My relationship with pop culture falls somewhere between shaky, dated and non-existent. It wasn’t always so. As a kid who watched way too much TV and listened to lots of radio, I grew up as a child of my era, well aware of social trends, celebrities, and other things of no significance. But it didn’t take long before that grasp of trendiness started to slip away, especially when I twigged to how much being trendy was tied to consumerism.
When our kids became young
adults and moved away from home, my last connection with pop culture left with
them. So if you show me a picture of, say, Kim Kardashian, I can tell you her
name within three or four guesses but I have no real idea why she’s well
known.
I’m pretty well versed on the hits of Joni Mitchell
but as for Taylor Swift, well, of course I know who she is and that she ends
her world tour today in Vancouver, but would be hard pressed to name even one of
her songs. Some of this due to a tired, aging memory, but it’s also because I lost
my pop-culture connection and didn’t have enough personal reason to rebuild it.
Each Advent, when John the
Baptizer comes roaring back onto the scene, I am conflicted because he feels
like an iconic pop-culture figure from a milieu I do not understand. His call
to repentance and his preparatory work for the Messiah are so clear, and are
still so deeply needed, yet when I picture his weirdness and wildness I have no
idea what to make of him. Outrageous John is to me like a Reality TV personality
from shows I don’t watch, a TikTok creator of content I’ll never watch, or a social
media influencer from an world I don’t really understand. What I do know about him, from the gospels, is
this:
- · John the Baptist was a relative of Jesus of Nazareth, as
their moms, Elizabeth and Mary were kin whose pregnancies had a profound divine
element;
- · He was, from the womb, understood as the one to
prepare the way for the Messiah;
- · He looked and sounded like a wild man: a coat of
camel’s hair, a leather belt around his waist, a diet of locusts and wild
honey, pacing the shores of the River Jordan, thundering his disapproval of the
religious establishment;
- · I know that John
had disciples, some of whom became disciples of Jesus;
- · He had people come from as far away as Jerusalem, some
70 km away, to confess their sins and be baptized, and Jesus was among those
baptized by him;
- · and we know that his harsh, uncompromising ways, and
his popularity, which may well have exceeded that of Jesus, eventually got him
imprisoned and killed.
So, what to do with John the
Baptist/Baptizer? Loud, brash, weird,
and right on point with his critique of his day, and ours. My hunch is that in
our day, he would be all over social media, people lined up to be baptized by
him all having their smartphones along and posting selfies to their favourite
platform. And just like it was 2000
years ago, I sense that the powers that be, threatened by his words of truth,
would put an end to him.
If we understand peace as a
stress-free state of being where everything’s nice and chill, it seems odd to
be talking about John the Baptist on the Sunday of Peace. However, peace – the broad and beautiful
Jewish concept of shalom - is so much more than that. Shalom, as defined by Jewish journalist Susan
Perlman, is about peace but also wholeness, completeness, soundness, health,
safety and wide-spread, available prosperity.. Rundle Memorial United Church in
Banff had a tradition of lighting a peace candle each Sunday, using these words
to express the breadth of what peace is all about: “Peace is not merely the absence of conflict, but the presence
of justice. Peace is what happens when those who have much do not have too
much, and those who have little do not have too little, when the very old and
the very young are safe and secure, parents can feed their children and
themselves, and all have the opportunity for meaningful work in their
community. Let us pray and work for this kind of peace”.
In order for there to be
peace, there needs to be justice. In
order for there to be justice, there needs to be a desire for equity, a
levelling out of wealth and resources, likely with some overbalance in order to
get there, a removal of all manner of barriers so that there is fair
opportunity for everyone to experience shalom. Such peace, justice and equity
will come only if the systems change, systems that continually fill the pockets
and bellies of those who have more than enough while others go empty,
away. This is no small thing, and John
the Baptist let us know the cosmic scale for such levelling to occur. Luke sees in this the words of the prophet
Isaiah 40:3-5 which said,
“In
the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord;
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
4 Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and
hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain.
5 And the glory of the Lord will be
revealed, and all people will see it together.
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
If there was ever a place
that could picture such a transformation, it’s here in the south Okanagan,
where the highway running through desert landscapes is anything but straight, a
place with valleys, mountains and hills, places both rough and rugged. Isaiah and then John the Baptizer, quoting
Isaiah, use this powerful metaphor of transformation to describe the coming
realm of the Messiah. Interpreting this through a Christian lens, we understand
this as the unfolding of the Kingdom or Kin-dom of God. The bigness of the metaphor – mountains levelled,
valleys filled – make clear that this is not just a tweaking of the way things
are, or something done by human hands; the way God intends is drastically
different from what is now. And as with
our musings on hope last Sunday, this yearning for peace founded in justice is
not just wishful thinking of a world that will never be; it is a belief, a
full-bodied yearning, that God’s heart for Shalom can and will become the heart
of the world.
