John the Baptist | Michael Valliant

Prepare the Way

Every Wednesday at Christ Church Easton, there is a small healing service. On December 6, using the lectionary readings for the second Sunday of Advent (Mark 1:1-8) I gave this homily, combining the Gospel reading and some of Kate Bowler’s Advent daily devotional we are using this season.

“Prepare the Way”

Does anyone know what the last book in the Old Testament is? Malachi. And does anyone know what thoughts or prophesy Malachi closes out his book with?

“See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me…“

“Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes… so that he can change the hearts of the parents to their children and children to their parents so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse.”

With no Gospels yet written, Mark picks up the final promise of the Old Testament and its being fulfilled in this new good news he is sharing.

What else does Mark do for us as he starts his account? He kicks it off:

“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the son of God.”

Where do we famously hear, “the beginning” in the Bible? At the beginning: Genesis, “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth.”

So in his opening lines, Mark connects us to the beginning of Scripture and echoes and continues the most recent thread of Scripture they had.

In doing this, he introduces us to John the Baptist.

In his book, “Mark: The Gospel of Passion,” Michael Card writes:

“When we meet him in Mark, John is standing in the Jordan with his camel-hair coat, preaching repentance. Repentance—it is the only way the people would be prepared to meet the one who was coming to forgive their sins. That is how John ‘prepares the way’ for Jesus.”

“John is all that is old and everything that is new. He stands with one foot in the Old Testament and the other firmly planted in the New. It is impossible to overstate his significance.”

In every Gospel account, Jesus’s ministry begins with and carries on from John the Baptist’s ministry (sometimes in talking New Testament it’s helpful to differentiate John the Baptist from John the apostle/Gospel writer). Mark, the shortest of the Gospels, known for giving us, the readers everything we need and not one thing we don’t, doesn’t even give us a birth narrative—that wasn’t important—Mark starts with John the Baptist.

John became hugely popular; he had a huge following and his own disciples. Mark tells us, “People from the whole Judean countryside and all the people from Jerusalem were going out to him and were baptized by him.”

That would be enough to blow your ego up, make you feel important. And yet, listen to John in just these few short verses:

“The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

The humility of John the Baptist. He is not “The Way” (which is what they would call the early followers of Jesus)—John has come to prepare the way. He understands his job and his purpose, and he doesn’t try to hog the spotlight or make it all about him. He might dress funny and eat strange foods, but John is humble. And John is making a clear, straight path to Jesus. He is preparing the way.

Our first Advent reading, from this past Sunday, is where Jesus told his disciples, and us, to “keep awake.” Anticipation. Our second Advent reading, and the focus is preparation.

Maybe we can understand John’s role in preparing the people for Jesus. But what does it look like for us to prepare as we begin our walk through the season of Advent?

Throughout this month, I am going to be bouncing off, writing about, and connecting us to Kate Bowler’s daily devotional, “Bless the Advent We Actually Have.”

In these first four days of the season, Bowler has reminded us to see:

Hope As Protest – in world where we expect things to go wrong, hope in God, hope in Christ is a protest against the ways of the world (as opposed to the ways of God)
God Is With Us – on the great days and the impossible days, God is with us, that’s why Jesus is called “Emmanuel” and a big part of why he becomes incarnate, to assure us we aren’t alone
Teach Us to Pray – prayer as preparation.

This hit me. Bowler says:

“When we cry out to God just as Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemane—“God take this cup from me”—our voice joins the chorus of the fellowship of the afflicted… I take comfort in knowing I don’t cry out alone. And my cries don’t fall on unlistening ears. So if today is not your day of wholeness or hope… let’s look around at others and see where God is working in their lives. Maybe see where we can make their loads a little lighter. Together may we become people who look for signs of hope and act in hope while we wait.”

One of the points of Bowler’s devotional is that even as we wait in hope, we have difficult days. And even on those days, when we are low, there is still hope. If we can’t find anything in our lives at a particular moment, we can remember that we are connected to others who are going through things, including Jesus, and when we look around, maybe we can ease our burdens together.

Compressed Hope – is her theme for today (December 6). Can we find those moments, those stories, those friendships, that connect us to hope? What are the ways we can package this expansive hope in God into something we can carry with us in our daily lives?

When I think about John the Baptist, he had seen no huge change in the world when he started his ministry. Israel was enslaved to Rome, the state of the world was bleak, and he trusted God, trusted Jesus who was to come, and powerfully proclaimed the need for people to repent. We know things did not turn out great for John in any worldly sense. But he was a man on a mission, and he was full of hope.

