Laid Bare

Luke 2:1-20

 

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. ²This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. ³All went to their own towns to be registered. ⁴Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. ⁵He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. ⁶While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. ⁷And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
⁸In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. ⁹Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. ¹⁰But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see — I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: ¹¹to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. ¹²This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” ¹³And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,
¹⁴“Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”
¹⁵When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” ¹⁶So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. ¹⁷When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; ¹⁸and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. ¹⁹But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. ²⁰The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

Laid Bare

Let us Pray:

God and Father of Jesus,

On this holy night

You give us your Son,

The Lord of the universe

And the savior of all peoples,

As an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes

And lying a manger

In the first moments of his life

You showed us the paradox of your love.

Open us up to the mystery of his powerlessness

And enable us to recognize him

In this plain-spoken word

And simple meal.

This we ask in his name,

Amen.

This night lays bare before us. No snow on the ground, yet all is frozen.  But that’s ok…Christmas Eve isn’t about snow.

Christmas Eve, when spent in song, listening to old readings and old words, always seems to lay out, bare, and sparse, and beautiful, snow or not, in front of the intentional listener…

If you’re not overcome with sleep at this late hour.

And what, exactly, is laid bare?

Well, perhaps we should first consider what it is that Mary bears this evening.

That Christ-child; that new life birthed for a world that, 2000 years hence, is still talking about it…and hoping for a new miracle any day now.

Any day.

And perhaps that is one of the things laid bare on this night every year: how much our world is still in need of fixing, and how we take this moment to express our sure and certain hope that as God began that work, God will keep the promise heard in the new-born screams of this infant.

As he was laid bare in a manger stall.

What was Mary’s to bear was not simply a child; it was the font of eternal hope.

Even as the shoulders of that eternal hope would also bear so much: sin, body-weight, a cross.  As Isaiah said of long before, “The government will be upon his shoulders…”

But that is to be expected, I guess, for those of us who know the whole story of salvation still being played out, but began on this night.

Take the bare hills of Bethlehem that night, where an angel announces that the newborn one, born into the world to save it, would be lying bare in a manger…only strips of cloth to cover himself.

Much like those strips of cloth lying in a bare tomb some thirty years later, no longer needed to cover the vulnerable body made triumphant.

And then consider how the shepherds left to go find this bare child…leaving their own flocks bare in the process.  Such wild abandonment is as astonishing as the angel’s news.

Like the abandonment of some bold women, baring their love for their savior as they walked toward the tomb, leaving their safety and intentions bare in the process.  And how God had worked a plan over those three days that changed the rules of life and death with wild abandonment.

And take that God, the God who makes such a leap into the skin of humanity on that bare Bethlehem night.  In such an audacious move plans are laid bare for the world to see, all people as the angel announces: God is coming with a new plan for humanity.

Are we ready for such good news, for such a plan?  Or is it all just a story?

A friend of mine told of a drive that she and her husband were making shortly after they were married.

Having rented a car they began the trek from Chicago to St. Louis in the middle of a terrible snow storm.  They went from car rental place to car rental place to find one…to no avail, until they finally landed at facility with a car to rent.

Unfortunately, the car had some mechanical issues.

Condensation was building up on the circuits, causing the car to shut down completely every 20 minutes or so.

Having made it almost to Bloomington in twice the time it usually would take, they were forced to stop at a gas station deep into the night.  My friend used a pay phone to dial her father and report on their progress.

“We’re having trouble,” she said.  “It’s hard to make it and we’re not sure how we’re going to do it.”

“Ok.  I’ll come get you…” was her father’s simple reply.

That was crazy talk.

Deep into the night, as a storm raged and hours lengthened between them, the father’s reply was astonishingly, audaciously, crazily, “I’ll come get you.”

They weren’t ready for such a bold statement of love, where love was laid so bare.  “I’ll come get you.”  Can you imagine?  Driving that distance in a snow storm, in the middle of the night, five hours.

