Advent 3A - 12/12/10 Grace St. Paul s The Rev. Steve Keplinger Bill Gates dies in a car accident. Immediately, he finds himself in front of the one, only Almighty God. Well, Bill, God says, you re a smart guy. I m going to let you decide where you want to go. I m willing to let you visit both places briefly to help you make a decision. Bill says, Well, thanks God. Let s try hell first. So Bill goes off to hell. It was a beautiful place, with a pristine, sandy beach, beautiful turquoise waters and magnificent flowers and foliage, not unlike the image portrayed for us this morning in that first reading from Isaiah. In addition, the sun was brightly shining through a brilliant blue sky and the temperature was perfect. Wow!, says Bill to God, this is great! If this is hell, I can t wait to see heaven. So off to heaven they go. Heaven, Bill discovers, is this lofty place in the clouds with angels singing and playing harps, not unlike our own singing and performing angels back here. It was nice, Bill thought, but not quite as wonderful as hell. It doesn t take very long for Bill to give God his answer. I think I would prefer hell, he says. Fine, God 1
says. As you desire. Bill is whisked off to hell. Two weeks later, God checks back with him to see how things are going. There he finds Mr. Gates, shackled to a wall, surrounded by hot flames. Simultaneously, Mr. Gates finds himself in the darkest of pitch black caves. How s everything going?, God asks Bill. Full of anguish, Bill replies, this is terrible, not at all what I expected. What happened to the place I saw, the sandy beach with the lush foliage? And God said, Bill...that was the screen saver. Like our friend Bill Gates, John the Baptist feels today like he has been duped. Last week we heard the story of John coming out of the wilderness in his cool camel hair outfit, doing his street corner preaching about the Jesus who is to come. He was absolutely sure he knew what Jesus would be like and what Jesus would do for him and those who followed him. As we heard last week, John preached about a Jesus who would spend his time separating the good folk from the bad, and then throwing the chaff of the world into unquenchable fire. This would mean that all those people who had been harassing John and his followers would finally be out of their way. Those people would get their come uppance. But now, here is John, sitting in jail, 2
imprisoned by the very people he was sure Jesus was going to firebomb. Like Mr. Gates in our opening joke, John is blinded by his own vision of what Christ would be like. He can t see past the screen saver he has created around the actual person of Jesus. You can t help but feel sorry for John as he sits there in prison in the midst of his disillusionment, wondering if he has just wasted his entire life and everyone else s on the wrong guy. But when Jesus is confronted by John s disillusionment, he is perplexed. John, he seems to say, what were you expecting? Look at what is happening around you, the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the poor are hearing the good news. What Jesus sees happening in the world around him is just like the utopia vision painted by Isaiah in our first reading. What accounts for this vast difference in vision? Why is it that John sees little or no difference in the world around him since Jesus has arrived, leaving him himself bitterly disappointed, while at the same time Jesus is rejoicing because he believes the entire world is changing for the better? Is Jesus looking at life through rose colored 3
glasses, a screen saver instead of the real thing? Or is it that from John s vantage point of a jail cell, it is difficult to see the positives of life? Despite what Monty Python has suggested to us, it is difficult for all of us to look at the bright side of life when we are in personal turmoil. But this, in and of itself, does not explain why these two see the world so differently. We realize this when we note that later in Jesus life, when he must face his own crisis and then his own death, he does not become disillusioned like John. He remains convinced that despite his death, the kingdom of God is still inbreaking. The world changes all were hoping for are actually happening and it is not a screen saver. The difference, it seems to me, has something to do with breadth of vision. John is upset because the Jesus he was expecting is not the Jesus he got. His understanding of Messiah is a very personal one. He was waiting for one who would make straight HIS and his followers paths to God by eliminating the people who were blocking their way. Instead, John got a guy that welcomed his enemies instead of destroying them. John thought Jesus would save them from the power brokers and instead, here he is in the power brokers jail. 4
Jesus understanding of God however, goes beyond the personal. Jesus sees that it is not so important what happens to him, but rather he is able to focus beyond himself to what is happening in the world around him. It is that change in perspective that makes all the difference. This became clear to me this week, during my own time of Advent apprehension and angst. The difference between John s personal Messiah and Jesus universal God hit me as I meditated again upon the words of Mary that we just sang together as our Psalm. Like John the Baptist, Mary begins the Magnificat in a highly personal way. My soul proclaims, my spirit rejoices, from this day all generations will call ME blessed. The Almighty has done great things for ME. But then Mary s direction in the Magnificat takes a sudden turn. As the overwhelmingness of what is about to happen to her starts to form in her mind, she has to be scared to death. An unwed teenage mother from a tiny tribal cult in the Roman Empire had every reason to worry about her own safety. But amazingly, instead of focusing on the danger to herself or how precarious her own situation was, she stops thinking about herself altogether. She begins looking at a much 5
