assassins, and God had to lure him out with the still small voice. Elijah was the one who never died but was raised up into heaven by God while his disciple Elisha and a band of other prophets watched. And the people who came out to the Jordan to check out John knew that when Elijah came back to earth, it meant that the messiah was going to come soon. Matthew tells us that John had his own message: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near. I’m afraid that the word repent has lost much of its charge, or that maybe its meaning has been skewed by too many New Yorker cartoons of the shaggy guy on the street corner with his placard of doom. Repent means more than saying you’re sorry and promising not to do it again, whatever it was. Repentance means more than that. John was telling the people that they had to live an all new way. William Temple was the Archbishop of Canterbury during the second world war. He defined repentance as learning to see with the eyes of God. Learning to see ourselves and others as God sees us. Do you remember the baptism scene in O Brother, Where Art Thou? All the people lined up in their white robes and Allison Krauss’s clear voice singing “As I went down in the river to pray Studying about that good old way And who shall wear the starry crown Good Lord, show me the way !” That’s what the prophets are about, that we are meant to wear the starry crowns! That we are to learn to see with the eyes of God. John, Elijah, Amos, Jeremiah, all of them have to be outrageous, they have to shout and carry on to get our attention so we’ll stop in our tracks and say, “Oh, I forgot. Oh, that’s what God wants for us. Oh, God has a better idea for the world.” And God does have a better idea for the world. Just listen to Isaiah. The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. Isn’t that wonderful? I have a print at home Of one of Edward Hicks’s Peaceable Kingdoms. Lions and lambs and babies and wide-eyed cows. We have to be reminded that that is how God wants the world. When we see with the eyes of God, that’s the world we’ll see. It’s a promise. It’s a promise that seems a long way off, I’m afraid, because as a people we have a lot of work to do. I wish I could change the world. I wish I could end the war in Iraq. I wish I could feed all the starving people in Haiti. I wish I could cure AIDS. I wish that my repenting could have that much effect on others. But the little changes I can make won’t happen if I don’t put on those new eyes. In 1965 Curtis Mayfield wrote a song. It was in response to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s most famous speech, I have a dream. Mayfield was going to another civil rights rally, And he wrote, People get ready, there's a train a-comin' You don't need no baggage, you just get on board All you need is faith to hear the diesels hummin' Don't need no ticket, you just thank the Lord. We still have work to do to bring about Dr. King’s dream, but it is a better world in some ways than it was in 1965. Some eyes have changed for the better, and they wouldn’t have changed if people hadn’t gotten ready. That’s John’s message, standing knee-deep in the flowing water, dunking person after person, prepping them for their starry crowns, getting them ready to greet a baby in the stable. John’s a character, there’s no getting around that, and maybe we still don’t want to ask him to more than a backyard barbecue, but he’s a good gatekeeper. He helps us to own up to who we are, who God created us to be, citizens of the kingdom, created in the very image of God. Oh. It takes more than a gentle reminder To convince us of that. The German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, writes this:
My eyes already touch the sunny hill, We feel the wind in our faces. My prayer is that this wind, this holy ruach, this voice in the wilderness, today blesses us with a holy Advent, so that we might be ready to greet the child who will be born in the stable, the new life that will be born within us and among us with the eyes of God, Godself. Amen.
|
05/16/2008 | ||||||
.jpg)
The
Rev. Margaret Waters