How questions

·  Isaiah 35:1-10

·  James 5:7-10

·  Matthew 11:2-11

·                      Canticle 15

I’ve never been in prison.  The closest I’ve come was a couple hours on a school bus full of protesters with a zip-tie around my wrists, waiting to be processed by the National Park Police.  But that’s a story for another day. My point is that I don’t really know what it is like to be confined against my will, forced to do nothing but wait and see when and if I will ever go free. 

John the Baptist, in our gospel story, is in prison, and he doesn’t know how long he must wait, or what he’s waiting for, and it’s not likely to be pleasant when it comes.  But John is not concerned about this.  Because God has given it to him to see that the kingdom of heaven has come near, that one is coming after him who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  This is the waiting that matters to John—the long waiting of his people for the redeemer promised to them through the prophets.   And this is the wait that John believes will soon come to an end—but the question is: how soon?

The conditions of John’s imprisonment mustn’t be completely harsh, because he can have visits from his disciples.  That is how he catches wind of the activities of Jesus of Nazareth, who once came to him to be baptized in the Jordan.  At that time, according to Matthew’s telling, John recognized Jesus’ spiritual stature, and protested that Jesus should baptize him, and not the other way around.  Jesus insisted, though, that John do it, and maybe that made John doubt whether Jesus was the one foretold.  In any case, when we next meet John he is in his prison cell and sending his disciples to ask Jesus a question.

Now, the author of Matthew sets the stage for this story by using the word “Christ,” “Messiah.” It’s the first time this word appears in the Gospel since wise men came from the East, and Herod asked his priests and scribes where the scriptures said the Christ would be born.  “When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing,” Matthew writes, “he sent word by his disciples and said to him, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?’”  So for us as readers of the Gospel, the answer to John’s question is known before he asks it.  There is no doubt or suspense about it at all. 

For us the question that really counts is the one that Jesus chooses to answer.  It is not the question of “when?” because we know that the answer is “now.”  It is not the question of “who?”—the answer is, “Jesus.”  But the question that Jesus answers is “how?”: “how do we know that he is the Messiah?” or “how does the Christ act when he comes?”  And this morning I want to submit to you that the “how” questions are the ones that really matter to us, too. 

Christians through the centuries have enjoyed speculating about what theologians call “eschatology,” that is to say, the “when” question.  I guess maybe we’ve found it reassuring to think that there’s a definite date upon which history will end, and that we might even be able to foretell that date, even if in only a general, ballpark-guess kind of way.  And we’ve had even more fun speculating about what theologians call “Christology”—the “who” questions.  Maybe it give us a sense of confidence to be able to define in precise and technical terms who Jesus is and what exactly is his unique relationship to God and his role in the plan for the creation and redemption of the universe.   But if we’re going to be completely honest with ourselves, I think we have to admit that our answers to these questions are always going to be no more than speculation, because they are questions to which, by definition, only God can give the answer.

And it’s the “how” questions that really meet us, as they say, where we live.  Jesus’ answer to John’s question suggests that we can answer the “how” questions, right here on the human level.  We don’t need to wait for someone else to come, in the future end of time.  We don’t need to confess that Jesus is Lord and Savior, or the only-begotten Son of God, or load him up with all kinds of other lofty Christological titles.  What really matters to Jesus, is that we put our faith in what he did when he was here on earth, in his human life.  John the Baptist’s disciples come to ask “who?” and “when?” and Jesus answers, “tell your master what you hear and see: 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.” 

This answer of Jesus is a kind of pastiche of quotes from the prophets, from their inspired visions of what it will be like when Israel’s waiting is over, and the anointed one finally comes.  But it’s a very selective set of quotes.  He doesn’t say anything about slaying the wicked, or destroying the enemies of God; he doesn’t talk about restoring the dynasty of David, or rebuilding the might of the nation, or reforming the worship of the temple, though he could have found passages in prophecy to support making these the planks of his messianic platform.  But again, he’s not answering John the Baptist’s question with promises of what he will do, if everyone accepts his claim to be the Christ, and joins his insurrection, and supports him in a bid to take power.  He’s talking about what anyone can see and hear—the work that he is already doing, with the power he already has from God.

The work that Jesus is doing is healing human beings who have been deprived of the full flourishing of their lives by illness or disability, by poverty or premature death.  He’s not solving all their problems, or giving them keys to a house on Easy Street, but he is restoring their dignity and their hope.  He is showing them what they can do and be, when they believe that they, too, are sons and daughters of God.  He is renewing their faith that there is meaning and purpose to human existence, and that they have been called to play their part in God’s mission in the world. 

