Isaiah 42:1-9
Acts 10:34-38
Mark 1:7-11
Psalm 89:1-29 or 89:20-29
If your experience is like mine, you've heard sermon after sermon about how strange a character John the Baptist is whenever the Gospel passages about his ministry come up. And while it's fair, I suppose, to compare him to a pariah, a baglady or a ventman, I wonder whether this strategy brings those of us in the pews closer to John's ministry.
Certainly, most of us would prefer only the "Hey! God loves me and will give me the goodies" spirit in today's Old Testament reading and Psalm, than the words of a stinky guy in camelhair. I wonder though if emphasizing John's strangeness obscures the message. As strange as John was, people did flock to him to be baptized.
This point was brought home to me several weeks ago by a pairing of encounters that had such perfect symmetry I suspected intelligent design at work. The first happened when I was out for sushi with an old friend from high school, a man whose teenage acne left his face severely scarred and whose Teamster jacket–though understated by the smallest, most tasteful version of the familiar horses and wheel logo–makes people frequently give him a large berth.
John–we'll call him that cause that's his name-- is so rough looking that his union once sent him to Chicago when his boss, a reformer vice president, had to fire a mobbed-up conference president whose own assistants were carrying guns. John, unarmed, was given a pager "just in case". He's that kind of discomforter.
His looks are deceiving. Most of his days are spent getting his local's members into substance abuse treatment programs, helping fired people find new jobs, or negotiating contracts so workers have fair wages and adequate health care. Perhaps his most endearing trait is his great love for children, and his concern for union members' kids underscores all of his talk about his work.
At dinner, he was distressed–his son's naval vessel had just been ordered back to the Persian Gulf, and worse still, Dave, a nephew whom he had raised like a son, was in a Marine unit in Bahrain. It was likely that both would be fighting if war broke out, Dave on the front lines.
He didn't feel that he had heard any legitimate reasons to go to war against Iraq and he was angry about a leader who would be willing to put kids in harms' way.
Just at that moment, a small child ran up to my friend and started making googoo eyes. This is nothing new –animals and small children have always gravitated to John. Kids can sense how much he loves them. The child's parents, who had heard John's protesting remarks about the war, shuffled the kid off, looks of fear, anger, and embarassment dueling on their faces.
The next day in church, Elizabeth, a college professor, worshipped with me at St. John's in St. Cloud, and after the dismissal, announced to me: "Well! It's happening! I'm going to Iraq! My tickets to Amman arrived on Friday!"
I was stunned, then recovered and gave her a big hug of Christian solidarity. She explained that she would be observing conditions in the city and reporting back when, if, she returned. Her training as a geographer–she had studied dietary changes in China and knows the holy Land like the back of her hand–would help her understand what she saw in the city.
Here was a woman who had taken the slogan "Start seeing Iraqi children" to its logical and faithful extreme. It wasn't the first time she had radically lived her faith–in China, she worshiped boldly with Chinese Christians, an act not always looked upon favorably by the Chinese government.
"People with courage and character," said Herman Hesse, "always seem sinister to the rest." Both John and Elizabeth could be seen as prophetic characters, the voices in the wilderness of conformity, compliance, and complicity.
Perhaps it's the company I keep, but I'm not sure we have to look too far to find those voices crying in the wilderness. Or that we should expect our Baptists coming as homeless people. John seems to be a more deliberate and courageous type, like a union reformer or fearless professor. What today's gospel suggests is that we have to listen–and to listen within a framework suggested by Christ's own baptism–regardless of how uncomfortable we are with our prophets..
We all know what John did–baptizing sinner for repentance. We have to dig a little deeper and go to other gospels to read what he said. To the good people–the Ph. And Sad., he rebuked them as "a generation of vipers". To the other sinners, he consoled mercy and justice: give clothes to the poor, feed them. Tax collectors were to extract no more than was due. Soldiers were to show mercy.
And yet John knew his own limitations, and knew that on his own, he could only call for repentance. Jesus, whose sandal he was unworthy of tying, would grant salvation by the Spirit. This was the new law and covenant.
On its lonesome, Repentance can't tie your shoes.
The new covenant is brought home by Acts. If we turn to the story surrounding today's passage in Acts, we hear yet another story about the need to overcome personal discomfort if we are to follow Christ. Peter says: (read) . This statement concludes a chapter that introduces Cornelius–not a Jew, but a Centurion who had found Christ and led his household in prayer and devout living.
The Holy Spirit visited Peter in a perplexing dream–later Peter realized that the vision had meant that he was to cast aside old strictures against consorting with gentiles. What God had cleansed was not to be shunned. His new faith did not allow partiality.
The voices in our wilderness (and contemporary American life is a wilderness if there ever were one) call us to repent our sins. Christ calls us to love our neighbors. The vison of Peter instructs us to go out and preach peace through Jesus to all people, not simply those who are like us.
It won't be easy. Even Peter had to get a house call from the Holy Spirit. Perhaps our discomfort with the implications of our own baptism is a wake up call, or a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring us prisoners out from the prison where we sit in darkness, into a new covenant.
Won't be easy.