John the Baptist

1 Epiphany 2020: Noticing Our Practice

January 12, 2020 by Cam Miller

Jordan River where it empties into the Dead Sea

I have been preaching for forty years, I can’t believe it.
I realize that to some of you,
that’s nothing –
heck, Sabin’s got married
the year I was born!

But I was ordained a deacon in June, 1980
and then priested nine months later.
That is irrelevant to everything this morning
except that the First Sunday of Epiphany
may be one of those Sundays
I have never missed preaching.
One year I was in El Salvador
but even there I preached through a translator.

While the cast of characters
never changes in this story of Jesus’ baptism,
it remains endlessly interpretive
just like the whole of the bible
and our theological tradition.

There are stories that come up
in the lectionary cycle
that I just grit my teeth and get through,
but this one is so layered and interesting
that it feels like a good friend
I haven’t seen for a year.

But our understanding of stories changed,
as does our theology.
We do not believe today
what Christians in other times and other places believed.

Christianity is obviously an old religion –
not as old as Judaism, Buddhism or Hinduism
but older than Islam, Shinto or Mormonism.
Each century, and indeed, each culture
makes numerous contributions to a religion,
so that Christianity
is like a mountain
sculpted by time and events
that changes its shape and texture and size.

We imagine, standing as we do
at a fixed moment in time,
that Christianity
has always been like it is today,
but that is as impossible
as Christianity 100 years from now
looking like it does today.

Just think about how much Christianity
must have changed
from what it was before Constantine
and when it became the religion of the Roman empire.
It went from being a decentralized,
competitive
and subversive movement,
that was a loosely associated
string of house churches and regional centers,
to becoming an institution –
with a bureaucracy and an emperor
who had the power to enforce conformity.
The 4^thcentury was big
in the evolution of Christianity,
but so was the 20^thcentury.

For one thing,
the 20^thcentury began to apply
historical and literary analysis
to our interpretation of the Bible.

Think about this.
Prior to the 20^thcentury
the Bible was read exclusively through the filter of doctrine.
All the things that the Church
already believed about Jesus
were assumed to be true
beforereading it.
For example, never mind that the Gospels are clear
that Jesus had brothers and sisters,
the doctrine said his mother, Mary, was a perpetual virgin,
and so that took precedence
over whatever the text actually said.

But in the 20^thcentury,
archeology, anthropology,
and history
suddenly blossomed as sciences,
and it was inevitable
that the Bible came to be read
through their filters as well as –
sometimes even replacing the filter of doctrine.

To its credit,
Protestant theology often led the way:
great 20^thcentury Christian scholars and theologians
began to ask the Bible
historical and archeological questions
instead of isolating single passages
that helped prove a point of doctrine
while ignoring or rationalizing all the rest.
So, in the first half of the 20^thcentury
Christianity began to open its doors
and hear brand new things
from the very old Bible.
And the things they noticed in the Bible
did not always match up with previous doctrine.
For example,
it soon became clear
that John the Baptist
and Baptism
were treated very differently
in the earliest Gospel, Mark,
and the last Gospel, John.

With forty or fifty years between them,
and with totally different audiences,
it began to be noticed that Mark treated John the Baptist
and Baptism
much differently than the Gospel of John did –
and that Luke and Matthew
were also different
but created a kind of mid-way evolution
between Mark and John.

The power of doctrine dissipated
and suddenly we could see what was obvious all along,
if only we would place each Gospel
next to one another and read them.

In Mark, the story of Jesus’ baptism
clearly states that people came to John the Baptist
confessing their sins
and being baptized
as some kind of ritual cleansing in the Jordan River.
In Mark, John the Baptist
does not recognized Jesus,
nor does Mark make a clear connection
between “the one” who John the Baptist predicts,
and Jesus as being “that one.”

Rather, Mark describes a private religious experience.
Jesus comes up out of the water,
and HE sees the heavens torn apart.
He sees a dove descending.
He, Jesus, hears the voice of confirmation,
“You are my beloved.”

