Word on the Street (John 1:1 - 14)

     In the beginning . . . in the beginning . . . when I hear those words, my mind ranges back over the years, over the eons, to the beginning of the earth, for that is what John is evoking, using the same words that open our scriptures: “ In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.”  The author of those words assumed that the heavens and the earth were made at the same time, and he was close . . . The Earth, according to the latest data, is four and a half billion years old and the universe is almost fourteen billion . . . only nine billion or so off . . .

But of course that’s beside the point in Genesis, and beside the point here: both Genesis and John assume God created the whole shebang, earth and all stars, loud rushing planets, as the hymn goes.  The entire universe—whether fourteen billion, four billion, or even four thousand years old, as used to be thought—the whole thing, top to bottom, front to back, the Lord God made it all.  And John ups the ante, talking about the Word with a capital W who was there in the beginning with God, and who mysteriously and at the same time was God.

And the whole universe was created through this Word—and what could that Word, that was there at the start of everything, be?  Could it be . . . “let there be?”  As in “let there be light” or “let there be lights in the dome of the sky?”  After all, in  both Hebrew and Greek it's one word—a form of the verb “to be”—and John does say that all things we're created through this Word, and what more appropriate word than being itself? 

The concept of being is wound throughout our scriptures—God called himself that when he spoke to Moses from the burning bush—and it's only natural, because if nothing else, that's what the Bible is about, the being of God and the being of us as well, AKA who God is and who we are . . . And in the beginning of his Gospel, in this magnificent poem, John ups the ante, he says that this Word “let there be,” became flesh, the stuff of you and me and Uncle Joe and Aunt Tilly, ordinary flesh, and then lived right here among us.  And he breathed the same air that we do and walked the same earth, and I think it was kind of a vote of confidence in us.   I mean, we often have a pretty low opinion of ourselves as a species, we say we're war-like, lustful, that we’re one big ball of envy and greed, etc., etc., and I guess it's true, we do have a few rough edges here and there, but how bad can we be if the creative Word of the universe, if being itself, thought enough of us to become incarnate?  We must have something going for us for “Let There Be” to want to be one of us, don't you think?

On the Borderline (Matthew 11:2 - 11)

    The Jordan River is deep and wide, Hallelujah!  Milk and honey on the other side, Hallelujah! and Moses and his people wandered in the wilderness forty years – a good long time – forty years before they got to that milk and honey, before they crossed over from their old life into the one promised them by their God . . . the Jordan’s a minor river that plays a major part in the hearts and souls and minds of the Hebrew people . . . it’s source of food and drink, of life and of hope . . . it’s that way today, too . . . the Golan Heights overlook its valley, and the West Bank is the Western bank of the Jordan River . . .

In Jesus’ day, the rich and famous lived in the wilderness along its banks.  I’m not sure why – it was wilderness, after all – but maybe it was a scenic thing . . . after all, if you have enough money around here one thing you can do is build a great big old house overlooking the Little Miami.  Or the Great Miami.  Or Glendale.  Maybe it was something practical, like for commerce, so you could get all those fatted calves and frankincense and I-phones into the house without breaking your back on the roads.  Could be it was for whatever cool breezes were to be had on those hot desert nights . . . whatever the case, Herod – governor, raconteur, and all-round king of the Jews – had not one, not two, but three palace-cum-fortresses along the river . . .

And John the Baptist was imprisoned in one of them, in the very wilderness he had wandered, along the same river where he had baptized all who came with a baptism of repentance . . . where he had baptized one Jesus Christ, son of God, as a matter of fact . . . John would be beheaded beside that river not too many days hence . . . Jordan River is chilly and cold, Hallelujah. . . chills the body, but not the soul, Hallelujah . . .

And as he sat there in his cell, John remembered one particular day on the river, when he’d baptized Jesus and the dove had floated down from the heavens, and the voice had said “This is my Son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased.”  And it had seemed to him on that day that a new era had begun, a new time when they were gonna kick rear and take names, when they weren’t going to have to take it any more from those purple-robed rich Romans along the river-side . . . it had seemed to him that the Jordan River – the dividing line between want and plenty, between wandering and milk and honey, between life and death – had become a borderline once again, separating new realms, the old earthly one and the glorious kingdom of God.

