Dialed into the Wilderness

Transcription

1 Plymouth Congregational Church of Fort Wayne, UCC Dialed into the Wilderness Prelude the Word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. Luke 3:2 It is not my intent to pry, but I was wondering this week what listening habits we bring when we worship together. Do you have a favorite setting on the dial, so familiar you don t even need to think about what you are watching? Is it a setting so comfortable, so controllable, that if by chance or design the channel gets changed, you find yourself irritated or agitated? Not your usual contented self? I wake up in the morning to NPR. Sometimes I can t bear to listen, so I turn it off; sometimes I m not interested, and so I hit the snooze; And sometimes I m made wide awake, wanting to be informed with a story or report that has gained my attention. In the car my radio is preset K105 Country. It is a new thing for me, really. Check that. Maybe a regression of sorts. So many years ago I had a particular taste for Charlie Pride, and Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings, and Johnny Cash, that sorta thing. If I tire of country I can dial up to the Mothership of Sports Talk Radio,

2 ESPN. And if I don t like that, I can dial down to a preset, for a contemporary mix of soft Rock, which now is filled largely with Christmas music. So three easy clicks, and I can dial into three very different worlds. Page 2 On my computer, my homepage is set to Yahoo. It is a preset. I turn on, Yahoo.com pops up. I m not sure how that habit developed, but it was sometime long ago when Google was shifting from a noun to a verb, and someone persuaded me it wasn t a good thing to let Google monopolize my search for answers. Listening habits. I ve got a narrow range really, can t roam too far through the thousands of available frequencies. And sometimes, I prefer sounds of silence. Thank you, Paul Simon. Praise be to God for the Holy Spirit, for the silence can have important things to say. The silence, if we dare, is always full and pregnant. Listening habits. It is easy to dial in and forget to click, to not explore the options. The constant clicker can be frustrating, but to not click at all can be dangerous, not for what it permits, but for all that can be distorted. I m in/out of the hospital down the street (St. Joseph s Mercy) on a fairly regular basis. They have a TV screen in their main floor lobby area. It has been there for years, through more than one renovation by my count. I ve never seen the channel changed on that screen. It is always dialed into FOX News. One channel and its constant banter, one channel regardless of its outlook, is not good for mental health. It is a constant feed and reinforcement of our delusional proclivities.

3 Page 3 Listening habits. How would you describe yours? Where are you dialed so as to be informed for life to flourish? I came across an article recently concerning YouTube. I learned in my reading, that 3.2 billion people have Internet access, and that more than a 1 billion regularly dial up YouTube. I learned that within the age range of 18-49, YouTube has more (American) viewers than any cable network. YouTube is available in 61 different languages. And it is tremendously appealing to youth, so much so that, in the words of Time Magazine, it pretty much owns (the) eyeballs (of youth) (The actual quote owns kid s eyeballs ) And for children under 12, up 70% or more, eye in everyday (see Time, Sept. 7-14, p. 72). Is there some site that owns your eye, informs your ear? Are we dialed into waves working for our good? ***** ***** ***** In our scripture reading this morning, we heard a lesson full of intrigue and surprise. The word of God came to John, son of Zechariah, in the wilderness. We are given to know who, what, and where. Who? John, also known as the Baptist. Where? Working free-lance in the wilderness. Doing what? Preaching, working with a text from Isaiah the prophet.

4 There is a lot we aren t given as background material. Don t you wonder how did he get there? And why? Why set up shop in a place most people work hard to avoid? Page 4 Did he have parental blessing of Elizabeth and Zechariah to act out in such a retrograde way? Did he keep connected, calling once a week for a little Facetime? Were they tied, or cut off, dialed in or estranged? Did the mainstream parents live to see their son become a counter-cultural radical? Luke begins this gospel telling of John s birth; he was a miracle child, a late-in-life arrival to Elizabeth and Zechariah, both of whom are said to be righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments (Luke 1:6). Father Zechariah was a priest; as a couple they were known and established in the faith community. Those who knew the parents were both happy for them and hopeful for John. People wondered: What will this child become? (Luke 1:66), for the hand of the Lord was said to be with him. We have scant more, other than - he grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day he appeared (Luke 1:80). ***** ***** ***** THE INWILDERNESS PROVIDES CLARITY, AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE CONFUSION BROUGHT ABOUT BY COMPETING CHANNELS THAT VIE FOR OUR ATTENTION in the wilderness, you have to pay attention to what matters

5 For a lack of attention a thousand forms of loveliness elude us everyday. Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism, A Study Page 5 John is able to remind: God has not forsaken; God is near; God desires to partner, to repair; it is God s will to amend and end the rift that keeps us bound to our fears, that keeps us less that being whole. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time ***** ***** ***** SECOND THOUGHT. GOD IS WORKING THROUGH AN ALTERNATIVE CHANNEL. THERE IS A SIDESTEPPING OF THE MAINSTREAM. GOD IS WORKING UNDER THE RADAR. God bypassing the pyramidal schemes of worldly value, the celebrities, the famous who are famous for being famous. It was not to the emperor (Tiberious), not to the governor (Pilate), not to the regional rulers (Herod in Galilee; Phillip in Ituraea and Tachonitis; not to any mayor or other municipal titan (Lysanias in Abilene); it was not to a high priest, a pontiff, bishop, or ruling elder (Annas and Caiaphas), that the word of God was channeled. The word of God was dialed in by way of John. And let there be no mistake everybody was talking about God, presuming they had the goods, the power, the position, the authority.

6 John, though, gets singled out, which is an unexpected surprise. Page 6 The lesson: we need to be careful in presuming how God s word gets packaged, from whom to whom. It doesn t always come from the bright and flashing and popular. Doesn t always come from a man; or woman; older is not always wise; God s word can work and reside within the marriage, the single, the celebite; the gay man, the straight woman; if the Word can come to John in the wilderness, it can come to a receptive heart in just about any location, which is good news for all of us, for we hail from vastly different locations. ***** ***** ***** ***** THIRD THOUGHT. ANOTHER SURPRISE. It is a big deal that the Word of God came to John in the wilderness. But there is, I think, a bigger deal, and that is that God s Word came to anyone at all. Doesn t the option exist to leave the people who walk in a darkness (largely of their own making to their own designs? God is not bound to speak; God is not bound to save. And yet, this is what we hold as fundamental mystery of our faith. God continues to show us a way, even through death. ***** **** ***** Pause with me. Listen for a moment to poet, Denise Levertov. On the Mystery of the Incarnation Denise Levertov ( ) It's when we face for a moment the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know the taint in our own selves, that awe cracks the mind's shell and enters the heart: not to a flower, not to a dolphin, to no innocent form but to this creature vainly sure

7 it and no other is god-like, God (out of compassion for our ugly failure to evolve) entrusts, as guest, as brother, the Word. Page 7 God out of compassion entrusts the Word. Even to us. Even here. Even now. Not one of us is off limits. (Sermons are typically composed in haste, for the demands of the day are many; so be charitable as you read; and remember: the contents of this sermon have not been edited and may or may not have been a part of its public presentation)