December 7, 2008
Second Sunday of Advent
Rev. Wendy Miller Olapade
Text: Isaiah 40:1-11, Mark 1:1-8

WILDERNESS SURVIVAL

Do you remember the first time you heard the folk song, "Has anybody here seen my old friend John?  Oh, won't you tell me where he's gone?  'Cause he freed a lot of people but they say that the good die young.  And I just looked around and he was gone."  The late President John F. Kennedy was the radio's concern that day, but I wonder if during this Advent season we might ask the same of John the baptizer.  Where is our friend John?

If we believe Mark's gospel, we had better find him.  Mark thought highly enough of John to use the baptizer are his opening “good news” mouthpiece.

In a sermon on this text, Donna Ross imagines what might happen if John the baptizer were to set up preaching camp in the middle of a modern-day shopping mall.  Here's how she describes the scene:

In comes John, right into the mall.  It's deep winter, but he's wearing sandals on his bare feet, and, yes, he's wearing his camel's hair coat, tied with a leather girdle.  Now he strides through the double doors of the mall and comes out into the open space near the fountain, and he's crying out, "Repent!  Repent!!!!"  Unreal, everybody thinks!  What's this awful man got to do with Christmas?  Get him out of here, so we can get our shopping done!  But wait; imagine this: John is a powerful preacher, and the adults cease their frantic shopping and start to gather round him.  The teens stop their wandering to laugh, but then they find themselves listening.  The children hear him and leave Santa's line, tugging on their parents' coats and asking questions: "What's he doing?"  "What's he saying?"  "Why is he here?"  He's crying out: "Repent!  Turn around!  Change your lives!"  And John is such a powerful preacher that the lights, the carols, the crèches, the shopping, even Santa's Ho Ho Ho’s - all are forgotten, and the people begin to ask, "What shall we do?"  And John says, "Repent, and be baptized."  Then he begins to baptize them, right in the lovely, multicolor, LED lit fountain.

Yes, my dear ones this is such an important piece of the Christmas experience that I am convinced that on our journey to Bethlehem this Christmas, we had better track down that wild eyed preacher named John and listen to his stinging good news.

Craig Kocher, former Acting Dean of the Chapel at Duke Divinity, reflects that while Madison Avenue has already had their way with us and with Christmas by this second week of December -- the Church maintains that Christmas is but a glimmer on the horizon, a promise foretold, a hope longed for, that for which our hearts ache. 

Not so for the gods of profit margin, and product control.  Awash in their religiosity, manger scenes sit on every mantle.  The trees are up, or will go up soon.  We are bathed in a forest of lights, Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, holiday parties, concerts and fundraisers, and Christmas cards and carols and all Christmas music radio stations.  In this bubble bath of Christmas schmooze, John the Baptizer is nowhere to be found. 

We won't find John rushing about in the city center.  Oh, plenty of Christmas characters will make a home there, through no choosing of their own.  Angels, wise ones, shepherds, and little drummer boys are easily found where the action is.  Such characters are rather friendly and marketable.  They connote a Jesus whose cousins might have been well-to-do temple elites, merchants, or even Jerusalem politicians, rather than a hairy fire and brimstone preacher, whose breath reeks of locusts and honey.  Repentance--the primary product John uses to deliver his wilderness good news--doesn't sell well in the days before Christmas, not at the local shopping mall, not in the midst of the downtown bustle and not in First Church Main Street.

The Bible regularly reminds us that the harbingers of God have never felt comfortable in established places.   Clean crisp and well-manicured cities don't do well in confrontation with camel haired preachers like John.  It's no wonder then that John did his preaching out in the wilderness, away from established, rock-solid mainline Jerusalem, out where he would attract people who were longing for something much deeper than Jerusalem had to offer, people who wanted to change direction in life, were willing to be dunked in dangerous waters.  Let’s face it--John is odd.  He's not well groomed, and the virtue of repentance is a hard sell to good folk like us.  It's no wonder modern day Madison Avenue doesn't put John on Christmas Stockings or Christmas coffee mugs.  Most folks would prefer to let John's cup pass.  The truth is, we might expect John's audience to be desert rocks and sand alone.

Seriously?  Repentance--the primary product John uses to deliver his wilderness good news--doesn't sell well in the days before Christmas, not at the local shopping mall, not in the midst of the downtown bustle and not in First Church Main Street.

The Bible regularly reminds us that the harbingers of God have never felt comfortable in established places.   Clean crisp and well-manicured cities don't do well in confrontation with camel haired preachers like John.  It's no wonder then that John did his preaching out in the wilderness, away from established, rock-solid mainline Jerusalem, out where he would attract people who were longing for something much deeper than the mainline had to offer, people who wanted to change direction in life, people who were willing to be dunked in dangerous waters. 

Let’s face it--John is odd.  He's not well groomed, and the virtue of repentance is a hard sell to good folk like us.  It's no wonder modern day Madison Avenue doesn't put John on Christmas Stockings or Christmas coffee mugs.  Most folks would prefer to let John's cup pass. 