But then, cooped up in his prison cell he’d heard stories about Jesus and his ministry, and he began to doubt everything . . . he heard about the preaching, about how the meek are blessed, the merciful exalted, how evildoers are not to be resisted and cheeks are to be turned . . . and he heard about Jesus’ deeds as well, how he’d fed five thousand people, cleansed a leper, healed two blind guys and that was all well and good and everything, but where was the winnowing?  Where was the chaff?  And where was the unquenchable fire?  The Messiah was supposed to bring judgement and doom on the oppressors, not cure their ills and heal their kids.

And so he sends his disciple to Jesus to ask him: Are you the one to come or not?  And he uses the technical term – the one to come – the promised one, the guy who’s gonna make it all better.  And I’m sure he’s hoping that Jesus will just answer once and for all, yes or no, but he doesn’t: he quotes scripture at him, Isaiah to be exact: “Go and tell John 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.” What do you think, he says.  All those works of the messianic age are coming to pass, blind healed, lame walking, lepers cleansed, deaf hearing, dead rising . . . all these signs, piled up one on top of another, sign upon sign, what do you think they mean?

And then he says something that puts it all into perspective, that shows that he knows exactly where John is coming from . . . “Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me,” but here our translation does us wrong, because in the Greek, the word is literally “scandalized,” as in “Blessed is anyone who is not scandalized by me.”  And in our passage, it has the additional connotation of “losing one’s faith.”  John is laboring under the misapprehension that Jesus is coming to be a conquering Messiah, a front-of-the-army king who’s going to restore Israel to it’s rightful place among the nations, and he’s in danger of being scandalized, of losing his faith over it.  And notice Jesus uses the same wording here as in the Sermon on the Mount – Blessed are the meek and blessed are the peacemakers, and blessed are those who aren’t scandalized because of it all.

Paul uses a form of this word to great effect in his first letter to the Corinthians.  He says “we proclaim Christ crucified, a scandal to the Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” To good Jews like John and the Pharisees and Sadducees, the fact that Jesus died on a cross was a scandal, a stumbling block, an obstacle to their faith in him.  And well before the crucifixion, John is beginning to feel that way already.  He’s beginning to have doubts, to question his faith in the identity of Jesus Christ.

Many times, we measure faith by a lack of questioning, a scarcity of doubt . . . we’re afraid to admit we have them, we think it makes us somehow less Christian . . . but Jesus doesn’t say blessed is the one who doesn’t have doubts, or blessed is the one who doesn’t ask questions, but blessed is the one who doesn’t lose her faith over it . . . and looked at it from that angle, it certainly makes a lot of sense . . . those who don’t lose their faith over the foolishness of the gospel are indeed blessed, they’re indeed happy, to use another translation of the word blessed.  But he doesn’t forbid anyone to ask questions . . .

Well.  After John’s disciples leave, Jesus turns to the crowd and begins to teach them about John . . .“What did you go into the wilderness to see?” he says, “some reed, shaken in the wind?”  Did you go out to see some official like Herod, who is politically pliable, who blows whichever way the wind blows and – not coincidentally – whose coins have the image of a reed?  “What did you go out there to see?  Somebody dressed in soft robes?  You can go to those palaces over there to see that . . . no, really – what did you go out to see?”  And on the third repetition of the question, he gives them the answer, he tells them what they should already know:  Did you go to see a prophet?  Of course John’s a prophet . . . a prophet doesn’t blow every which way like a reed, he doesn’t prance around the palaces in fine robes and sandals . . . of course he’s a prophet . . . but he’s way more than that . . . This is the one about whom God said – through other lesser prophets – “see, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.”