As Bowler was going through cancer treatment, she came to this reminder:

“How easy it is to forget. Forget there is someone turning on and off the stars. Forget that the sun rises and sets without us having to remind it to. Forget there is someone who makes each snowflake unique… These tiny miracles can be reminders that God holds the world together, not us.

Hope is found in knowing that even though it feels like the world is coming undone in my time and maybe in my life situation, the truth is that the sun keeps shining every day and the stars will still shine at night. The whole world shines hope upon us every day.”

God is bigger than we are. The universe is bigger than we are. God takes care of the biggest parts of our world, like the sun rising and setting, the planets in their orbits, and we are a part of that ride. But as small as we might be in the big picture, he has a part for us. Like he did for John, God has a role for us to play, preparing the way, preparing our lives, for something bigger to follow.

This Advent, as we are intentional in our waiting, in our hopefulness, in our preparation, we know that God’s love in the form of the incarnation and coming of Jesus, is what’s coming, is who is coming. And that’s worth the wait. Let’s do our part to prepare the way and prepare our hearts and lives.

Amen.

Are You the One Who Is to Come?

Lead in: I am in my second year in seminary through the Iona Eastern Shore program, which allows our cohort to continue working while we are in seminary. December 10-11 was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. This is the text of the sermon I gave.

Churches/denominations that use the Revised Common Lectionary have prescribed readings for each day and Gospel readings for each Sunday. So we don’t get to pick what Gospel we preach on.

The Gospel reading for December 11 was Matthew 11:2-11, where John the Baptist sends followers to ask Jesus if he is the one who is to come, or are they to wait for another? And Jesus’s answer.

“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

That’s the question we’re going to kick around, the one John has his disciples ask Jesus.

John the Baptist didn’t care what other people thought. He wore strange clothes, ate strange food, blasted the religious people, and attended to business in the wilderness. And he was faithful—he did what he was called to do and he had crowds following him.

And as he was called to do, he pointed to Jesus as the one who was to come—the one he wasn’t fit to carry the sandals of.

John is in the New Testament Hall of Fame—each of the four Gospels has him playing a pivotal role in helping Jesus launch his ministry. And it was John the Baptist’s death that marked the beginning of Jesus’s time teaching and healing and moving toward his death and resurrection.

And this same John, while in prison, sends a question to Jesus: are you the guy or are we supposed to wait for someone else?

Brutal, right? Disheartening. Not exactly a vote of confidence from your friend and mentor.

Let’s think about it from John’s perspective: he’s in prison. He will end up beheaded. The Jewish people’s position hasn’t been improved.

The Jewish people had this idea that the Messiah—the anointed one—will arrive on the scene, hand out justice, military-style, free Israel, put them back on top in power, and they will all be vindicated with a great, big victory to show the world they were right.

That’s what they’re waiting for. Hey Jesus, are you this guy? Or are we waiting for someone else?

Notice how Jesus answers him: he doesn’t say, “Yes, I’m the guy.”

He tells John’s disciples to “Go and tell John what you hear and see:

The blind receive their sight
The lame walk
Those with a skin disease are cleansed
The deaf hear
The dead are raised
The poor have good news brought to them.”

Jesus points to his actions as his answer.

Is Jesus the one who was and is to come? Yes. He was showing it then and we’ve seen the movement that has swept around the world in the 2,000-plus years since. But he wasn’t doing what John, or what the Jewish people, or what the world expected.

I wonder if that is still the case. If we are still largely missing what Jesus was doing and what he came to do.

How many people have heard some form of the expression, “Wait til your father gets home…” Or, “when your father gets home…” That’s not really meant as a good thing, right? It’s more along the lines of—here come the consequences of your actions.

Think about that over the course of Biblical history, especially for those who have been singled out, chosen as examples, held up by God as those to look to. We see a lot of, “Wait til the Messiah gets here. Then you’re gonna get it. Then you’ll be sorry.”

Today it isn’t hard to look around and see people doing a lot of the same posturing: look at how you’re acting; look at what a terrible place the world is becoming. Wait til God gets here. Wait til Jesus comes back. Then you’re going to get it.

Don’t make God angry. You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry.

God is not the Incredible Hulk. He didn’t give us free will and the capacity to love—he didn’t fill us with wonder and awe and compassion, just to smash us when we mess up or get things wrong.

God wants us to change. He wants to help us. He has bigger and better ideas in mind.

If God is Love, what does a big military victory and putting those who were oppressed on top of their oppressors—what does that do to further love in the world? What does that do to further the work that we know Jesus came to do? How does that put things back right?

We have this idea of righteousness, on our terms, not on God’s terms.

Jesus was working out righteousness and salvation in accordance with the will of his Father. Before he gets to his death and resurrection, he is giving us a model for how we can do the same.

ARE YOU THE ONE OR ARE WE TO WAIT FOR SOMEONE ELSE?

