|
First
Reading
|
Psalm |
Epistle |
Gospel |
| Baruch 5:1–9 |
Canticle 16 |
Philippians 1:3–11 |
Luke
3:1–6
|
To the West of the neighborhood where I grew up in Albany was a vast tract of state owned land with tall pine trees climbing sandy hills, and numerous small shallow ponds surrounded by low growing shrubs. It was a wonderful place for youngsters to explore in the summer and to go ice skating and sledding in the winter. When I was away in college, it was announced that this land would shortly become the new campus for SUNY. Giant earthmovers and bulldozers came in, cut the trees, leveled the hills, drained the ponds, and buried a series of catchment basins connected to tunnels of underground cement conduits. Within a year the tract was turned into a large flat barren plain. Then the state built four high-rise dormitories around an academic plaza with peripheral parking lots for hundreds of cars. Needless to say, all the familiar landmarks of ponds and hills were destroyed. Talk about hills being laid low and valleys leveled. While the architect said he was working with the environment, it was hard to know what environment he was referring to. Now years later there are maple and oak trees of modest height lining the walking paths, and large lawns of grass around the buildings. However, no undergraduate walking around the campus today could even remotely imagine what the land looked like originally. SUNY created a completely new topography. Thousands of students now live and learn in an environment that was once left for fast growing and shallow rooted shrubs and herds of deer.
When I hear the Advent message, I can picture John the Baptist as a burly guy operating one of those giant earthmovers and scrapers, completely changing the landscape. It was shocking at first. How dare they do this. Yet now I know that SUNY Albany is able to offer its students so much more than when it was a small regional college some forty years ago.
John the Baptist was probably not the person most people would choose as their pastor, and he certainly would not stand a chance of getting elected a bishop. John was a poor politician, but a thorough bulldozer of human pride, who caused people to search their souls and turn over their life. He made people uncomfortable. Yet it was John, more than anyone else, who served as Jesus’ mentor and model of a preacher. It was no surprise when Jesus began preaching that Herod and others in high places thought Jesus was John the Baptist who had come back to life.
In Greek the word for repentance implies a change of mind or a definite turn in a different direction. It is much more than simple remorse. John who upset rulers and rabbis as well as revolutionaries, who would refuse to be kept in anyone’s pocket, became the earth mover for new birth. His images were never comforting nor soft. Rather, they were that of an axe cleaning out the dead wood, of a winnowing fork clearing away the chaff, of stones becoming Israel’s children, all symbols of profound transformations, reversals, and complete shifts of direction. I’ve told the old joke many times. How many vestry members does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, of course, but first a committee has to be set up to see if the light bulb was given as a memorial. It is so much more difficult to let old assumptions be, to let go of old haunts, to forgo the ruts of ingrained habits, to stop licking the old sores, than we would like to admit. Minor adjustments and course corrections are a lot easier and far more common, but they are no substitute. That is why New York State could not have built the new SUNY campus, housing thousands of students, by just cutting down a few trees, leaving the hills intact, and building around all the small ponds.
How is John preparing us this advent? Behind all the imagery and strangeness, John’s preaching comes down to this: When God calls, we are offered the possibility of change. In Christ, all our baggage from the past can be let go. We don’t have to be trapped round and round in a squirrel cage. All the stuff about generational, sociological and psychological determinism is challenged by the birth of God’s vision of humanity’s future. When God calls our name, we are not defined like we once were, and to us who live in an age of darkness and violence, that’s the advent of good news. God re organizes the topography of our world. It is not about getting even or making sure others get what we think is coming to them. God’s Advent is for all flesh to see, not just for our friends and us. To be sure it is shocking and uncomfortable. Nevertheless, whenever I whimsically wish that I could wander through the pine bush behind my old house just one more time, I realize that the land has far better use now, and while it took years for me to adjust, the end result worth it.
And I offer this to you in the name of the Living God, Amen.
