What’s the Same? (Second Sunday of Advent)

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This Wednesday, before our Advent Evening Prayer service, I’ll be leading an Advent Theology on Tap in place of wine and cheese (although you’re welcome to bring wine and cheese to this, too!)  And for Advent, we’re going to look at John the Baptist.  He figures prominently in our Advent and Epiphany readings, but he also turns up later in the Gospel narratives.  And he continues to be a “person of interest” even after his death – he’s mentioned in the Book of Acts, and he’s also one of the few New Testament characters who’s mentioned in contemporaneous non-Christian writings.

Moreover, most of us find John the Baptist to be an interesting character!  And by “interesting” we often mean weird; unusual and different! And indeed, as we meet John the Baptist in today’s Gospel reading, John was acting like a different kind of guy, and that was probably a good marketing strategy.  Being “different” got John a lot of attention, and it’s probably why a lot of people hiked down from Jerusalem to see him.

But as I’ll note when we look at John the Baptist in a bit more depth on Wednesday, some of the things that seem to us to be very different or unique would not have been quite as different to some of John’s contemporaries. For as much of a wild and crazy guy as John may have seemed to be, he was utterly a conformist and a traditionalist when you consider:

• The place he chose to preach – the Jordan River; Sure, it wasn’t in the Temple or in a synagogue, but the Jordan River was a symbolic and strategic place for ancient Israel; it’s the place where they crossed over into the promised land; it’s another place where God parted the waters; it’s a place where they expected God to be at work … (so it wasn’t like John appearing in some foreign country…)

• John’s style and behavior – sure, he was quite eccentric compared to other people around him; but even so, his strange clothing and diet looked just like Elijah; and like Elijah and most of the prophets, what he did and said ticked people off, and that was often expected of prophets … (usually, people didn’t respond to the prophets by saying, “good sermon Pastor!”…)

• The basics of John’s message – he wasn’t preaching a new God; he was lifting up the very same God of Israel who had brought the people out of slavery in Egypt, and he was calling them to be faithful to that God, and to take God’s action in their lives seriously …

In many ways, John the Baptist – and what John the Baptist says and does – ISN’T new or different.

So what was different?  What was so different that John was remembered not only in our Gospels, but by other contemporary historians of the time?

And really, the only thing different was the time. The times were changing – indeed, they had already changed. And because the times were different, God was about to do a different thing.  And people were, therefore, going to need to live in a different way.

Folks needed to live differently in order to live faithfully into a different time and a different situation.  In some respects, this too wasn’t “different.”  This was what prophets had always called people to do.  And it’s probably the basic reason that prophets ticked people off, because even when we know it’s true, we don’t like to be told that things are different and we’re going to have live differently, too.

And indeed, with or without crazy guys like John the Baptist, the challenge of living faithfully always involves recognizing the different situation, and being willing to live differently. And although the exact details may be different for each different time, the goals are the same.

And the goals that John the Baptist (and all the prophets) called people to are the same goals God calls us to in the different times we live in today.  In every time and in every age, prophets like John call us to:

• Take our relationship with God seriously and personally – that is, to be personally invested in our own spiritual growth and connection to God; sure, lots of people and activities and structures can help us, and that’s good; but there is no substitute for individually investing ourselves in the things that give us life … (especially as Christmas approaches, this often means being more aware of God’s presence in our lives right here and right now, and not simply wrapping ourselves in Christmas trees and decorations and “the warmth of the season”… )

• Never assume that an “institution” or “tradition” will take care of things for us – this is a time of year when we all like to fall back into our warm “Christmas traditions”; This evening, we’ll gather for our “Church and Community Christmas program”, which has all kinds of great opportunities to share the story of Christmas, have fellowship together and invite folks from the community to join us – those are the same things we did years ago with our Christmas pageant – and sometimes we still refer to this event as “Christmas pageant” – but it’s different now than it was in the past, because things have changed around us, and so we’ve adapted to a different time…

• Live differently, even when it’s hard, precisely because we’re taking our relationship with God personally and we’re not going to rely on the “way things have always worked before”; and often, that means accepting that God works in our lives precisely at moments and disruption.  After all, that was what the time was like when John appeared in the wilderness; and so the goal is not supposed to be to find a way out of the chaos and disruption as much as it is to see God’s promise and opportunity in the midst of the disruption, and then to take the leaps of faith necessary to live into those promises and opportunities. That’s always harder than it sounds, but it’s one of the essential goals of Advent… 

The other difficult thing about times being different is that it isn’t clear exactly what the changes are going to mean, or exactly how this “living differently” is going to look.  And although there are always a few people who claim to have all the answers, prophets like John the Baptist didn’t pretend to know exactly.  And yet, the prophets didn’t need to know exactly, because they trusted God to be there in spite of the change.  And even though they knew the changes would bring great challenges, they saw hope and promise because they knew that God would be with them through all the changes.

I don’t know exactly what changes need to made personally or communally for us to live faithfully in different and changing times.  But I do know that in every age and in every time, God calls us to live faithfully by taking our relationship with him seriously and personally.  In every age and in every time, God calls us to examine whether we’re relying too much on institutions and traditions to do the hard work for us.  And in every age and in every time, God calls us to wrestle with how we’re going to live differently because the times are different.

Those calls are always the same.  And they’re always the same because God is always with us.  God is always acting to give us hope and strength in the midst of the changes.  And God is always doing new and different things in our lives, giving us promise and opportunity even in the midst of chaos and disruption.

Amen.