“Go and tell John what you hear and see:

The blind receive their sight
The lame walk
Those with a skin disease are cleansed
The deaf hear
The dead are raised
The poor have good news brought to them”

We are not Jesus. We can’t perform the miracles that we read about him doing throughout the Gospels. But those are things that God is calling righteous, that God is saying are in synch with His will.

If we want to know who God is and how he wants us to act, we need to look at Jesus.

And Jesus doesn’t want us to throw up our hands and say we’re not you, we can’t do it. He makes it clear that he gives us the Holy Spirit so we can continue the work that he began.

How much of our energy, how much of our attention, how much of our creativity, how much of our resources are being put towards this kind of work?

Who are we waiting for? Who will we follow?

I wonder how we would feel if we reframed John’s question for Jesus and pointed the finger at ourselves:

Are WE the ones Jesus has asked to continue his work or is He to wait for someone else?

That question should make us look in the mirror.

Here’s the thing about John: this isn’t a knock on him at all. He did his job well. He lived his life the right way and he spread the message he was given.

When Jesus starts to speak to the crowds he says John is a prophet and more than a prophet.

“To those born of women, no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist… He is the one about whom it is written:

‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
Who will prepare the way before you.’

What was John’s message? REPENT. TURN AROUND.

Don’t get caught up in all the things the world is throwing at us and telling us are important. Playing it forward: don’t make violence the answer. Don’t make hate the way we live.

To a people who have lost their way, to a people who are in a spiritual wilderness, John is saying to stop. Don’t keep doing the same things. Turn around. Be different. The kingdom of heaven is near.

It’s not too late to change.

Earlier in Matthew’s Gospel, in chapter 4, after Jesus is baptized by John and then tested/formed in his own wilderness experience, Jesus hears that John was arrested. And as he begins his ministry, the message that Jesus proclaims is “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.”

They were both telling the people, and us, the same thing. The difference is that Jesus was bringing the kingdom with him. He knew the work he needed to do to help bring it about. And he showed us the work we need to do to keep it going.

John was TELLING us to live differently, Jesus was SHOWING us how to live.

Think about the list of things that Jesus wanted John to know about. What do they all have in common?

Jesus cared for others. He healed, he fed, he taught, he brought good news. That was how he was working to bring the kingdom of heaven near.

When we care for others, we are continuing Jesus’s work.

Marsha Allen, whose been a part of our Tuesday Bible study for years always asks one of the best questions: What am I supposed to do with all this? How am I supposed to live?

So let’s ask ourselves that question: what would that look like to continue Jesus’s work here in our community?

In 2009, what we now know as the Talbot Interfaith Shelter began as a temporary shelter in our Parish Hall. It would be at Christ Church for a period of time and then it would move to another location and this continued until 2014 when they opened their first and current location at Easton’s Promise. Today they have two facilities, and their program for helping their residents’ get back on their feet is called the S4 Program—shelter, stability, support, success. They don’t just give people shelter, they help them get back their lives back—they give them hope.

A number of years ago, volunteering at the shelter one evening at just this time of year, I met a father and son there—the son was in elementary school. Their wife/mother died from cancer, but not before medical expenses they couldn’t keep up with left them homeless.

I can remember everyone had gone upstairs to bed and a few minutes later the boy came back down the stairs and was standing in the living room staring at the Christmas Tree. When we asked if we was okay, if he needed anything, he said, “No, I just like looking at the tree.”

His dad gave an incredible testimonial about how the shelter helped them, how much being there meant to them. Executive Director Julie Lowe and her team BRING GOOD NEWS TO THE POOR.

CarePacks of Talbot County began when Emily Moody, who was a social worker at Easton Elementary, noticed how many kids were going home on the weekends without healthy food to eat. She and Megan Cook began an effort that is now at place in every school in Talbot County, where packages of food are sent home every weekend to make sure the kids who depend on free breakfast and lunch at school can eat on the weekends. And once a month on the fourth Friday, people can go to CarePacks to pick up food for whole families. This kind of program is also in place in Caroline County and it being put in place throughout the Eastern Shore. THE HUNGRY ARE BEING FED.

Global Vision 2020 is an international non-profit organization, founded here in Easton by Kevin White. They go around the world, diagnose sight problems, and are able give glasses, on the spot, to people in the poorest countries. There are people who literally can’t see and that’s how they experience life. And with inexpensive glasses given to them then and there, their lives are changed.

When our Mission Trip goes to Peru next summer, helping give people sight through Global Vision will be among the work that Kelsey Spiker and the team will be doing. THE BLIND ARE RECEIVING SIGHT.

