Lunacy? Audacious Hope
Advent 2c, Luke 3:1-6 (December 6, 2015)
Advent is a time for craziness, even lunacy...
To wait while we live in a time that demands instant gratification? To dare to hope that all flesh, (yes ALL), will see God's deliverance while we ourselves are so often caught, stuck, even trapped?
Nevertheless, such waiting and hoping are intergral parts of the practice of advent.
Our reality is that often we are not sure that we need to be delivered, so why wait, or why hope? In our times of struggle we tempted to think that if we just try harder we can do it ourselves. Or if things become even more trying, we are convinced that we can see someone - a counselor, a doctor, a weight loss specialist, a financial advisor and then - things will be "just fine". But all of this is merely scratching the surface before daring to get down on our hands and knees to actually examine who we are and where we are at with others and the world.
Truth be told - the expectation that we might even listen let alone hear – borders on insanity. Nor am I only thinking of a preacher, who while carefully crafting a sermon delivers it only to observe some people talking during the delivery, glancing at their watches, yes, waiting only for "it" to be over. To strive to listen to another, to live in the moment is for us a HUGE STRETCH.
To the totality of our reality comes this text making such audacious claims.
THE WORD OF GOD COMES TO JOHN IN THE WILDERNESS. The word of God! God directly communicating, somehow, someway, to this strange guy who is out there – in a wild place, doing wild things. God communicates with that guy. Strange!
And then- that guy runs with it. He makes no apologies. He demands that people from all walks of life turn to God. He expects that in doing so they will see their own faults, their own limitations, the ways they fall short of God's intention – at home, in the wild world in which they live. He doesn't expect excuses or rationalizations – just the bare, naked truth. "Turn to God!" he cries.
Amazingly he is not ignored. Many, many people come out to that wilderness place. They willingly go down into the water undergoing this baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. It's crazier than – professional wrestling, political pundits running inaccurate polls, even the radicalization of people to ISIS. People come out to hear and obey this word of God that is given to that guy, John.
But John is not self-satisfied. He is not one to slap himself on the back and say, wow, look at me, I am so successful. Instead he declares, THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING. One is coming who will completely free these people from themselves – and enable them to live with hope, both for themselves and for all others. He employs metaphors that meant more to people then than they do to us now. After all we drive on super highways and fly over mountains, valleys and hills instead of needing to climb them while grunting, needing to tread carefully while hoping and praying that we don't fall to our injury or even death. But John's metaphors will also work upon us, if we dare to be moved beyond the literal.
What of the mountains of hatred and the valleys of despair we know? What of the mountains of financial and social inequity that lead people to be so completely dissatisfied that they long to hurt or even kill others and think that somehow that is God's will?
Can these mountains and valleys somehow be levelled out? Can people come together with humility, respect and care knowing each other as brothers and sisters because we are all children of God? Might we start anew? Can people who now function as predators literally and figuratively be transformed to caringly live with, even be transformed to be advocates for the gentle and the vulnerable? Can we who are caught up in all kinds of addictions – to things, to status, to fear, to food, to leisure, to alcohol and other substances, be freed from such powers as we turn to God? God is already reaching out to us. That's what John says then and continues to say now.
To be sure, this advent time is a time for craziness. We are being called to live our lives against the flow of rushing, of ongoing, ever increasing anxiety. Advent is a time that calls us to stop, to wait, to hope.
Yes: stop running, stop racing, stop doing things that lead us to race and run, to believe that it's all up to us. Stop - in order to be in this moment – with God, with ourselves so that we might hear one another.
Advent calls us to WAIT FOR SOMEONE to come to us. Such waiting may not mean simply shuffling our feet, or being saturated with boredom, or sitting on our hands. Such waiting may mean many things. Here, now, waiting may mean being attentive to God's word coming to us, leading us in a certain way. Such waiting becomes pregnant with hope.
For the word that comes to John and to us as we wait for God's direction is from God. This sounds crazy. It is a word that ultimately leads us beyond ourselves to God and through God again and again to ourselves and to others. It is a word that leads us to be convinced not only up here, but deep within, that God cares about us and this world. We begin to KNOW that God is always working so that there can be life, love and new beginnings - for all.
I know – some of "this" sounds crazy. As we look around at this world – and surely as we look within, such overarching hope appears as lunacy. We see and know so much loss, pain, death, suffering, hunger and inequity. At times the pain is overwhelming!
But John calls us to also see more – to look to God – to look to THE ONE who - is COMING. We, too, are called to look to this One, this Jesus, whose very name means, God delivers. We are called to look to him and hope – not only for ourselves, as amazing as that is, but also to hope for the world. As we look and listen, we are promised the abilities to see and also obey! Such dazzling counter cultural audacity!
Advent is a crazy time. It flies in the face of so much of what we know and experience. But Advent is also a wondrous, miraculous time - a time gifted us by God. Advent is a time when God's own Word comes to that guy John and then through him – to us!
Even now, through John God seeks to open to us to God's action, God's direction. Listen, watch, wait and hope. By God's grace – even we can! Who knows what will, what may already be happening? .............Amen.