But we see in Matthew today,
as in Luke,
that this story evolved
over the fifteen or twenty years between them,
and Jesus’ private spiritual moment,
becomes a huge public miracle.
In Matthew, John the Baptist declares
that Jesus is “the one,”
and the CROWD sees the dove,
and the CROWD hears the voice.
There is no room left for doubt
that this was a miraculous event
that proved Jesus was “the one.”

Historians have discovered, however,
that the followers of John the Baptist
had their own religious movement
and it was focused on John, not Jesus.
The Baptist movement outlasted John
and in fact, still exists.
They are called, Mandaeans.
Until we invaded Iraq, they lived mostly
in that part of the world.

The John the Baptist movement
was probably bigger and stronger
than Jesus’ movement
when they both existed side-by-side
in real time, as we say today.

Biblical historians began to recognize
that this whole idea
that John the Baptist foresaw and proclaimed
Jesus as the Messiah,
was likely a bit of early Christian propaganda.

You see, in this baptism story
we have preserved a very gnarly issue
for those early Christians:
Jesus was baptized by John
and that could be seen as Jesus
being subordinate to John.
Surely John’s followers
used that inconvenient truth
to say that John was superior to Jesus.

Then, from the standpoint of doctrine,
there was another problem rising up from this story
like an arm sticking up from a grave.

As time went by,
those that followed the Jesus movement
began to claim that Jesus was perfect.
It was not enough for them that he was merely human.
In fact, to them, in order for him to be the Christ,
he had to be without sin.

Now that is a very big claim,
and it contradicts the very human Jesus
that appears in Mark –
the one that goes down to the Jordan River
confessing his sins.
That is what the crowds were doing remember,
coming down to the river
to confess their sins and be cleansed.

But the idea that Jesus submitted himself
to a baptism
“for the forgiveness of sins”
became such a scandal in early Christianity,
that the last gospel written
does not even record Jesus’ baptism.
We will hear next week from the Gospel of John,
and it simply does not say Jesus was baptized.
The Gospel of John also directly quotes John the Baptist
declaring Jesus is superior to him, and
leaving no doubt that Jesus is the Messiah.

So the Gospel of John makes clear
that Jesus was not baptized
for the forgiveness of sins or anything else,
and that John the Baptist
was merely the opening act for the main superstar, Jesus.

To summarize then,
historical, literary, and archeological analysis
of the Bible led us to realize
that Mark is not the same story
as Matthew,
which is not the same story as Luke,
which is not the same story as John.

The differences cannot be dismissed
as just a few stray details, because
these are four different manifestos
with four different views of Jesus.
The four gospels range from a grown man
who has a religious experience at his baptism,
to an eternal God, begotten not made.

Whether we choose to believe
all the doctrines about Jesus or not,
the 20^thcentury opened the Gospels
and let the cat out of the bag.

Conservative Christianity
simply refused to accept the analysis –
putting hands over ears and eyes
and very loudly shouting down
anything that did not agree with its doctrine.
It is no coincidence that Fundamentalism and Pentecostalism
are products of the 20^thcentury too.
They are a reaction against
historical, literary, archeological, and anthropological
analysis of the Bible.
So much of what we see and hear today
in terms of the conflicts within Christianity
are as a result of the 20^thcentury’s
theological contributions to Biblical scholarship.

This division is splitting Christianity
across cultural and continental boundaries,
with the religion dividing-while-shrinking in the Global North,
and growing massively in the Global South.

Well, all of that is interesting,
but has little to do with our baptismal practice,
here in our little wine bar church
in this small slice of New York.

It is a new year, so let’s notice
what we practice together,
even if we always practice it imperfectly.