John not only preached about what was to come, he played a part in them himself.  So he is an object of prophecy as well as a purveyor of it.  He is player in salvation history, not just a proclaimer of it.  And of course, as the baptizer of Jesus, the role he played was crucial – he was a vessel, a conduit, a pipeline, of the grace of God as it settled dove-like upon Jesus.  It is the same role the church plays today . . . the technical term is means of grace: and like the church, that’s what John was: means of grace, a channel for God’s direct action.  Like the church, John preached the message of Christ, about the kingdom of heaven that was surely at hand.  Like the church, John was a sign of that coming kingdom in and of himself, in his actions – baptizing all who came to him – as well as in his proclamation.  John was a prophet and at the same time greater than a prophet, more than a prophet.  As Jesus himself says, among those born of women no one has arisen who is greater than John the Baptist.

And yet, Jesus says, and yet, . . . the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he is.  The least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than John the Baptist, greater than the one crying in the wilderness, greater than the one who baptized Jesus himself in the cold, cold river.  John was a herald of the kingdom, a signpost to it, he was one who participated in its coming, and yet he is less even than the least one there.

And this paradoxical statement is at the heart of who John is, and who Jesus himself is as the once and future Messiah . . . Do you remember reading about the Israelites in the wilderness?  They wandered for forty years – biblical code for a long time – homeless and hungry in the wilderness east of the Jordan.  The Lord had promised their ancestor Abraham the promised land, the land west of the river, and that promise was always in their minds, like a star that travels on before, or a willow-the-wisp that winks and jitters just out of reach . . . and do you remember that when they were finally ready, when it was finally time for them to cross over into the promised land, the Lord told Moses that he could not go . . . the Jordan River – the borderline between the wilderness and the Land of Canaan, between privation and milk and honey – became a line that he could not cross . . .

In a sense, John the Baptist was the same way . . . he came to the border country at a transition time, when the time was ripe or – to use Gospel language – when the time had been fulfilled to make ready the way, to smooth the road, to prepare for the coming of the Kingdom of heaven . . . but he was not a part of that kingdom himself . . . like Moses, he would not cross that border into the new reality . . . John stood on the borderline, in the border country along the river, at a border time, looking into that new kingdom, but he could not go there himself.  Thus even the least of those in the kingdom – you and me, for example – are greater than John.  This greatness is not in being better than him, but in the sense of having advantages, of being rich in what matters.

And so now we can see that – in those border times, along that Jordan River deep and wide – John was a sign of that border in and of himself . . . he had his doubts about the identity of Christ precisely because he is of the old school – he preached about the coming of the new, but could not comprehend its nature . . . as our story tells us, when he saw that Jesus was the Prince of Peace, and not some violent, conquering hero, he couldn’t square it with his own experience, with his own notion of what the Messiah would be.  And in that, he was very much a sign of the world, a sign of the old age, which equates might with right, which says that the ones with the most money, the ones with the most success, are the ones who win.  John was a borderline himself, between the old and the new kingdoms, between the kingdom of the world, and the dawning kingdom of heaven.

And now at this Advent, at this border-time, the world seems to be at one too . . . violence grows daily, we feel massively insecure within our own borders . . . the poor of the world are getting poorer, the rich seem to be getting richer, and society seems to be falling apart around our ears . . . into this border country comes John, baptizing a baptism of repentance, pointing the way to the new way, the new coming . . . and this new way is not like the old, he’s not what the world expects, in some ways, he’s not what we expect, either . . . the Son of God is coming to bring peace not war, to bring healing, not killing, to bring reconciliation, not conflict.  Blessed are we who are not scandalized, who live in that new kingdom, in the time of that coming, surprising Word of God made flesh.  Amen.

Take Heart (Revelation 22:1 - 5)

     There's a new chapter in the Harry Potter saga . . . I know, just when you thought it was safe to go back to the movies, right?  Anyway, this one is called Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and apparently it's about, uh . . . fantastic beasts and, you know, how to locate them, but without even settling foot in the theater, I can tell you where there are a lot of them, and that’s in the Bible, of course.  From the ginormous whale that swallowed up poor old Noah to the Leviathan of Job to four-faced, eye-covered babies (aka cherubim), our scripture is chock-full of fearsome critters.  And I think the folks who saw these things—whether in person or in a visionary dream—used things they know to describe things that were beyond our words, especially that eye-covered baby.

