John the Baptist, “’Wildman John’ leaps into Advent’s second Sunday, taking my breath away with his matted black dreadlocks, that camel skin he wraps around his bony body, gnarled bare feet sticking out below. His eyes seize me the way his rough hands seize the locusts he eats, the honey he snatches from wild bees. He roars warnings: dire times, dereliction of duty, the brink of doom. Advent seems too small a stage to hold him.
“He roars because [the rugged re-ordering he seeks,
is with prim and manicured] people in the city he has abandoned. The city,
where life is contrived, where truth is artifice; the wilderness, where godly
design is discernible still. John is a wilderness man now. And John roars
because the crowds that come out to hear him are immense, multi-national,
multi-lingual, even multi-faithed…. They come because the Wildman speaks the
truth they long to hear.”
These words from Nancy Rockwell, a United Church of
Christ minister and spiritual director in New Hampshire, launch us into an examination of John the
Baptist, the rough-hewn herald who came to announce the transformative ministry
of his kinsman, Jesus of Nazareth. Examining this pivotal figure was for me a
trip through territory that is both fearsome and familiar, with a couple of unexpected
twists along the way.
I’ve always found it hard to reconcile the story of
John the Baptist, with the two Advent Sundays that typically house his story:
the Sunday of Peace, and the Sunday of Joy.
While ultimate peace and joy may well await those who heed the call of
the Baptist, he is not a placid or peaceful man; he is, in Nancy Rockwell’s
words, a man who roars. He’s a man who rebukes and demands, not someone who
allows us to set the cares of the world aside and bask in the joy of God’s
beautiful presence.
Think of John as someone running a spiritual boot
camp. As we prepare to host a world cup
cross-country ski event later this week, any one of those elite athletes could
tell us that the desire to reach the podium doesn’t happen by clicking your
toes into the bindings for the first time ever on Sunday, then allowing your
natural talent to scoot you along to victory on Friday. In addition to possessing a special level of
talent, it takes years of skill development, ongoing grueling physical
training, a single-minded approach to success, and an ability to have your best
performance at the right time in order to have even marginal success on the
tour. Continuing with that analogy, John
the Baptist would be the strength and conditioning coach that you both trust
and hate, forcing you to be strong and agile and flexible and durable all at
the same time. He’s the relentless guy
who will not lie to you, who confronts you with the level of cardio-vascular
fitness needed to succeed, who spurs you to do ten more reps of that exercise
you detest when you are at the edge of fatigue.
While you detest his tenaciousness, you know that you need the fitness he demands
for your skills to make a difference.
Professor Robert Tannehill (p.48) said this about John the Baptist: “It is important to note that John the Baptist is the
preparer of the way and forerunner not only in the sense that he bears witness
to Jesus, the stronger one who is coming (3:16), but also in the sense that he
prepares a repentant people, a people ready to receive the Lord because they
have passed through the drastic leveling and straightening that Isaiah
described”. It was this description from
Professor Tannehill that got me thinking about John as boot camp instructor. John is the one who literally “straightens
out” the crowd so that the message yet to come, the ethical and spiritual
demands of Jesus, can be embraced. This
makes me wonder: when people say that they find the demands of Christ to be too
stringent, is that really the case, or is it just that the basic spiritual
training demanded by John hasn’t been done?
Is Christ’s mission unrealistic, or is it just that the self-honesty
demanded by John has not yet been exercised?
Is Jesus’ demand to “go the extra mile” (Matt. 5: 39) mere exaggeration,
or has John not been heard when he said (Luke 3:11) “whoever has two shirts
must give one to the person who has none, and whoever has food must share it.”?
To return to the physical analogy, if I look at the Jesus mountain and figure it
is too steep to climb, is it just that I
didn’t let John get me strong or limber enough?
If I look at the Jesus distance and determine that it is too far to run,
is it just that I haven’t done any of the necessary cardio training with John? I’m not sure that it needs to be in the
sequential order suggested by scripture – first the stringent training of John,
then the life-long applications of Jesus – but I would definitely agree that
both aspects are necessary in our Christian living. An attitude of love and compassion needs to
be paired with the courage of self-sacrifice if we are truly to embrace
Christ’s call to service. The tough,
confrontational words of John help us to develop the spiritual sinews needed to
do Christ’s work in the world.
I said at the start of the sermon that some aspects I encountered this week about John the
Baptist were familiar, and some were unexpected. Most familiar is the picture of John the
Baptist as the unusual, uncompromising “Wildman John” described by Nancy
Rockwell. I think of John as “the voice in the wilderness’ because the gospel
of Luke basically tells me that’s who he is. But in researching the person of
John the Baptist, I found an unexpected
twist, from a few authors who point out that the gospel of Luke kind of
misquotes Isaiah, and this makes for a most fascinating change in
perspective.
This might be more effective if I had a video
screen to put the two readings side by side, but in the absence of that, listen
as I read two pieces of scripture.
First, will be Isaiah 40:3-4; and then will be Isaiah 40: 3-4, as quoted
in the 3rd chapter of Luke.
(ISAIAH)
A voice cries out:
“In the wilderness prepare the
way of the Lord,
make straight in the desert a highway
for our God.
4 Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made
low;
(LUKE) as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,
“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make
his paths straight.
