Snow Day!

OK! There were 11 people in church this morning -- and three drove in from Duxbury to serve lunch at St. Paul's Table. I am glad people did not feel compelled to drive on risky streets. Ten inches of snow, and now sleet and rain. The few of us who walked to church this morning remembered you in prayer, and gave thanks that you were safe and warm. Here's the sermon -- which I did not preach -- we did an African-method Bible study on the Gospel text, on the story of John the Baptist in prison, asking if Jesus was "the one." I based the sermon on the exegesis I did for the Advent 3 Reflections for the Feminist Theology blog.

Advent 3-A Dec. 16, 2007 St. Paul’s Isaiah 35:1-10

Canticle 15 James 5:7-10 Matthew 11:2-11

I’m thinking differently about John the Baptist this week than I did last week. What happened in the middle was thinking about those young men who took up rifles in righteousness and despair and killed people in Nebraska and Colorado.

Seeing the faces, and reading the stories, of those young men, along with reading this passage from the gospel about John the Baptist, gave me a sympathy for them. No, of course, they are not John the Baptist, heralds of the coming of the Messiah, but like them John the Baptist was harsh, severe, confrontative. He was thrown in jail -- by Herod, widely considered an unjust king, yes, but thrown in jail nonetheless. He was thrown in jail for causing trouble, for raising a ruckus, and being thrown in jail must have been as shocking and shameful then as it is now.

What strikes me most about this passage today is the compassion Jesus shows for John. John’s disciples, who have heard of Jesus; activity, inquire about him. It is clear that Jesus is NOT John. Jesus at this point in his ministry is not about confrontation, but about healing, wholeness, inclusion, grace. He even says it: “Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” What a contrast with John, thrown in prison for offending. Both Jesus and John are pointing to the coming of this same kingdom of justice and righteousness, but doesn’t it seem in this passage that they are going about it in starkly different ways.

But then look at what Jesus says about John. He seems to be defending John’s wild manners and confrontative tactics. What else did you expect, Jesus says, from a prophet who announces the world turned upside down? Did you expect someone nice, well-dressed, quiet, who speaks words that makes kings shudder. I am struck by two things in this short passage: just how different Jesus is from John the Baptist, and how much compassion Jesus has for John, with all of his ferocity and strangeness.

It’s refreshment Sunday, today, Rose Sunday, when the church directs our attention to the comforts of the Advent prophecies. We read it in Jesus words: “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” We read it in the words of Mary his mother, who sings this song as she begins to understand just what this child she is carrying will promise: mercy for the fearful, food for the hungry, protection for the lowly. We read it in the words of the prophet Isaiah, the promise that the exiles will come home, that sadness shall be turned to joy, that the desert will turn to a place of fertility and abundance, that no one, not even fools, will go astray. There is something to behold: not even fools shall go astray.

With such words of promise and hope, do not our hearts ache for those murderous young men, for the lives they took so senselessly and quickly? It is one more reminder, as if we needed it, that the world is a broken, fractured place, too often full of darkness and despair. We do not have to go to such extremes to feel some of those feelings, some discouragement, some dullness, some suspicion, some impatience. Maybe our lives are not what we think they should be, or what they used to be, or what we hoped they would be by now. Maybe we don’t like our neighbors, or think there is anything worth getting up for in the morning. Surely John the Baptist was an impatient soul; you can hear it in his question of Jesus: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

This little passage from the Epistle of James is for those of us for whom the kingdom is coming just too slowly. “Be patient, beloved, until the coming of the Lord.”

How can we be patient, with young men shooting innocent people, with poverty, famine, war, disaster, with loneliness and ill health and even the price of heating oil? James explains it this way:

The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near.

He hits the nail on the head of community life: “Do not grumble against one another.” Be patient, he says, like the prophets were patient.

This third Sunday of Advent is the most hopeful Sunday in this season of hope. It tells us what we have to look forward to: to health and wholeness, healing and inclusion, we will really be able to see, we will really be able to hear, we will really be able to understand. The people who will first hear this good news are the very least of the lot: the blind, the lame, the lepers, the dead, the poor. And it is these – not the powerful prophets, the gaudy kings, the righteous disciples – who will be first in the kingdom of heaven.