To be sure there are those who are disappointed in Jesus because they hope for bold slogans and grandiose pronouncements and instantaneous change.  There are those who are resentful because, being accustomed to power and privilege, they assumed the messiah would reserve a first-class place on his bandwagon for them.  But then there are those who see that in Jesus God has come to us to heal our bodies and souls, not because we have any special rights, but because of our special needs.   We are broken, seemingly beyond repair, and still God cares for us, and chooses us to be ambassadors of heaven.  When we welcome this Messiah who shows who he is by restoring wounded human beings, we are already blessed, no matter who we are, or who we have been.

You and I may not have the supernatural gift of healing that Jesus had.  But that doesn’t mean that the power of God can’t work through us to change our lives, or even change the world.  It can, if we accept that it is in the lives of ordinary men and women like us, that God has chosen to manifest redeeming power.  If we accept that this transformation is not something that will begin any day now, when we’re good and ready, when we’ve kicked that bad habit and started doing yoga, and the holiday shopping is done, or the kids are in college, it has in fact already begun.   

For Christians the supreme model of this kind of acceptance has always been the mother Mary, who magnified the greatness and power of God in her own lowly soul.  Though she cannot possibly be ready, she consents to conceive the promised child.   And then it’s up to her—to her ordinary human powers of gestation and giving birth, of maternal care and love, of patient instruction in the way of life commanded in the Torah.  She has accepted her role in the coming of the Messiah, and that in itself has scattered the proud and thrown down the mighty.  That in itself has lifted up the lowly and filled the hungry with good things, as surely as if the job were already done.   

Steadfastness and encouragment

• Isaiah 11:1-10
• Romans 15:4-13
• Matthew 3:1-12
• Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19

Some of you know that once a month or so I meet over lunch at B’nai Israel Jewish Center over on Western Avenue with Rabbi Ted, and Mia, his associate, and two or three other clergy from different faith communities on the West side of Petaluma.  We had our December gathering on Thursday, and it was Rabbi Ted’s idea that we might open our meeting up this time, and invite folks to join us from the wider community, to share our concerns and our hopes about making Petaluma a place where all kinds of people can live together in harmony.  It wasn’t so long ago that many of us assumed that this was a goal that most people share, but it appears recent events in town and in the nation have shaken that confidence.  Because people came out in response to our invitation: from the synagogue and the Episcopal, and Unitarian, Methodist, Lutheran, and Catholic churches; from the Islamic Center of Petaluma; from six or seven different social service agencies and community organizations; from the police department and the city council.

Rabbi Ted emailed our little clergy group early in the week and offered to facilitate the meeting, and we gave him the green light, and on Thursday it became clear pretty quickly that we’d made the right decision.  Not just because the meeting was his idea, or because he was our host.  And not just because he is the most experienced spiritual leader among us.   But also because of the moral authority he had when he spoke of what it means to him and his congregation when people start talking about of mass deportations, and registries of religious minorities, and internment camps.   And the moral authority with which he can tell stories from the experience of his own community about attempted arson, and breaking of windows, and swastikas painted on their building over the years.  And this helped us all put our meeting in the right perspective—to feel the urgency of this moment, to be sure, and the need for vigilance and initiative; but also to remember that the struggle to learn to live together is nothing new.  It has been going on for a long time, in Petaluma and everywhere.

As St. Paul is winding up his long instruction to the church at Rome, about how to be a single faith community of Jews and Gentiles, with all the tensions that entails, he tells them that even though it is not easy, they shouldn’t give up hope.  Because, he says, their being able to live together in harmony, and give glory to God with one voice, is what the mission of Messiah Jesus is all about.   It is what God sent Jesus to make possible.  It required him to put the interests of others before his own.  So it wasn’t easy for him either, to say the least, but he gave himself to the task with perfect faithfulness because he loved us, and had hope that God would find a way. 

And here I think that if you read between the lines you can see that Paul might also be talking about himself.  This isn’t one of those passages like you find elsewhere in Paul’s letters where he holds himself up explicitly as an exemplar of imitating Christ, and talks about all the hardships and suffering he has endured for the sake of the Gospel.  But in all his letters Paul writes from the heart of his own experience, and his own struggles and victories of faith are never far from his mind.  I think this is one of those places where Paul is speaking of, and to, himself, as much as he is speaking to his intended audience.  So when he says that the God who will help the Romans to live together in harmony is the God of steadfastness and encouragement, he’s talking about the spiritual consolation that has come to him and helped him at times when his own hope was wearing thin.

Paul’s encounter with the crucified and resurrected Jesus, a man he’d never met and used to despise, somehow made him a leader in this unlikely mission; a mission to create a new humanity, in which there is no longer male nor female, no longer Jew nor Greek, no longer slave nor free.  This mission has cost him everything, and in particular it has cost him his religion.  Not that he has ceased to be a Jew, or has converted to a different faith.  But his experience of Christ tore down to the foundations his understanding of what it meant to belong to the covenant people of God, and to be an heir of the promises made to the patriarchs. 