5 Every valley shall be filled,
and
every mountain and hill shall be made low,
It’s a subtle difference, I admit, but here it is: in Isaiah it says, “ A voice
cries out, ‘in the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord” while in Luke
it says “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness [says] ‘prepare
the way of the Lord.’” Luke, working
from the Septuagint version of the Old Testament which funnelled the Hebrew
text through Greek, understands that it’s the prophet who is in the
wilderness, crying out; but if we go back to the original Hebrew text of Isaiah,
it implies that the voice can come from anywhere, it’s the people hearing
the voice who are in the wilderness.
Consider
this possibility with me: It’s not so
much that the messenger, John, is coming from or standing in the wilderness
when he shouts out the truth; it’s that we
are most able to hear God’s new way for our life when we are in
wilderness.
In the
fall of 1999, I was in ministry with a young, vibrant congregation bursting at
the seams, and I crashed hard. Losing a
year to clinical depression – and after that, facing the fact that I could not
return to a ministry that I really thought was going to be long-term – was one
of the hardest things I have gone through.
But it was also one of the greatest gifts, and I knew it even at the
time. Thrown off the merry-go-round,
I had some bumps and bruises to attend to, but once I came to my senses I knew
that if I was planning to survive, let alone thrive, I would have to truly open
myself to the healing love of Christ. I
would have to virtually reconstruct the way that I interpreted the world around
me, I would have to start understanding
my emotional needs, and I would need to connect
with a truth-telling therapist who would let me know if I was “getting it” at
all. On the surface, while my old
patterns of being seemed to be somewhat “successful,” that success wasn’t
sustainable, because it was built entirely on my capacity rather than on a
reliance on the forgiving, renewing power of an eternal God. I was trying to jump ahead to the techniques
of congregational growth without having done any of the difficult soul
work. And when I crashed, I landed in a
place of spiritual emptiness – a wilderness, where all the demands and
distractions were gone, but where the fearsome task of soul-work awaited me. Only when I exited the feverish pace of my
previous life and entered wilderness
could I hear the voice of God, which had in essence been yelling at me all
along, trying to get my attention.
In the 3rd chapter of Luke (TEV, alt.),
we hear more yelling. John is yelling at
the crowd: “you brood of vipers… turn from your sins! Don’t expect that being
children of Abraham will save you from being judged! You’re proud of your roots, but I tell you
that an axe will be taken to the roots of those who fail to bear good
fruit.” His uncompromising words place
him firmly in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets, those who refused to
sugar-coat the truth when people were turning away from God. Clearly, his words rang true for those who
came to see him – while his words stung, he wasn’t telling them anything they
didn’t already know. If everything was
running just tickety-boo in their lives, they wouldn’t have gone to see
John. But they were wandering in
spiritual wilderness already. They knew
that they needed to let go of their attachments to worldly goods; they knew
they were supposed to be sharing with the poor; they knew they were supposed to
conduct their affairs ethically and truthfully. They knew these things in their hearts, but
it wasn’t until this wilderness Wildman confronted them publicly that they
found the motivation to actually change.
Have you had this happen in your life? Have you had times where what you needed most
of all was a truth-teller, who would look you square in the eyes and say, “is
this really how you want to live? Does
this action really express your desire to live as a child of God?” I don’t think I, personally, would seek out
John the Baptist for this task – perhaps THAT much honesty is a bit
over-the-top – but it is so important, when we are in those wilderness spaces
in our lives, to have people who will mirror to us our own deep goodness, and
our own stumbles that run contrary to that goodness. I do believe that the Holy Spirit lives
deep within me, as the conscience that guides my way and corrects me when I’m
ready to choose something out of line, and I also believe that one of the
reasons we are called together as a congregation, is to find those truthful
companions, here, who can help us to live the Christian life. Each of us has
the divine spark within us, and each of us needs companions to gently fan that
flame when the embers are burning low.
One of the things a preacher always has to be aware
of, is her or his preaching context. For
most Biblical commentators, working in urban university settings, “wilderness”
is a term that suggests something unknown, even frightening. That is perfectly legitimate, and is, in
fact, how the wilderness was seen by people in the days of John the
Baptist. In those days, the wilderness
was where robbers lay in wait to beat you up on the road, as in the story of
the good Samaritan. The wilderness was
where evil, tempting spirits dwelled, as in the story of Satan tempting
Jesus. It was a place “out there” where only
bad things happened.
Preaching in Canmore, however, I realize that many
of you love wilderness – it’s one of
the things that drew you to live here, rather than someplace else. Multi-day
hikes or canoe trips, tramping through unknown wilds on snowshoes, or skiing in
the back-country are wilderness experiences where many of you thrive. Being out in the middle of nowhere is one of
the places where many people in this community really experience the holy. So when I’ve been speaking of wilderness in
the more typical, “a difficult place where it’s hard to get your bearings” some
of you may have been hearing, “a place where I get away from the falseness of
civilization to restore my soul.” And
you know, that works, too. Whether we
picture wilderness as a difficult place, or as a place of solitude and spirit, this
much remains true: we are most able to
hear God’s challenges to our lives when we enter into wilderness. When we drop the polite excuses that keep
us frozen in place, and enter into the wild, uncivilized place, we allow
ourselves to be confronted and conformed by God.
John the Baptist is clear: he is not the promised
one. But he knows the one who is, and
loves him, and will do everything in his power to get us ready for him. In the name of Jesus, may it be so. Amen.
Resources cited:
Rockwell, Nancy - http://biteintheapple.com/wildmanjohn/
Tannehill, Robert C. The
Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts: A Literary Interpretation, Vol I. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986.
© 2012 Rev. Greg Wooley, Ralph Connor Memorial United Church, Canmore AB.
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