A parent’s love.

In telling the story, my friend began to tear up.  Love laid so bare is sometimes tough to believe…it must be just a story.

But it isn’t.  Nothing so powerful is merely story.

God’s plan for the world, for you and me, laid bare in the Christ, is simply: I’ll come get you.  Can you imagine?

That plan, that message of God proclaiming to the world, “I’ll come get you” is what Mary bore, what the shepherds ran to see, and what we celebrate still on this Christmas Eve.

Do imagine it.

Imagine it and then consider what we bear on this night.

Peace and hope and dreams.  Yes, of course.  We bear those most nights.

But tonight, it’s not so much what we bear, but how we are laid bare on this night.

Dennis Kennedy has a poem on how humanity is laid bare this night that goes, in part,

“Darkness drives down the sun,

Loosing night cold as blue metal;

Together we beg the return of fire

And you hear, O Lord.

Sun’s slow revolve enthrones a

Little one on wood warmed with straw.

Childbirth is risky-he comes

As he goes

In a rush of blood and water.

In the night, with loaves and wine,

We become the little one;

Blood brothers and water sisters,

Bits and pieces of the kingdom.”

What is laid bare, tonight, are our hands as we approach this table of grace.  Our hearts as we open them once again to God’s plan for the world.

What is laid bare, tonight, are the ways where we’ve been bits and pieces of the kingdom of God, and the ways that we have not.  In our love and our fighting.  In our war and our peace.

And tonight of all nights, we are reminded that those things in our lives, our relationships, our world that are laid bare, as naked as a newborn; those things that are most vulnerable in us, our hopes and fears as the carol goes, our crankiness, craziness, our desire for control and our desire for constancy are also imbued with the promise that God’s plan is in action turning all of that, the salvation story laid bare in us covering and soothing those scars and successes that we call life.

So open your hands tonight in a moment of vulnerability, receive the bread and cup, God’s plan to come get you, me, us, wrapped up in his love.

So open your hands tonight to hold a vulnerable candle, flame laid bare against the dark, dispelling it just enough to promise a new dawn.

So open your heart tonight to hold the promise of God’s love again, and become the bare little ones we realize that we are when juxtaposed against 2000 years of past and eons of future.

See God’s love laid bare in the form of a newborn one, bare and vulnerable, but full of hope, possibility, and the bold plan of salvation that God has in store for the world.

Can you imagine such bare, bold love?

Nothing so powerful could be mere story.

Merry Christmas.

Amen.

A Letter From Ethan-Christmas Eve Family Service

(This letter was read along with two Christmas books at our “Family Service” at 5pm.  The first book was the Christmas story from Luke with pictures for the kids who gathered around like story time.  The second book was a pop-up book about the Star of Christmas over the Christ-child that lights our trees to remind us of Christ today.  And then this letter was the simple sermon.)

Dear Pr. Tim,

 

Please read this note from your nephew Ethan, who is now 10.  It’s pretty important.

 

Much love,

Gabe

 

Hey Uncle Tim,

 

Merry Christmas!

 

Normally I would be texting you or emailing you.  But, as you know, I’ve been grounded for the past couple weeks for the “Thanksgiving incident.”

 

Between you and me, I think most people would be flattered to hear that their new haircut reminded someone of a national monument.  But not Aunt Cathy, apparently.  She’s just not a patriot I guess.

 

But I’ll be off grounding after the New Year…

 

What do you want for Christmas?

 

I asked mom for a new under-armor shirt to wear during indoor soccer.  She told me that all Santa was bringing me was coal…due to the “Thanksgiving incident”…but then dad told me we are in the middle of an energy crisis and that coal is too expensive, so I’m not sure what will be in my stocking!

 

But that’s ok…

 

Between you and me, I’m really not sure what I think about Christmas anymore anyways.   I mean, I’m almost 11 now, and I’m not really sure if I buy this whole angels and shepherds thing.