There is the Jesus we proclaim,
though I recognize there may be significant differences
and a many splendored variety of lenses
through which we see Jesus.
But our pal Jesus, the one we proclaim
and whose spiritual practice we raise up,
is not a Marvel comic book character.
Rather, he is one who failed and floundered
and likely engaged in what we call sin,
and who was vulnerable to what hurts us –
because he was human, just as we are human.
I think some version of that 20^thcentury-bleeding-into-the-21^stcentury Jesus,
is the Jesus we practice.

Then, we proclaim a Jesus who welcomed
all people to the table,
a Jesus who practiced a radical hospitality
that we are supposed to emulate.
That is a claim that Christianity
has not always been known for.

Another part of our practice
has to do with seeking God,
and the God we seek.
Rather than the cosmic critical parent
that judges our brokenness,
I think we practice the search for the God
who coos to us in the quietness of our hearts:
“You are my beloved,
with you I am well pleased.

Then there is the sharing of subversive wisdom,
which definitely is my practice.
Yet I have noticed more than a few of you
seem to also value that which undermines imperial orthodoxy
wherever it claims to be the keeper of exclusive truth.

The practice of using contemporary poetry and prose
is also interesting, because it suggests
that God whispers to us through moderns texts
just as easily as ancient ones.

We practice changing worship every season,
learning new prayers,
and new songs
or new words to old tunes.
Without a doubt we have different feelings
about this practice,
but it has become a Trinity Place practice.

We practice a spirit of authenticity in worship,
in which it is okay to cry,
say amen,
or laugh out loud.
It is a spirit that allows sitting or standing,
verbal participation
or simple presence –
a come as you are
and be as you need to be
kind of spirit.
It is all-at-once casual and ritualistic,
tradition-bound and innovative,
constant and changing.

We practice the sharing of our lives
and the unfolding our stories with one another
around the table.
It is a circle we try to make safe
with the honest acknowledgment of our common brokenness
and a willingness to give one another glimpses of ourselves.

We practice a hospitality
that understands eating together
is an act of spiritual intimacy.

We practice the awkward and painful art
of balancing precariously –
like the fiddler on the roof –
between today and tomorrow.
By which I mean, we practice surrender
because we have so much of our future
dictated by the courts.
It is a surrender required because we also
live as a spectacle in the court of public opinion.
The act of surrender
in times when control is far beyond
the edge of our reach,
is a core spiritual practice
in every tradition.
We practice it, not out of desire,
but out of necessity.

We practice all of that and more,
which is to say, these are ways
we practice our baptism with one another.
We practice it in many other ways
where we live our lives beyond this spiritual community,
but I dare say, how we practice it here,
helps, enables, and nurtures us
out there.

So, it is important to stop and notice what we do
now and again, and celebrate it
as well as noting any distance
between what we say we cherish
and what we actually practice.

The occasion of Jesus’ baptism
is a great moment in which to do that –
which is why we just did.

3 Advent 2017: Thunder in the Desert

December 17, 2017 by Cam Miller

TEXTS for PREACHING

Isaiah 61:1-7
John 1:6-8

From “The Broken Body”
by Jean Vanier

Our brokenness is the wound through which
the full power of God
can penetrate our being
and transfigure us in God.

Loneliness is not something from which we must flee
but the place from where we can cry out to God,
where God will find us and we can find God.

Yes, through our wounds
the power of God can penetrate us
and become like rivers of living water
to irrigate the arid earth within us.
Thus we may irrigate the arid earth of others,
so that hope and love are reborn.

SERMON

“I am thunder in the desert! Make the road straight!”

I love that scene,
it is right out of a movie.
“Who are you?”
“I am thunder in the desert!”

Think George C. Scott, James Earl Jones, or Samuel L. Jackson playing the role of John the Baptist –
or to add a kind of kooky, kinky wrinkle, think Christopher Walken.

It’s a dustup
between the highly coiffured and well-scented privileged establishment
and the grouchy, rough-mannered activist who plays them
for the fools they are.

