And our third reading
is from the Second Book of Presidents, the fourth chapter and the 15th
verse: In the eighth year of the reign of President Clinton, when Alan
Greenspan was chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Jeb Bush was ruler of
Florida and his brother George ruler of the region of Texas, during the high
priesthood of Clifton Kirkpatrick and Attorney General Janet Reno, the word
came to Peter Jennings, anchor of ABC News in the City of New York. And, Lo!
It went into 7 million homes across the land, proclaiming the victory of
Albert, son of Gore, in the region of Florida. And jubilation arose in the camp
of the Democrat warriors, and there was wailing and gnashing of teeth in
Republican lands, until lo, an hour later a different word came and
Albert son of Gore was cast into the fiery pit of undecided, adrift in the sea of “too close to call.”
And behold! This was a warning unto the nations, that the
prophets Dan and Diane and Matt Lauer should not be trusted in their
pronouncements, that they are not true prophets of the Lord God of
Israel, and that yearning and longing for the coming of the President would be
long upon the land.
Well, enough of that . . . you get the picture. At just this
time of year fifteen years ago, in a time normally reserved for waiting on
Christ, we were in fact waiting on a President. And the first warning sign
wasn't a star in the east, or an angel whispering in the ear of the Virgin
Mary. It was Dan Rather, prophet of the technological age, rushing to judgment
on “Election 2000" or “Decision 2000" or whatever it was called,
declaring Florida going to Gore, then retracting it barely an hour later. And
in the hours after that, it happened not once, but twice more, driving
Gore to first concede, and then un-concede to then-Governor Bush.
And according to the media, the candidates had a few choice
words to say to each other. But who really knows? The press, with their million-dollar
polling, and their billion dollar satellite links weren't exactly on top of
their game that night. If the wise men
had been the media, they would have followed a 747, instead of the star,
and they would have ended up in Turkey or Bulgaria instead of Bethlehem. Thank God that God’s prophets are a
little more reliable than ours. Take
John the Baptist for example. As far as we know, he got it right the first
time. There’s no “At this time, the
polls are closed in lower Judea, and Jerusalem Broadcast Corporation is able to
project that Jesus is the Messiah . . .” or if there was, Luke doesn’t
tell us about it . . . he’s too busy telling the story, too busy quoting
Isaiah, telling us that John’s is “The voice of one crying out in the
wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord’”
Luke interweaves the stories of Jesus and John – one of whom is
the Son of God – and it's clear we’re meant to compare the two, so similar are
their stories. He begins it with a story of a birth almost as miraculous as
Jesus', when John was born to Elizabeth, who was barren. And an angel comes to Zechariah, her husband,
but he doesn’t believe it – and does that remind you of Sarah? Laughing?
– so he’s struck mute, not a particularly good thing for a Temple
priest, who has to say the ritual words and chant the ritual chants.
And right here, we’re pointed in those two Advent directions,
to the past and to the future, for the Advent of King David was also marked by
a miraculous birth, as was the Advent of Israel, when Jacob was born to Sarah.
In fact, all through the scripture, such births are signs of divine
transformation, symbols of God's radical acts, as new life is brought forth,
and new hope springs into the world.
And so angels come to Mary, and say to her – as they said to
Zechariah – that a child will be born. And right off the bat, we know that this
child will be great, even greater than John, because Mary was a virgin, and a virgin birth trumps a barren birth, any day of the week. If John was great, Jesus would be greater
still, as signified by that greater miracle.
Jesus would be the super-John, John raised to the umpteenth power,
magnified again and again. John was born of a barren woman, but Jesus would be
born of a virgin; and in all Hebrew
and Christian scripture, there are many opened wombs, but only one virgin
birth. So John's very birth is a pointer, a looking-forward, to the
coming of the Lord. Not only would he proclaim it in his ministry, but enact it
in his very life, even in the manner of his own coming. And even before
he was born, John proclaimed the advent, the good news of Christ, leaping for
joy in his mother's womb.
And with that long laundry-list of rulers, Luke tells us when
all this took place – about 30 AD, give or take a year or two—but more
importantly who is in charge. It
was the time of Emperor Tiberius, of Herod and Pilate, when Philip ruled in
Ituraea and Annas and Caiaphas were high priests. And although it seems like just one more list
of rulers or ancestors—like who begat who, who begat someone else—it places
John's ministry within a historical framework. It shows the divine breaking
into human history; it shows the kingdom coming near. And there’s something else, too. Luke's stress on the powers that be – his
monotonous recital of political movers and shakers – emphasizes the
counter-cultural nature of the Gospel.
It was a time of all the great rulers – Tiberius, Herod and
Pilate. Philip and Lysanius. Annas and Caiaphas. All these powerful people, in
all their powerful splendor, with all their powerful armies and police and
temple guards, and where does the word of God go? To whom is the gospel given to proclaim? To a
crazy, wandering Judean, who lived in some cave or another in the wilderness.
And although Luke doesn’t describe the Baptist, Matthew has no such qualms – he
says he wore camel-skin clothes and ate locusts and wild honey. You could
probably smell him a mile away.