John the Baptizer shares this
vision, and then launches into the sharp realities of the work ahead. Yes, the establishment of the Kin-Dom of God is
something God will enact but that does not leave us as mere spectators - the
spadework of peacemaking is done at the human level. When a state of war is replaced by the kind
of peace treaty that truly addresses the needs of the disadvantaged, the work
of peacemaking is being done. When gender-based violence and discrimination is
named as sin, when government policies targeting girls and women and the
2SLGBTQIA+ community are overturned, the work of peacebuilding is being done. When the pervasive suspicion that limit the
lives of people of colour is named and addressed, room is made for peace and
justice to emerge. When the countless
barriers, visible and invisible that are faced by people with disabilities are
identified, awareness heightened, and solutions not just named but funded, the
work of peace and justice moves forward.
And as John so bluntly points
out, preparing for the arrival or advent of this new realm requires repentance,
a desire to end current behaviours. To
repent is, literally, to “turn around”, to recognize that something is not
serving a good purpose, name it, and commit to ways that are life-giving. New Testament Professor Warren Carter writes,
“By repenting, people prepare the way of the Lord and make his paths
straight. To repent signifies, then, not only specific changes in structures
and ways of living, but a basic receptivity to God's purposes”. As Church, some of the most important work
that we do in opening ourselves to God’s purposes, both as a denomination and
as congregations, is to recognize ways that do not serve God’s call to peace
and justice, to turn away from those things and, where others have been harmed
or isolated, engage in forms of reconciliation – some of which may have costs
to them. We prepare the way for the
transformative peace of Christ by cultivating habits of peace, justice, and
active love in our individual lives, in the ways of this community of faith, in
how we are in the world around us.
Earlier in today’s message, I
wondered aloud where John the Baptist might fit in the pop culture of
today. I even went so far as to ask my
good friend, Professor Google, whether others thought that John the Baptist
would be a “social media influencer” if he were here today, that is, someone
who would connect with people, communicate with them, and attempt through that
connection to influence them in positive ways. (i.e., not just someone who makes repeated
ill-informed comments online). In
general, the voices I read online suggested John would indeed be an influencer While I cannot for the life of me picture John
the Baptist owning any device that would get him online, he certainly
understood how to capture people’s attention, a key skill in the world of
influencing, then he pushed them to do three things: repent of their current
ways, open themselves to God’s new ways, and then give themselves to the ways
of Jesus. Unlike the kind of
self-serving celebrity whose only goal is to build themselves up, John
understood that his entire purpose was to get people ready for the path that
Jesus would walk with them. John caught
peoples’ attention, confronted them with how they needed to change, signified
this new life through the waters of baptism, and pointed them to his cousin
Jesus, the very embodiment of shalom. #JohntheBaptist would have had lots of
followers, but his ultimate goal was to point them to peace, justice, and
Jesus.
And so, inspired by John’s
call to repentance and his image from the prophet Isaiah of a new day, we yearn
for a peace founded in justice, we commit ourselves to change, we pray as
individuals and as Church that the path of Jesus will be our path as well. In the name of the Holy One who brings life
for all who wander and suffer and carry heavy burdens, may the sharp words of
John the Baptist catch our attention and lead us to the life and light and
peace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
References cited or
consulted:
Carter, Warren. Matthew
and the margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading. Cited in https://www.crossmarks.com/brian/matt3x1.htm
Coursera. “What is a social
media influencer? And how to become one.” https://www.coursera.org/articles/social-media-influencer
Dabbs, Matt. “John the
Baptist would have made a horrible social media influencer”. https://mattdabbs.com/2022/08/18/john-the-baptist-would-have-made-a-horrible-social-media-influencer/
Perlman, Susan. https://inheritmag.com/articles/what-is-shalom-the-true-meaning
Reaoch, Stacey. “The Social Media Strategy of John the
Baptist.” https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/the-social-media-strategy-of-john-the-baptist/
Schwartz, Quinn. “The History of Influencer Marketing.”
https://grin.co/blog/the-history-of-influencer-marketing/#:~:text=Although%20influencer%20marketing%20has%20technically,prominence%20in%20the%20early%202010s.
© 2024 Rev Greg Wooley,
Osoyoos-Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge
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