It is the strong resonant voice
of the prophet
who knows very well the power of words,
annunciating missiles he has been handed
from a power greater than himself.
He releases those words
into the atmosphere,
freeing them to deliver their payload.
But the poor shopkeepers of order
and control
have no inkling
that such words have power,
more power than they will ever know –
until it is too late.

It is a big scene,
as is the one from Isaiah
who laid the rebar and paved the road John the Baptist walks on.
Big stuff, all of it.

But I want to listen underneath the loud.

On this 3^rd Sunday of Advent,
the last one before Christmas Eve,
I want to listen underneath all of that bigness and loudness and conflict,
for the “still point” Eliot writes about,
and to that pool of “brokenness
in the wound through which the full power of God can penetrate our being…”
envisioned by the poet, Jean Vanier.

The cervix of the rational world
is growing thin,
and making way for our birth
into the more mystical dimensions
of the cosmos.

In this moment,
we are standing in a double-exposure
of two worlds that are always present to each other
at one and the same time,
as watercolors bleed into one another yet never fully join.

The Beast of War snorts
and heaves as loud as ever,
its hot breath dripping from enraged nostrils.
But in places least expected, wolves
decided to curled up with lambs –
and not with mint jelly on the side either –
but to snuggle into their fluffy-wool.

It is always like that, both/and:
beasts of war and wolves and lambs.

Even as some among us in this community
suffer the haunt of grief,
the lamentation of fractured relationships,
the anxiety of illness,
or the sudden threat of more limited income,
at the very same time
the breath of God sings like an oboe
slow-dancing on the wind.

“Yes, through our wounds,
the power of God can penetrate us,” the poet says,
and indeed, the song of God brings healing
to someone with cancer,
peace to another with mental torment,
rest to yet another who has been racked with pain.
We cannot see rhyme or reason in it,
and it won’t be neatly ordered by our small minds
or the application of a skim coat of pure reason.
It is not our universe after all.

Still, listen down underneath it all,
for the movement
and the shifting
and the quiver.

It may not be easy to do,
feel the thinning of the veil
pulled taunt between two dimensions.
Our penchant for the rational and orderly
is likewise stretched,
but more like a latex glove over our brain.

The slow mechanical grind of gears driven by a blind eye
to anything that is not replicated in a laboratory –
or able to be measured with our best abacus,
slide-rule, or computer –
we will not believe,
we do not see,
and so, we insist it must be refused
like all such talk of the mystical.

So, let’s side-step the rational and let that skinny old dog lie.

Instead, with the imagination and intuition,
and even with our emotions,
let’s try to see and touch,
feel and maybe even taste and smell,
the thinning of the veil between God and Creation.

Now, in truth, literally,
we know the veil is so thin that it almost isn’t there;
so shear it really doesn’t appear.
The veil between God and Creation
allows movement “between” –
a kind of semi-permeable membrane
that gives shape without structure.
It is a double-exposure of believable and unbelievable
that can sometimes be especially intense.

It is the same as when those invisible negative ions,
right after a thunderstorm,
nearly caress the skin and stroke the brain.

So listen.
Take a deep breath and let it out slowly,
and just listen for it…

deep breath here

…The 3rd Sunday of Advent
is stretched so tightly across the next eight days
that if we look real close,
we can almost see little faces looking back at us
from the other side – little noses
and lips smooshed up against the invisible
but opaque pane of days.

The sounds of a newborn Christmas Day
can almost be heard, even now.

But that skinny old dog of untamed reason
is still sleeping in the corner,
content to lay there between meals
and guard our movements.
It is the practical,
rational,
thoughtful mind that insists
we travel down the well-worn rutted road,
following the tracks of proven wagons wheels
that came before.

That dog will bite our heels
if wander up out of the rut.
You may be listening to that prove-it-to-me voice
right now, the one inside every head
ticking down the list of things to do before Christmas arrives.

There is the grumbling about commercialism
and keeping an eye on weather forecasts,
and let’s not forget the snarling about
flu, politics, and the current mishmash of tribalism.
The rational mind is not merely mathematical
and a steady engineer,
it also is a nagging parent
hassling us about getting it all done.