It was only through the grace of God, and his faith in Jesus, and the signs he saw of the Holy Spirit at work in the communities to which he was sent, that Paul could gradually build his religion up again, according to a radically different design.  This was a long, painful process, and it didn’t help that it made him an outcast and a blasphemer in the eyes of the people he used to think of proudly as his own.  So if Paul speaks in the name of a God of steadfastness and encouragement, it’s because he knows that he himself would not have made it this far without that God.

And Paul also gives the church in Rome a recommendation for where to turn to find the encouragement and hope that they need.  It the same place he goes, which is to say the scriptures.  He even gives a little demonstration, citing some of his favorite Bible verses—the ones he knows by heart, and that he turns to when he needs encouragement to remind him that he is not on some kind of fool’s errand, but is doing the will of God. 

 Because the call that Christ has given him to God’s universal mission of reconciliation is not entirely new.  The prophets of the covenant, even as far back as Abraham and Moses had pointed toward the true grandeur of Israel’s vocation.  But it was in Isaiah that this vision came into full view.    In Isaiah we read that as punishment for Israel’s sins, God would permit foreign enemies to come and slash the tree of the Israelite nation and the lineage of David, until nothing but a root remained.  But Isaiah also promised that from that root a new shoot would come, to rule in the Spirit of justice and wisdom.  And those same Gentile nations that once came to conquer and plunder, will come to learn the way of Israel’s God, by which the whole creation will live together in peace.

Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but we find similar imagery of trees and roots in the preaching of John the Baptist.  Like Isaiah’s, John’s message is one of electrifying hope: “the kingdom of heaven is near.”  But it also contains a warning.  John warns the people not to presume that belonging to some religious organization guarantees them a place in that kingdom.   Neither does being born into any particular nation or tribe.  He says “one more powerful than I is coming after me.”  But the one who is coming brings a purifying fire.  It’s a fire that will spread widely and indiscriminately, giving life and power to men and women of every language, and tribe, and family, and nation.  It will inspire them with the wisdom and will of God; but it will also burn up everything in them that is not of God, everything inessential, or has outlived its usefulness—everything that does not bear good fruit.

Each week in church we follow Paul’s advice and turn to the scriptures for encouragement.  And every year at this time, we go all the way back to that moment where the prophets of the Old Testament open the door to the New, the time just before the story of Jesus began.  It’s time again to hear the voice crying in the desert, telling us to turn our lives around because the kingdom of heaven has come near.  It is time to come out of our churches and sects and to go down to the river to confess our sins, to pray that God will cut down and sift out and burn away everything in us that is fruitless.  Now it is time to prepare a way for the one comes to baptize us with Holy Spirit and fire.  We go back to this time as if to clear away all our assumptions and the things we take for granted, all the privileges and prerogatives of being “Christian,” and strip our religion down to its foundation: the radical hope that God will come and teach us, and all the nations, how to live together in peace.   

Feel the sun

Zephaniah 3:14-20
Canticle 9
Philippians 4:4-7
Luke 3:7-18

Today, after the 10 o’clock service, the people of this church are throwing me a party to celebrate my fiftieth birthday, which was also the tenth anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood.  I say “was” because the actual date was December 3^rd, ten days ago.  So, I already received birthday wishes from many of you, and had my birthday blessing prayer.  Which makes it’s a little awkward, for someone who grew up in a family where drawing too much attention to oneself was considered a cardinal sin, that we are still celebrating my birthday.  But my wife has issued me several stern warnings over the past couple of weeks that I must be gracious and appreciative about it.  And really, the warnings aren’t necessary, I am appreciative and grateful.  I really am touched. 

Because all of us want to be remembered, and noticed, and cared for, and I’m no different from anyone else in that regard.  Turning fifty is a big deal, and if I had a friend who was doing it, I’d want to throw a party, too, and I wouldn’t care if the most convenient date was ten days after.  So my friends are doing for me what they would do for any other friend.  That is the way I’m looking at it, and I should be content to leave it that.   But, of course, it’s not quite that simple, because I am not simply your friend, I am also your priest.  And because I am, I feel obliged to say that, even as I enjoy the love and attention, and can say that I deserve it as much as anyone else does, I also know I don’t deserve it more.  Every one of you is as essentially important, as worthy of honor and respect, as deserving of a special birthday celebration as I am.  Maybe even a little more.

