Scripture: Matthew 3:1-12
Reader: In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the reign of God is at hand.” This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord. Make the paths straight.’” Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist and his food was locusts and wild honey…
This guy is pretty far outside the mainstream, wouldn’t you say? If anyone could be said to be outside the mainstream, it would be John the Baptist. Here was a person of mysterious origin, who just appeared in the wilderness, who had no visible means of support, whose message was that the Lord or the reign of God or both were on their way, whose fashion statement was a camel hide, and whose cuisine featured fresh locust. We can make certain allowances for the fact that this was two thousand years ago and there would be some natural differences in life style, but I don’t think that would account for everything. Even back then, I’m sure, the man was weird. And yet…
…the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins…
I have to admit that I’ve never quite understood this, this “popularity” if you can call it that, this eagerness to confess sins, this being drawn to someone who you normally wouldn’t sit next to on the subway. It’s one of those cases where I wish the Bible would fill me in a little more, give me some background on why this guy attracted crowds.
Oh, well…you can go on…
But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance . Do not presume to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our father”, for I tell you God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
Well, merry Christmas to you too. Maybe weird isn’t the right word. Maybe angry is more like it. Over the top angry. Time-for-anger-management-class angry. If I had been there I would have told those Pharisees and Sadducees to keep their distance. No need to provoke him any more than he already is. No telling what might happen. In fact I would have told the whole crowd not to get too close, just to be on the safe side.
I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.
OK, OK, let’s stop with the unquenchable fire. John’s getting carried away here.
But I was going to use John the Baptist as a basis for my preaching today. I am going to use John the Baptist as a basis for my preaching today, but maybe with a little different twist from what I first intended. I was wanting to, and I still will, say something about the whole question of being Christian and being inside or outside of the mainstream, reflections that have been stimulated by the annual appearance of John the Baptist during Advent. I don’t know if I’ll do very well expressing it, but I have some things that I’m concerned about that have to do with faith and spirit, and I wanted to try to get at that some of those things today. I was not intending to say anything much about this U.C.C. ad that NBC and CBS thought was so controversial and that in any case they have succeeded in making controversial. But I think I will after all say a little something about it, just because I feel like I need to for various reasons, not too much but more than I intended. And all of this still within the broad context of the specific meaning Advent may have for us this year as we prepare and anticipate transitioning into a new space and try to imagine what may be given birth to in the process. But first John the Baptist.
As I was saying a few moments ago, John the Baptist clearly lived on the edges of polite society, the margins of the mainstream. In this way, as in many others, he prepared the way for Jesus, prepared us maybe for thinking of Jesus as one who lived on the margins, prepared us maybe for thinking of Jesus as one who calls his followers to live on the margins. The image of John the Baptist is a little more extreme, but Jesus follows in his footsteps in many ways, born in a stable outside the inn, sent to proclaim release to the captives and set the oppressed free, life on the road, nowhere to lay his head, hanging out with outcasts, touching the untouchables, executed as a criminal, the story’s pretty clear about this. And you have probably heard, as I have, in fact I have given sermons that essentially say that Christ calls us to be there with him, outside the mainstream, standing with people on the margins of society, and doing things that are on the margins of what is standard and safe and acceptable and ordinary. After all, we have not in our ordinary ways brought about a world of justice or produced peace on earth, goodwill to all. Why should we keep doing what we have always done and expect a different result, or be satisfied with the results we have produced so far?
The trouble is that often when I have heard this message, whether coming out of my own mouth or someone else’s, I look around the room and become aware that I am among a bunch of people who by and large are not living on the margins and are not likely to. I know we all have our issues. Many of us, because of who we are in one regard or another, are effectively shut off from full recognition and inclusion in the mainstream of American life, encountering glass ceilings and closed doors and the like. All of us, even those of us who are white, and male, and straight, may occasionally or sometimes or often feel like we don’t quite belong, like we are on the outside looking in, like the kind of normality or happiness that other people seem to be enjoying is just not available to us, like we are not really, fully at home in the world.
Nevertheless, when the subject is how Christianity calls us to stand with those who are marginalized, when the subject is Christian risk-taking, when it is said or implied that we are supposed to be following in the footsteps of John and Jesus in this regard, the people I see usually when I look around the room or take stock of myself are people who—not all of these will apply to everyone, but you’ll get the idea—have homes and gardens, buy Christmas presents, look forward to seeing parents or children or grandchildren at the holidays, shop at Kroger, Wal-Mart, and Barnes and Noble, like to sleep late (or maybe like to get up early), go to the movies, veg out in front of the television, root for the home team, do cross stitch or crossword puzzles—as I say, you get the idea. For even the most alternative or eccentric among us, as self-identified, there is an ordinariness that we are a part of and that is part of us.