But still, there is the other voice
quietly humming from within the chamber
of our hardened hearts.
At the still point perhaps, but maybe everywhere,
there is also that cooing, whisper-of-a-song
that bids us to look again
at the winter landscape
and see if we can’t also find
a sign of spring hidden there.

It is always like that, both/and – two voices
but we only have one actual strand of attention.
We have to choose which voice gets most of our attention.
We do not, and should not,
deafen ourselves to the voice we do not choose,
simply give one prominence at any given moment.

As Christmas draws us closer and closer
with its strange magnetic power,
the unbelievable is poking through that thinning veil
between God and Creation.
It is poking through and tickling our resistance.
It is poking through
and drawing the attention of our cynical, hassled,
rational inclination to just get through it all.

As much as we insist on the intellectually credible
we also yearn for a lifting of the veil on the mystical.
It is always like that, both/and –
resisting and yearning.
All this worship stuff we do
is only an attempt to say something intelligent
about the unbelievable holiness
that moves like smoke through history,
and sings its song
in the ear of our otherwise routine
and unremarkable lives.
All the Bible readings
with their antique images;
all our hymns, both jolly or morose;
all our poignant stories and poems;
the overly formulaic prayers;
the predictable rhythms of the Communion –
all of it, is just our way of stuttering.

None of what we say or do uncovers
any big “truth.”
There is no tidy summary of God
to unwrap yearly in a digestible formula.
All of this thing we do, on Christmas or any given Sunday,
is a highly articulate stammering.

As the veil between God and Creation thins
like a cervix in preparation for delivery,
we suddenly realize
that our most eloquent statements of faith
crumble into nards of nothingness.

That is the beauty of such thin moments.

So watch
and listen
and wonder.
Don’t wake the dog.
Let it lie.

Watch, listen, and
wonder.

As the Christmas story unfolds in front of us,
and all the manic craziness we do dusts up around it,
put away your fine analytical skills.
Don’t try to figure out the moment.
Don’t apply logic to the thinning veil.
Don’t dissect and evaluate it until it’s gone.

Watch,
listen, and
wonder.

In other words, experience it.
Feel it.
Enjoy it, even if it doesn’t all feel good.
You can wake up the dog later and give it a bone.

But in the thin moment watch, listen, and wonder.

That’s just a little advice for the season we are in –
because sometimes we forget.
We have entered a thin moment
when there is a tapering of the border
between God and us,
in which strange things may be afoot.
So watch, listen, and wonder –
and, of course, enjoy.

2 Advent 2017: A Bald Face Challenge

December 10, 2017 by Cam Miller

TEXTS for Preaching

Isaiah 40:1-11

“Savior” by Maya Angelou

Petulant priests, greedy
centurions, and one million
incensed gestures stand
between your love and me.

Your agape sacrifice
is reduced to colored glass,
vapid penance, and the
tedium of ritual.

Your footprints yet
mark the crest of
billowing seas but
your joy
fades upon the tablets
of ordained prophets.

Visit us again, Savior.
Your children, burdened with
disbelief, blinded by a patina
of wisdom,
carom down this vale of
fear. We cry for you
although we have lost
your name.

Mark 1:1-8

SERMON

“Visit us again, Savior.
Your children, (are) burdened with
disbelief, blinded by a patina
of wisdom…”

Burden – a heavy load.
Disbelief – an inability to accept something as real.
Patina – a film of calcification
covering old implements and metals.

I realize that while “patina”
may not be an ordinary word,
“burden” and “disbelief” enter our speech
with such routine they go without notice.
But examining the average, mundane,
humdrum,
and tediously dull
can stir up a little gold.

Much of our religion
is a film of calcification, a patina,
that is burdening the generations with disbelief.

Much of our religion
is a film of calcification, a patina,
that is burdening the generations with disbelief.