Sometimes, the author put it in words, like Ezekiel, who said he saw “something like four living creatures” or Peter, who saw “something like” a sheet lowered down from heaven, crawling with unclean animals.  Ezekiel and Peter both know it wasn't really four creatures or a bedsheet they were seeing, but you have to describe the indescribable some way . . .

And I think that’s what’s going throughout much of Revelation as well.  But although there are  plenty of fantastic beasts, our lesson this morning is from the last chapter of that book, which makes it the last book of the Bible.  All the pageantry, theology, revelation and history come together right at this point, they converge on this beatific vision of the future.  We're right in the middle of John of Patmos’ final vision, where he imagines the fulfillment of the kingdom of God as a place to settle down, a place to live, symbolized as a glittering city, a new Jerusalem.  And though it isn’t a beast, it's pretty fantastic nevertheless.  An angel is showing him around, and in the passage right before this we're told the city is fifteen hundred miles wide and fifteen hundred long and the same in the vertical dimension.  That’s sure one big city, and whoever heard of one in the shape of a cube, anyway?  And though it's made of gold, like heaven in the children's stories, it's not golden colored, it’s “transparent as glass.”  And it's clear that it's an incredible sight, in the fullest sense of the word, because John cannot credit it, he cannot register it in his mind.  So his mind falls back on what it knows, and likens it to a fabulous town.

And now, as our passage commences, we harken back to the very beginning, in the , beginning, where water flowed out of Eden, to water the entire earth.  Only here it's the river of life, bright as crystal, John says, and has anybody here been to San Marcos, Texas?  Perched on the edge of the Hill Country, a stream with wondrously clear water, that flows from a lake where there are glass-bottom boats, the water is so clear, and when I read this scene that's what I imagine, the river of life, flowing pure and crystalline, containing all the bounty of the waters of earth, bubbling with life, all the aquatic life of all the long eons of their planet, teeming in life’s river, and the waters flow through the Tree of Life, the same tree of life that got us in trouble in the first place, in the beginning, but now, here at the end—the end of the Bible, anyway—here at the end, it’s here for us in our shining abode, and that's the thing it's twelve kinds of fruit nourish us from here on out, to fill us, and there will be no more hunger, no more famine, because far from banishing us from the garden,  the fruit of the Tree of Life will sustain us all our days.

And  he leaves of the tree will heal the nations, there will be no sickness, toil or danger in that bright land, and after all the face-melting, apocalyptic Hollywood endings, John’s vision sees the end of the world, as actually a new beginning, where abundance reigns and everybody has enough to eat, and our bellies will be too full to practice war any more.  And we’ll be sitting around with all the leisure in the world, plucking on harps—we’ll all magically know how to play—and maybe plucking one of those fruits from time and popping it into our mouths like big, fleshy bon-bons.

And I’m thinking “that's ok for the first thousand years or so, but what are we going to do after that?   I mean, even though Couch Potato is my middle name, it sounds a bit of a bore. There oughta be a library or something, or at least a Wal-Mart Supercenter . . .”  Then I remember that it's a vision, a dream, that it's not to be taken literally like the John Hagees and Hal Lindseys of the world do.  And like our own dreams, it's symbolic, where things in the dream are associated in our minds with concepts, and with that in mind, there’s something about a river, something—among many—and that is that it goes somewhere. It is not static.  And even though John’s vision is of universal wellness and great plenty, a river runs through it, and this new Eden—which we're welcome in, this time—is going somewhere as well, it is moving forward into an unimaginable future.

And why not?  I don't think God, who so meticulously created us for moving forward, who inspired an entire book that chronicles our progress,  would some day up and say “ok, that’s enough, y’all stop moving now,” and we wouldn't like that too much, would me?  I mean, humankind is always on the move—some would use say on the make—always looking forward, straining its collective neck to see what’s around the bend.

The French scientist and priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin called this “the Omega point,” and regarded it not as a static ending but the beginning of a new phase, like how the Apostle Paul might put it, a new creation.  And that name, Omega point, is particularly apt for this morning, in this season of Advent, because of course, it comes from Revelation, as well . . . and whatever happens, we can be sure that Christ, who is after all the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end, will be with us, will be in it, all the way.  Amen.