I see this as a spiritual matter, and a prayer concern. How do we stay in touch with, how do we embrace those different parts of ourselves: the mainstream part of us and the part that lives on the margins, the part of us that feels loved and the part that feels unloved, the part that feels known and the part that feels unknown, the part that feels like we belong here and the part that doesn’t, that feels somehow like a stranger. I think we all have both those kinds of people in us.
Likewise we have a double task in our outer lives as Christians and as a church. Neither as individual Christians nor as a church do we really want to live outside society, let’s be honest. We have just decided to become an established church, with an establishment, if you will, a building. We don’t want to live literally as sojourners. We wouldn’t want to live in a situation where being a Christian puts us at risk, as many people do around the world. We want to be seen as an institution that has a legitimate and respected place in society, and we want to be successful in that society, in some manner, though we may have different ideas about what that means. We don’t really want to live on the margins of society. We are a church and we share our humanity, our human joys and sorrows, and many parts of our faith with people in other churches, some of whom we have some deep disagreements with but who we also share a good deal with.
At the same time we have said to ourselves, and want to say to others, that we mean to be a more inclusive community than churches have often been, which is what the now infamous ad says about the U.C.C. in general and which is what our mission statement says about us as Sojourners. “We welcome and affirm those who have been wounded or accepted only conditionally in the past because of their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or their physical, mental, spiritual or economic conditions.” And in various ways, in words and actions, we have said that we intend to seek justice in ways that are more than the standard, safe, acceptable, and ordinary. How much more is yet to be seen but we know we are called in that direction too, away from the mainstream. How do we heed that calling and at the same time not adopt a hostile or self-righteous stance toward other Christians, or other human beings Christian or not, who are in so many ways our sisters and brothers? I ask the question not in the spirit of saying it’s impossible to do, but in recognition that it can be difficult to keep one’s balance in such things. How much are we, how much do we want to be outside the mainstream—of Christianity, of Belmont or Charlottesville, of the culture we are part of? All this is a matter of prayer for us, and will be as we find our way into the Belmont community, in the process making a whole slew of small decisions that will determine how far in or out of the mainstream we want or need to be.
Now a quick word about this ad, which I hope many of you have seen. Just quickly, the UCC is running nationwide an ad that depicts various people being turned away from church, including a same sex couple who could be gay. A few seconds later there is a punch line that says: The United Church of Christ. Whoever you are and wherever you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here. Then some more pictures of different people, again including at one point two women. CBS and NBC refused to run the ad because it was too controversial, apparently because they felt it supported same sex marriage, which was not mentioned in any way. I find it outrageous and disturbing at a number of levels that these networks would define a message whose intent is to offer a message of welcome to everyone as outside the mainstream, especially given what they have chosen to include inside the mainstream of their programming
But to be fair CBS and NBC are not the only ones who have found something to take exception to in this apparently simple and straightforward ad. Some people in the UCC have questioned the extravagant use of scarce resources to make an alliance with Madison Ave. and present the life of our denomination in a 30 second sound bite. I’m dating myself by using this phrase but once upon a time there was a lot of talk about how the medium is the message, and if that is the case, is this the way we want to present ourselves? Others have questioned whether the ad doesn’t suggest a kind of good guy/bad guy approach that implies the UCC is universally welcoming and other denominations are not, whereas the reality is that welcoming congregations can be found in all denominations, and so can unwelcoming ones. Perhaps it is just as well the ad didn’t run without incident. There are clearly some questions that need to be raised with regard to the spiritual state of our culture and our politics. There are also some questions we need to at least think about with regard to the spiritual attitude of ourselves, our denomination, even our congregation.
Meanwhile, I picture Jesus standing on the margins of all our mainstreams, the mainstream life of our culture, of our churches, of ourselves—standing on the outside looking in. One image we might use for the advent season, one that is used often and sometimes even sounds just a little trite, is that of inviting Christ in, to be more at the center, to be a blessing and a transforming presence within the mainstream of our lives.
I don’t want to knock that image. I just want to offer another one: an image of Christ remaining at the edges of our ordinary, mainstream lives, at the edges of our consciousness calling out to us and inviting us to join him outside the boundaries of what is safe, acceptable, and ordinary. I don’t want to glibly suggest that is what we should do, as though it were an easy thing to do. Nevertheless I can’t shut out that voice either, the voice of Jesus and John the Baptist, crying out to us from the wilderness and inviting us to join them out there where they point to and await the reign of God, something quite different from anything any of our mainstream worlds have to offer.
Our coming to the communion table today is partially an invitation for Christ to enter into the center of our lives, but also partially our being willing to listen for his invitation for us to enter in to his. All the while, we seek in our very flawed ways to make this mainstream world of ours a little more welcoming, a little more just, a little more loving. Amen.
Jim Bundy
December 5, 2004