While that may not be a controversial statement at all,
given that secularism
and other historic whirlwinds
have beaten bare the stone institutions of religion
like a thousand-year tempest,
I do recognize that it may be hurtful
and cause pain.

It is the kind of thing
I said prophetically forty years ago
as a young preacher
but without too much compassion.

Now, as a preacher standing on the dock
and able to look out and see old age,
I wish I had been more kindhearted earlier.

To say that much of our religion
is a patina, a calcification,
burdening our children with disbelief,
is surely a hurtful thing to say
to those of us who are deeply grateful
for what we have received from the church.
Many of us have invested great parts of our lives
in the community of faith
and supporting the institution of our religion.
To call much of it a green scale of film
obscuring the beauty of our ancient wisdom,
may feel painful and disrespectful.
And yet, standing here between Isaiah
and John the Baptist this morning,
saying so seems an apt way to honor those prophets.

Here is what I mean.
Isaiah steps forward
and preaches a counter-intuitive message
to his peers.

First, we have to understand,
that for 39 chapters,
Isaiah has been preaching discomfort.

For 39 chapters, he has been warning
his peers that their social and economic injustice
will be their undoing;
and he has castigated
the political and religious leaders,
for being purveyors of greed and self-interest.
Death and destruction are coming, he warns,
and now is the time to reform.
The people do not see it,
and they think things are good.
Isaiah is a weirdo.

Then, on a dime, Isaiah suddenly,
at the beginning of chapter 40,
begins preaching the comfort of hope.

But now, at chapter 40,
it is a time in which the people have been suffering
and nothing is good,
and nothing will ever be good again,
and hope feels like mocking their pain.
Isaiah is a weirdo.

The reason for this sharp change
is that the Book of Isaiah is actually several books,
written and compiled
over one-hundred and fifty years or more,
and so the historical circumstances of each section
represent how the world changed over time.

But that being said,
the preaching and the poetry
associated with the name, Isaiah,
often walks upstream from the real-time experience
of the people the prophet is preaching among.

He points out their selfishness and corruption,
preaching reform, when things seem good;
and then he offers the love of God and hope,
even in the midst of their brokenness and suffering,
when things seem bad.

Likewise, with Maya Angelou:
Much of our religion
is a film of calcification, a patina,
that is burdening the generations with disbelief…
is to challenge the foot-dragging
institutional self-interest that resists reforming Christianity, while also
pointing toward a real-time hope.

“Visit us again, Savior,
your children are burdened with disbelief…”
is a plea dripping with the experience
of our own moment in history,
AND the presumption
there is an alternative experience
both possible and expected.

So I think Isaiah,
both the reform-minded one
and the hopeful comforter one,
would look at our moment of anxiety –
when there is a swelling disbelief
in institutional religion
even as there is a strong, if generic,
desire for spiritual connection –
and point to both the need of reform, and hope.

So Isaiah stands on our left side today,
listening for what we might say –
listening for what you and I
will preach from a high mountain.
On the right side then, is John the Baptist.

John the Baptist was a weirdo too,
less poetic than Isaiah, but a fierce reformer.
Mostly we know about John
through the filter of those writing about Jesus
fifty to eighty years later,
after both John and Jesus had been executed
by state power.

Let us first of all, acknowledge
that John the Baptist did not see Jesus
as Number 1 to his being Number 2.
That is early Christian theological propaganda.
We know this from an outside historical view.
John had many more followers in Judah
than did Jesus did.
Even after John was dead,
his followers were more numerous than Jesus’.
In fact, there are still people today
for whom John the Baptist is their primary prophet –
they are known as Mandaeans.

The followers of Jesus and the followers of John
were in competition with one another for followers.
But Jesus likely had a deep appreciation
for the ministry and work that John began.
John too was a reformer
and what he did was hugely important.

You see, John figured out how to bust a monopoly –
a theological and spiritual monopoly.