However, this second Sunday of Advent, the church, in its infinite wisdom, forces us to deal with John the Baptist—every year.  We cannot get to the manger without first going head to head with leathery John, who calls us out, if you will! 

It is John who puts the Messiah's birth in much needed perspective, God's ironic counterattack against a world spinning out of control.  Thus, repentance is John's hopeful word, pointing out our self-deceiving beliefs that we are good, worthy, and deserving of our salvation---and reminding us that our lives need turning around, to be washed in the cleansing waters of baptism as we anticipate the Messiah's birth.

So there you have it—Advent, after Advent, after Advent, hairy old crazy John, refuses to go away.  He bellows from the margins into our fast-paced lives, determined to have our attention.  From the wilderness, John calls, waiting to ambush us, his husky voice booming down the halls of history, pointing a scraggly finger our way.  John has often been painted in Christian art as a fire and brimstone preacher, calling down God's wrath on sinful humanity with a rigid finger and pounding fist.

But maybe it's the other way around.  Rather than pointing with that lanky finger, maybe John is motioning for us, and rather than pounding that clenched fist, perhaps he is vigorously waving us over.  Perhaps John knows what we in the mainstream of early December holiday life don't know. 

Our lives aren't as clean as we think they are.  We aren't as good as we would like others to believe.  We need to join John for a cold bath of Jordan River reality, to wash away our pretensions, to remind us that the cuddly baby Jesus came into the world to save sinners, sinners like us, and John isn't going to let us forget it.  God's difficult way of salvation won't be discovered in the busyness of our daily lives, in the center of things, in downtown Winchester, Boston, L.A., or Jerusalem.  God's way is being prepared out in the wilderness, and if we want to make it to Bethlehem, we had better follow.

Amazingly, Mark tells us in this scripture, the people came.  Whether it was John's passionate proclamation, or a hope for something deeper than their same old ho-hum existence, Mark says they came.  Along the highways and byways of countryside and Jerusalem town, they came—all the people came--to hear the good news of God's new way.

Preparing for wilderness travel is hard work.  It involves anticipating what might happen out there in the wilds and then prepping for it.  Anticipation and preparation are the keys to wilderness survival.  Advent is that season of the Christian year in which we anticipate the coming of God's anointed one and prepare our lives, change them if we must, for a new world dawning. 

Rev. Kotcher writes that, “Wilderness existence involves some pretty radical changes.  In the wilderness I can't live my normal life.  How appropriate then that John's sermon is on repentance, quite literally, turning my life around, living in a different way, a more honest way, a more hopeful way.  The wilderness way is treacherous and only the essentials will find space there.  It is about survival, life and death, sin and grace, and John the Baptist says Christmas is the same way.  Food and water, a guide who knows the path, and the faith to follow.  That's about it.  Let me say that again: .  Food and water, a guide who knows the path, and the faith to follow.  Wilderness life is bare bones, trimmed down, like John who only has sandals, camel hair, and good news to tell.

And we know from all of our sacred stories that God likes it like that.  Leave the glitz and glamour to the advertising executives.  The Advent way of this God will be about the basics, the essentials, our sin and need for Christmas grace.  It could be this strange, passionate, preacher John and his eccentric pulpit is the only way that God can get through to us during Advent.  Sermons on repentance may fall on deaf ears in the city, surrounded by the usual trappings of a comfortable, well heeled life.  Out in the wilderness, however, when so much of life has to be left behind, the message doesn't have as many barriers to burrow through.  We can't haul all that stuff out into the desert to hear John proclaim God's new way.  The three wise ones had the same problem on their own travels to see the Christ-child; they had to leave their old lives behind and take only what was important with them.  When they encountered Mary's boy in that little crossroads called Bethlehem surrounded by Judean wilderness, they went home changed, different, traveling by another path.

If you want to prepare for Christmas this year, stay away from the shopping malls, get your nose out of the Christmas cards, leave all the stuff of mainstream life behind and set your sights on the wilderness, the wilderness of our broken world, the wilderness of broken dreams, the barren, dangerous, inhospitable places that do not sustain you, the wilderness of your own soul that can only be filled by the Christ-child's grace.  

My friends, I know that you have wilderness places in your life – and the promise of this un-believable thing for which we are waiting--is that God will make a way.  Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.  God will make a way and it is the only way to truly survive the wilderness.

After all, Jesus didn't come to the fast moving lanes of Jerusalem, at least not at first.  He came to a broken-down out of the way sort of place; so far away there were no maps, no street signs, only the light of a star to give direction in the dark night.  If we are going to find God this Advent season, we have to get away from the crowds, get away from our old lives, and go someplace off in the wilderness where life and death is at stake.   It won't be easy.   Such a path calls for repentance, turning away from an old life, and embracing a new one.

Where is our good friend John?  He's in the wilderness this Advent season, preparing for the Lord's birth, and he's calling for us to join him.  

Reference: Pulpit Resource Issue 33, Oct.-Dec. 2005