broader picture. Her focus turns to the world around her. And suddenly, she sees a vision of what life will be like with her son in the world. He has scattered the proud in their conceit, he has cast down the mighty from their thrones, he has lifted up the lowly, he has filled the hungry with good things. Both John the Baptist and Mary are facing heavyweight difficulties in their lives. John is in prison and faces an uncertain future. Mary has just accepted a role that could very well lead to her death. But it is their approach to these difficulties that makes all the difference. John focuses inward, wondering how he can be extricated from his predicament if Jesus doesn t do it. But Mary never asks God or expects God to make clear her path. Instead, she is able to see beyond herself and focus on what her experience can do to bring God to all humankind and all of creation. Unlike John the Baptist, Mary is able to move away from personal concern to planetary concern. And as soon as she does, she sees the same wonderful vision as Jesus and Isaiah do. She sees the real Jesus and the vision of how her son will eventually change the entire world. 6
This says everything to us about the key to our Advent and each of our faith journeys through life. At this time of year, when it is impossible to not be wrapped up (so to speak) in personal issues, we need to ask ourselves whether we are handling those problems like John the Baptist or like Mary. We can choose to be like John the Baptist, knowing with certainty who God is and what God is going to bring to us in our lives. We can be sure that we know God s mind and that we know how God operates. We, like John the Baptist, can be certain that our God will clean the world of its evil, therefore making our path through life straight and wide. And if we do so, I would suggest that we, like John the Baptist, will find ourselves in desperate need of our Blue Christmas next Sunday, feeling disillusioned and abandoned. Our other option is to choose the path of Mary. I think it is important to note that both Mary and John begin their Advent journey in the same way. Both of them say Yes to God. That is not the issue here. Presumably if we are on an Advent journey in our lives, we too have said yes to God. But Mary says yes very differently than John. John says yes because he is certain that by accepting Jesus as his 7
personal Lord and Messiah, his life will be enriched and saved. Saying yes to God for John means saving his personal life and the life of his followers. But when Mary says yes, she does so even though she has absolutely no idea what will happen to her next. She says yes not because she believes that God has come to make her life easier, but because she is convinced that God is coming, literally through her, to bring dignity and full life to others. This is our final answer on our own Advent journey. When Christmas moves from being a personal event for us, what do I get, to a planetary one, what is God bringing the world, our Christmas suddenly becomes saturated with meaning. If we can make this psychic change in thinking, we too can move from a critical view of all the problems that remain in the world, as John saw it; to an energizing vision like Mary, seeing that the kingdom of God really is happening all around us. In this planetary context, let us hear again Isaiah and Jesus s words from today and apply them to our own time. Whether we view those lines literally or metaphorically, it seems to me that all of them are happening right now. Many, like our own Ann Misenhimer, who 8
were blind now see through medical and electronic advances. We, in fact, seem to be on the verge of creating sight for almost everyone. The same holds true for those who were once deaf and lame and speechless. Metaphorically, there has been no time in history when so many of the world s population have been exposed to the deepest philosophical and theological thought processes in history. Nearly all of the world now has the opportunity to see and hear way beyond what we have in the past. By focusing outward like Mary, we too can hear her words in the Magnificat, not cynically, but as something that really is occurring in our time. It is difficult to not focus on all that remains wrong in the world today. All of you hear me take part in this prophetic criticism on a regular basis. But when we can move from a personal understanding of God to a planetary one, Christmas can happen, we can see that God s kingdom really is coming. This same planetary vision also offers us the best methodology for handling the difficulties and strains in our lives. It is all but impossible to not respond in the midst of our personal suffering as John the Baptist does. It would be very easy to view the death of our Deacon Herman White this week, as well as the pain and suffering 9
many of you are struggling with and see it as God abandoning us when we most need God. How could God allow this to happen to US, the ones who have spent so much of our lives professing God? But if we, like Mary, can turn from the deeply personal to the deeply planetary, our lives will be given the deepest meaning we have ever experienced. We will be able to see beyond our own pain. It will take away our emptiness and allow us to see the wonder that is happening around us in our world today, the inbreaking of the kingdom all around us. When we move from a personal vision to a planetary vision, we will not just feel the power of Christmas more than we ever have, but we will actually participate in creating Christmas. That, in fact, is the last message we learn from Mary today. It is at that moment in the Magnificat when Mary is able to completely lose herself, that the greatest event in the history of the world occurs. When she moves from a personal vision to a planetary one, conception happens. In the language of our very close theological relatives, the Eastern Orthodox, it is at that moment that Mary becomes Theotokos. Literally, the God bearer. There are some who remain ill at ease at describing a human being as the one who bears God into our world. 10
But for me, it is exactly that image that captures the magnitude of Christmas. We, beloved, are part of a religion that believes that God is so intimate with us, that God formed inside one of us. Today, rather than abandon our understanding of Mary as Theotokos, I would like to take the image one step further. I would like to suggest to all of you this morning that this metaphor of intimacy does not just refer to Mary. I believe that Theotokos has the potential to refer to each of you. If you, like Mary, can have the courage to say yes to God, without knowing what will happen next, if you can spend these last days leading up to Christmas moving from the personal to the planetary, if you can get out of your self concerns and instead concentrate on the world, if you can spend this time losing yourself, you can do it too. You can make Christmas happen. You can become Theotokos, the God bearer, the one who brings this Jesus who will change everything into our world. Amen. 11