The temple, and the temple clergy,
had a monopoly on God’s power and authority.
Every important aspect of the religion
was centered in the one-and-only temple
in Jerusalem.
All acts of piety,
all rituals of contrition and repentance,
all corporate acts of worship,
were focused in the temple.

That meant that those in charge of the temple
possessed a great deal of power.

So much so, the temple priesthood
had become an inherited privilege
passed on from generation to generation.
It was a closed world of power and wealth,
managing a hugely important
religious and economic center of the society.

John the Baptist busted that monopoly.

His practice of baptism,
a ritual cleansing for the forgiveness of sins,
sidestepped the religious institution
and provided an alternative spiritual practice
for ordinary people who could not afford
the high price of religion at the temple.d
John’s baptism was cost no money.

You see, John the Baptist wasn’t just some crazy
preacher doing weird things out in the wilderness,
he was organizing a rebellion
and busting a religious and economic monopoly.
Jesus was down with it too.
Jesus was so down with it, he went and got baptized.
Jesus was all about what John was doing,
even though Jesus was not quite the purist
John was when it came to being a vegetarian
and anti-materialist.

So now, I hope,
you can see the connection
between Isaiah on our left side,
and John on our right side:
both preachers, prophets, and reformers.
It’s not a bad place for Maya Angelou
to be standing either,
because she was a prophet, poet, and reformer too.

“Visit us again, Savior.
Your children, (are) burdened with
disbelief, blinded by a patina
of wisdom…”

That brings us to our need to scratch off the patina
and reveal the spiritual truth and wisdom
that will unburden our children,
that will move them within reach of belief
instead of burdening them with disbelief.
And it begins with the Christmas story.

The Christmas story is a refugee story.
It is a dark tale of oppression
and the dangers of living as an illegal citizens
among a people who do not believe in,
respect, protect, or even care
about their dignity.
That is Joseph and Mary.

We tell the Christmas story
as a romanticized Victorian sentimental journey,
with jingle bells and a gentle falling snow.
There is nothing whatsoever
cozy and comforting
about the manger.
It is a dark tale,
of skulking around in the night
to avoid agents of the government
bent on hunting them down
and threatening their very existence.
The Christmas story
is a story of exile and repression
and the whispers of an alternative being born,
a divine spark of liberation
that will bring down kings and empires.

We have wrapped Christmas
in gaudy paper and pretty bows and the way we tell it,
it is simply unbelievable to our children –
associated with the fantasy of Santa Claus.
And that is what we have done
with the entire Jesus story –
created a protective film
that distorts or hides the real Jesus.
Jesus is a threat to our institutions
not Mr. Nice Guy carrying lambs on his shoulders.
Jesus and John the Baptist
did not get tortured and executed
because they used the wrong fork at dinner!
Something about what they were up to,
and what they preached,
and what they did,
was threatening to the powers and principalities.
They were prophets
and reformers,
and they preached an alternative reality.

So here is what I think that means for us,
on this second Sunday of Advent 2017.

We need to scratch the patina of religion
to see if we can discover
a credible
compelling
whisper of God
that does not
and will not
feel like a burden of disbelief to our children.
Where, in the our body of ancient wisdom,
does the voice of Jesus
pierce the butcher paper we have wrapped it in?
Where does it leak out,
drip down and leave a trail on the floor
for us to follow?

How can we keep doing what we value
and have loved about our religion,
and at the same time, unleash it
from the protective cage
it has been jailed in for all these years?

I am not up here with a “How-to” book of answers,
even though I have my own ideas
about what to do.
Instead, this is an invitation,
and bald-faced challenge:
Let us use Advent for what it is,
a time to get ready for change.

Let us enter into the new year
expecting change
and nurturing change
and looking for what God is doing
in the midst of change.
Let us get out our wire brushes
and our brass polish
and go to work on the tarnish
so that the generations might know
the liberation of belief.

1 Epiphany 2020: Noticing Our Practice

3 Advent 2017: Thunder in the Desert

2 Advent 2017: A Bald Face Challenge

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