Being Different (Third Sunday in Advent)

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John the Baptism was a weird and different kind of guy! And often, when we read the biblical stories about John the Baptist, we focus on that weird and different stuff. Indeed, it can be hard to get past the weird stuff, even when we try. After all, between Mark’s version last Sunday and John’s version today, John the Baptist is a guy who:

• Wears weird clothes and eats weird stuff… (and apparently, that’s on purpose…)

• Embraces a messed-up marketing strategy… (he’s out in the desert far away from the people he’s apparently trying to reach…)

• Doesn’t want to answer questions … (he keeps telling people who he ISN’T, not who we is; it’s almost like he’s trying to give Monty Python material…!)

It’s almost impossible not to get fixated on these weird and different things about John the Baptist. But actually, there’s something even weirder and more different about John the Baptist, and it’s easy to miss if we get fixated on the camel’s hair shirt and the wild locusts.

The thing that’s really different about John is that John actually believed that God was doing a different thing right now – in his world and in the world of the people who heard him. And the new thing God was doing was going to restore hope. It was going to make things better. And if people were willing to be a little different themselves, they would get to see and participate in the new and different thing God was doing. God was actually present NOW and doing something HERE.  And that was different from what most people, both then and now, really think.

But for John the Baptist, and for the people who heard him, being different and living differently was often hard because it meant more than dressing in funny clothes, eating funny things or living in a funny place. Instead, living differently meant:

• living with the hope and actual expectation that God will be personally involved in your life, giving you blessings and opportunities, even if the world around you seems to be falling apart – sometimes, we also get distracted by the “end of the world” stuff that characterized John’s preaching; but even that stuff pre-supposes that God is actually present and engaged in the world around you. And I don’t think anybody needed to go out to hear John to hear more gloom and doom – they had plenty of that around them already. Instead, they went to hear the word of hope that God actually noticed and cared and was even now acting, even and especially when nobody else seemed to be talking about hope…

• envisioning life outside of the “boxes” of your pre-conceived expectations – the people who came out to question John probably did believe that God was going to give them a future – but if that future was happening through John, he had to fit into one of their “boxes” like “the Messiah” or “Elijah” or “the prophet”; and yeah, he did wear funny clothes like Elijah, but he just didn’t fit. And part of living into the different thing God is doing is accepting that God may be creating different boxes than you’re used to, or even no box at all. And part of living into God’s new thing is being open to God working in ways you didn’t expect…

• acting differently, even when you’re not sure exactly what this new thing is that God is doing in your life – John the Baptist, it seems, doesn’t necessarily know who Jesus is at this point; he doesn’t know exactly what Jesus will do, and later on he’s not even sure if Jesus is the one he should be looking for; but he knows that God is about to act, and so he keeps living into a different kind of future even though the details haven’t been revealed to him…

John lived differently, because he knew God was present in our world and doing a new and different thing. And that’s still true, and that’s why we’re also called to live in a different way. And like John the Baptist and the folks who first heard him, sometimes being different and living differently means:

• having the audacity to live with hope and expectation that God is acting in our lives, even and especially when things seem to be pretty bad around us – it’s easy to get caught up in pessimism and fear; that’s what sells, and that’s what often motivates people; but hope and expectation is invigorating and empowering. And what often made a difference for people in the Bible, and for us, is that when we you look for and expect God to act in your life, you often see it. And when you don’t expect it or even hope for it, you can’t see it, even if it’s right in front of you. Part of living differently is simply refusing to stay walled up in pessimism and fear…

• envisioning a future that’s not contained by our pre-conceived “boxes” – you know, around this time of year one of the reasons Christmas can be so stressful for many people is that “Christmas” doesn’t fit the box of “what it’s supposed to be” or “what it used to be when I was a kid” or when my kids were little; but if we get outside of the box, all kinds of new and interesting things are possible – things that are objectively good ways to celebrate and live because they make sense for the new reality God is giving us right now…

• acting differently, even if the difference isn’t a weird and funny thing that people notice – I don’t think anybody who heard John adopted his dress code or diet; but apparently many of them lived into hope by doing things like sharing with others and treating people fairly – things that, by the way, don’t matter if the world is about to end.  But if the world isn’t about to end – if it’s just going to be different – then living differently means finding different ways to share the love of God the hope of God’s future with people around you who need it …  

John the Baptist was a different kind of guy. But because he was different, he was able to see and live into the new and different kind of future that God was bringing about in the life of the world. 

And so in this Advent season, John’s example reminds us that we’re also called to be a little different, too. We’re called to be different because we’re called to look for the different things that God is doing right now, to expect that God will make a difference in our real, everyday lives, and to live in different ways so that others will begin to experience God’s future through us.

Amen.