None of these things are miracles in the sense that we see in Scripture. But each of these organizations are very clearly continuing the work that Jesus started and gave us as a model of working toward the kingdom of heaven.

The reason I mention these particular groups is: not only are they all local, they were all begun by people who were parishioners here at Christ Church. And they have all received either outreach funding and/or volunteer support from the church over the years.

There are so many more examples in our community, all around us, which many of you support and volunteer for, and that need your help.

This is a time of year when people get stressed. Heating and electric bills go up, it’s colder outside for those without a place to stay; in many cases, parents just want to give their kids a good Christmas, but they are stretched too far. The Advent Angel gifts around the altar are another example of ways to help people in the community who are in need.

Here’s the thing though. In just the last 20 years at Christ Church, many new ministries have been started and borne fruit, and they have made a difference in people’s lives.

We don’t know what the next ministries are going to be looking out five, 10, 20 years. But recent history says that they will come from YOU—the vision, the work, the love, the hope will be raised up from people sitting right here who are open to the work of the Holy Spirit and who seek to follow and continue the work that Jesus began.

Advent is a season where we wait with hope. Where we listen for how we can help. Where we see and tell people about the work Jesus was doing, the work he gave as an answer to John.

The blind receive their sight
The lame walk
The sick are healed
The deaf hear
The dead are raised
The poor have good news brought to them

Think about those things. Think about caring for others. And at the end of the service when we say together “and now send us out to do the work you have given us to do,” let these words sink in and mean something.

This is the season where we say,

with our hearts
and our minds
and our actions

that Jesus was and is the one to come, and the one we give our lives to follow.

AMEN.

Taking Notes, at peace or in the wilderness

I am rarely without a notebook and pen. It would be fair for me to wear a sign on my back that says, “Will stop to write.” Mostly because otherwise I will forget. I will stop my longboard if a compelling thought jumps into my mind. And I frequently sit along a shoreline, in the woods, on a bench or wherever to take notes.

When it comes to church, for the readings and the sermon, I often just have pen and paper at the ready.

These are notes and thoughts after sermons and discussion last weekend at Christ Church Easton.

Last weekend’s lectionary readings were Isaiah 11:1-10 (The Peaceful Kingdom) and Matthew 3:1-12 (The Proclamation of John the Baptist). They will both speak to you if you let them.

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
    and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,
    the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
    the spirit of counsel and might,
    the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
Isaiah 11:1-3

On our Sunday morning Zoom discussion, Fr. Bill Ortt unpacked the Isaiah reading.

Wisdom happens in the heart and soul. Understanding takes place in the mind.
Fr. Bill Ortt

That’s one to sit with. We comprehend things with our mind, but when something sinks into our soul, it changes us.

And as we got talking about how to take “the fear of the Lord,” Fr. Bill talked about the ocean–how it deserves reverence and respect; how it leaves us humbled and in awe when we think about its size and power.

My mind went to the stars. When I stare at a clear night sky and try to think about the distance and time that is between us and God’s artwork across the cosmos; if I see a shooting star or the recent eclipse, my sense of awe and wonder is beyond stoked.

In verses 6-10, Isaiah goes on to describe what the coming peaceful kingdom might be like:

The wolf shall live with the lamb;
    the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
the calf and the lion will feed together,
    and a little child shall lead them.
⁷The cow and the bear shall graze;
    their young shall lie down together;
    and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
⁸The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
    and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
⁹They will not hurt or destroy
    on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
    as the waters cover the sea.

This whole section is filled with hope for a people that need it. Maybe with what the world we live in feels like, looking forward with hope for a time to come might do us some good.

In Matthew’s Gospel, John the Baptist appears in the wilderness. He looks crazy, wearing camel-hair clothing and a leather belt, eating locusts and wild honey. He tells people to change their lives, to live differently.

We got talking about the wilderness.

“Temptation in the Wilderness” by Briton Riviere, WikiMedia Commons

The kind of wilderness they talk about in the Bible is not a place we want to be. Wilderness experiences are those times we feel alone, lost, stripped down, exhausted, confused.

We talked about the need for recognizing those times in the wilderness, those times of desperation.

“Sometimes we go into the wilderness, but sometimes the wilderness comes to us.”

That was a comment made in our Zoom discussion. There is a lot of truth to that. Being aware of the wilderness, even if we don’t feel that’s where we are, can be a saving grace.

Wilderness changes us. It can make us wiser. It can help us understand what other people are going through. It can wake up our compassion. When we come out of the wilderness renewed, we want to be people who help others who are struggling to make it through.

Towards the end of Fr. Bill’s sermon in the church on Sunday morning, he tied it together:

“We need to know what it means to be people who have been healed, forgiven, and renewed.”

Amen.