Because if I am your friend, and I think of you all that way, it is also in part my job.  It’s my job to pray for you, and listen compassionately to your troubles, and visit you when you are lonely or sick.  It’s my job to be kind and encouraging and supportive, and to give alms to the poor.  I have this whole working environment here that is set up for me to do these things.  So I get a lot of credit from folks for just doing my job.  But all of you have to do these things in your spare time, on top of working at your day jobs, and tending to your families, and all your other responsibilities.  You have to figure out how to be Christians in all different kinds of circumstances, some of which are a lot less conducive to it than being here at the church all the time, surrounded by stained-glass windows and people who know that, here, at least, they are supposed to be nice to each other.

And there’s something else I feel duty bound to say, as your priest and as your friend, because part of my job is also to be, in my own small way, like John the Baptizer.  It is my job to point away from myself, and tell you to look for another.  Because as honored and grateful as I am to be your priest, I am not your priest—not really.  I am not your pastor, your teacher, or the head of this community.  I can tell you to get ready, to throw off the things that hold you back, and put on your traveling shoes, but I cannot take you where God wants you to go.  That role belongs to someone else, whose coming is our great hope, our deep longing, and our hearts desire. I need him as much as you do.

Luke’s gospel says that all kinds of people came out to see John at the Jordan, hoping to be forgiven and make a fresh start.  And it mentions two kinds of people in particular—tax collectors and soldiers.  Why tax collectors and soldiers?  Well it can’t be a coincidence that both are what one might call “collaborators.”  They are tools of the Roman regime of domination of the Jewish homeland—lower level cogs in the unjust, unrighteous, ungodly machinery of oppression.  So, maybe it’s a little bit surprising that when they ask John what they should do, he doesn’t tell them to quit their jobs.  He doesn’t tell them to rebel and overthrow the rotten system.  John seems to understand that they may not be able to change the necessary evils that lead them to do the kind of work they have to do.  Not everyone is cut out to be a prophet and live in the desert on locusts and wild honey.  But even in these less-than-perfect circumstances, they can still conduct themselves with integrity.  The tax collectors don’t have to overcharge, and skim some off the top; the soldiers don’t have to run a protection racket.

The opportunity for repentance that John is offering is for everyone.  It is not the prerogative of some exclusive group, and it doesn’t depend on having just the right set of circumstances.  Yesterday afternoon I came back from a few days at a Benedictine monastery at the far south end of Big Sur.  But even though it is in an almost unbelievably beautiful and isolated place, a thousand feet up on the knees of the Santa Lucia Mountains, looking out over the endless sea, the world, with its compromises and imperfections, followed me there.   The thunder of the waves breaking on the rocks is mingled with the sounds of the highway that is the lifeline of the monastery, maintained by a small army of laborers and engineers and a fortune in taxpayer’s money.  The monastery driveway winds for two miles steeply up through a beautiful wild garden of native coastal scrub, but here and there large sections are completely overrrun with invasive, exotic pampas grass.

The imperfect world met me there, and it came there with me.  On arrival, I checked in at the gift shop, which is full of beautiful art, recordings of ethereal music, and books—shelf upon shelf of wise and illuminating books.  One such book caught my eye within five minutes of my being in the place, and the desire to possess it, and the turning back forth in my mind the question of whether I would buy it, lingered with me the whole time I was there.  It disturbed my meditations, like so many other covetous and envious and impatient thoughts, as three times a day I sat in the chapel, while the monks, who have renounced all worldly gain to commit their lives to prayer and charity, asked God for the forgiveness of their sins, and mercy on their souls.

John the Baptist says there is one coming who is mightier than he.  But he also admits that he is not worthy to untie the thong of that one’s sandals, so maybe John doesn’t understand what his might is really like.   John came with the baptism of water to wash away the stink and stain of gross corruption.  But if you’ve ever plunged deep into a cold river pool, you know that when you come up again out of the water, you don’t want to be under a cloud.  You want to feel the sun.  Maybe the one who is coming won’t carry out John’s threats of wrathful judgment.  Maybe he comes to baptize with the fire of the sun; the one and only sun who brightens every eye, and warms every heart, who continually bathes the whole earth in its light, giving life to all things.

That is why his coming does not fill us with fear, but with joy.  “Rejoice,” says the Letter to the Philippians, “again I say, rejoice.  The Lord is near.”  “Sing aloud, O daughter Zion,” says the prophet Zephaniah, “Rejoice and exult with all your heart, the LORD is in your midst; you shall fear disaster no more.”  The justice that John teaches is incomplete and provisional, and so it needs the threat of punishment.  But the Messiah’s justice is perfect, because it heals and reconciles.  He will not destroy unfruitful people, but burn away unfruitful thoughts, twisted inclinations, the mistaken understandings that squander the true giftedness of human life.  He will purify the desires of his people, so they turn of their free will toward the warmth and brightness of God that dawns within.  And then they will be done with waiting, done with making do, and good enough for now; alive with the Messiah’s Spirit, they will bear fruit for the life of the world.