All the glittering stars in the world – all the Herods, all the
Caiaphas's, all the Caesars, all the Barbara Steisands and Beyonces and Barack
Obamas – and the word of God made flesh comes to an unknown prophet, out
in the wilderness, no less. Where’s the
satellite feed? Where are the media
outlets? How do you make deadlines in the wilderness? Surely God could have done better than that. Surely the Gospel could've been sent to, say
. . . a senator with access to the Roman mail.
Or a TV anchor, someone who could get it heard around the world. But the word of God, like the Spirit, goes
where it will, and we cannot guess where that will be.
I can only imagine what would happen today . . . without a
press agent, you’re nothing. Without
spin-doctors, you can’t even get to first base, can’t even get near
first base, when it comes to media coverage.
I can see it now . . . CNN Atlanta gets a call from someplace called Chill-cote,
or Clear-coat, or maybe Chilly-coffee –
something like that, anyway – saying there’s some half-crazed chicken
farmer wandering the fields, proclaiming the end of the world, and the first
thing out of Wolf Blitzer’s mouth is . . . “who’s he killed?” Uh, nobody . . . “Is he holed up, then, with
a bunch of hostages?” well, no . . .
“Well, what about suicides? Have his
followers committed suicide yet, like those, whatchamacallums . . . saucer
people did?” No . . . he’s just roaming around the woods alone,
predicting the end of the world . . . and you know he wouldn’t be given the
time of day . . . especially since his proclamation isn’t all sweetness and
light, isn’t some new-age, feel-good personal self-actualization . . . it’s a
harsh, uncompromising message of repentance, of “turning away” from old, sinful
paths “For the kingdom of heaven has come near,” he says.
And the Baptist’s quoting of Isaiah is more than just
prophecy-fulfilling language, although it’s certainly that – at a time when the
world was filled with exclusive religions, which actively sought to exclude
outsiders, John says that “Every valley shall be filled, Every
mountain shall be made low.” All the
lands, everywhere, will participate
in the Kingdom of God. And in the last
line of our passage he spells it out: “all flesh shall see the salvation
of God.” All flesh – not just the rich and the powerful. Not just the
Jews or the Greeks or the Baptists or the Catholics or the Presbyterians, or maybe
even Christians—last time I checked, all means all—but all people, all
flesh shall see the salvation of God. In
this age of religious freedom, it's hard for us to realize just how radical
this message was. We're used to believing – or at least professing to
believe – that salvation is for everyone, regardless of race, creed or color. But in Luke's day, a religion which offered
salvation to all smacked of revolution.
The priests and scribes and temple-hangers-on jealously guarded the keys
to the kingdom, and kings and princes and potentates regulated who got
the goods. But the Kingdom of God, which
John proclaimed, was freely available to all . . .
And as a sign of that inclusiveness, as a sign of that
revolutionary, stone-cold grace, the word of that grace didn’t
come to the Emperor, or the Governor, or the head priests in Jerusalem –
although they were all around – neither did it come to the President, or the
media moguls or the stated clerk of the PCUSA – God could’ve sent it there, you
know . . . instead, it came to an unwashed, hair-shirted locust-eater, out in
the worthless wilderness lands, beyond the edge of social
acceptability. Is that a sign, or what?
Well . . . what about today?
Things are different now, aren’t they? After all, there’s a certain shortage of
virgin births and demon-oustings and other assorted miracles . . . where are
the signs of the good news? These are
enlightened times, where we don’t believe in no ghosts, where everything
must be logical and provable to be true . . . how do you proclaim the Gospel
without any flash and dazzle, without any special effects, without any proof? Signs of the kingdom, pointers to the
word of God, are in short supply.
But . . . I know a man who was cured, against all odds .
. . I know a family that was fed, when they had nothing to eat . . . I
know a wanderer – like John! – that was sheltered and given food . . . and I
know the church that did all these things,
a 75-year old church that was on the edge, but now is a lot
closer to the middle . . . We are a pointer to the kingdom, just by our
very presence in this community, in this nation and in this world.
Like John, the Word has come to us, in this church, here in this time and place, it’s been given to
us, and it will burst upon us anew -- fresh and green in just a few short
weeks. In the seventh year of Barack
Obama, when Joseph Biden is vice president and John Kasich rules in the region called
Ohio, the word of God has and will come to Greenhills Community Church,
Presbyterian. And like John, we are
called to proclaim that Word, to prepare for the coming of God’s reign, within
us and without—when all the
valleys will be filled, all the rough places made smooth and
straight. We’re called to be a
sign of that Word, of that on-rushing, already-here, already inside of us, kingdom of God, where war
and poverty and hunger are no more, where homelessness and abuse and loneliness
are erased as if they had never been.
This Sunday and every Sunday,
we will be a sign of the
all-inclusive hospitality, the overwhelming, open-hearted welcoming that
is God’s Kingdom. And as the coming year
progresses, I challenge each and every one of you to open your hearts, and
renew your commitment to living into that hospitality, and by so-doing spreading
the Gospel . . . the Word of God has come to us, here in the state of Ohio, in
the land of the Bengal Tigers, and that word is wild and precious and saving
and true, and it is our duty – and privilege! – to pass it on. Amen.
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