 

When I asked mom about it, she told me to ask dad.  And dad told me to ask you.  So here I am; what do you think?

 

I mean, I get that God came in the form of Jesus to teach us about his ways, I’m just not sure about the whole star, flocks of sheep, virgin stuff (and yes, I know what a virgin is…my health teacher is very good).

 

So, yeah, I guess I don’t know.

 

But my Sunday School said something that might be interesting.  He said to me that, if you spend all your time on the angels and star and shepherds stuff, you miss the baby himself.  And that the point of the story was to point you toward the baby.

 

The angel pointed to it.

 

The shepherd pointed to it.

 

The star pointed to it.

 

He said that the point wasn’t how the birth happened, but that it happened because God wanted to tell people something.  That God wanted to tell people that he loved people enough to come as one of them, to be with them, and to do all the stuff that people do: love, listen, hug, feel, and even to die like one of them.

 

That’s what my Sunday School teacher says.  But I’m not sure he knows a lot…I have to help him figure out how to work the DVD player sometimes.

 

Anyway, what do you think?

 

I mean, it makes sense to me, I guess.  If I look at the angels and the star and the shepherds as just a really cool way of saying, “Hey, something important is going on in this little kid, so you’d better pay attention!” then it makes a lot more sense.

 

And I guess my Sunday School teacher is right, it’s a lot better to get an actual hug than just talk about a hug.  It’s a lot better to hold mom’s hand then to have her just tell me over the phone that she wants to hold my hand.  It’s a lot better to have God come be with us in a real person than just have a bunch of old people talk about it for years…

 

So, I guess that’s what I’m thinking about this Christmas.

 

I like the story of the shepherds, angels, and all that, even if I’m not sure it really happened that way.

 

But what I like more is the idea that God cares enough to actually come be with us.  That seems more important.

 

Well, mom is heating up the oven.  I can tell because I smell something burning.  Last time I cleaned up the kitchen I put some of the Tupperware lids in that little drawer under the oven.  Turns out that’s something called a “broiler.”  Man, did that make the house stink!  Now we smell it every time she heats up the oven…

 

That was the oven incident, and why you got the letter at Halloween.

 

So, I hope we’ll see you guys sometime this year, and I’ll text you after the New Year.

 

Before I go, though, what do you think about what I wrote?  As you grow up, isn’t the fact that God loves us enough to come be in skin with us more important than this whole angel/star bit?  And isn’t that why we go to church in the first place, to be reminded of that? What do you think?

 

Love,

Ethan

 

 

Ethan,

 

I think you’re right.  And I couldn’t have said it better myself.

 

Love,

Uncle Tim…

Gift-Wrapping: Free

Luke 1:26-38

²⁶In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, ²⁷to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” ²⁹But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. ³⁰The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. ³¹And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. ³²He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. ³³He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” ³⁴Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” ³⁵The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. ³⁶And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. ³⁷For nothing will be impossible with God.” ³⁸Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

Gift-Wrapping: Free!

Let us pray:

As Mary and Elizabeth were open to you

Let it be with us

As this world was open to you in that time

Long ago

Let it be with us

As we are open to your presence now

Be with us

Birthed anew, here.

Amen.

Part of the joy of Christmas, for me, is giving presents to loved ones.  It always has been.

I remember one year when my younger brother, who shall remain nameless, found the gifts that I had bought for him.  When I caught him looking at them, I took every single one of them back.

Every single one.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want those gifts; he did!

It’s that the surprise was gone.  And that’s half the fun, right?  The surprise.

I also really enjoy wrapping gifts.  When I was younger I did it with much more precision, much more care.

Now as life is busier and more rushed…well, it’s done with a lot of love.

But my hope always is that the outside will reflect the inside, that the surprise will come packaged in something as appealing.

That’s why I love it when stores will gift-wrap what you buy.  I know that that tape will be perfectly sized, the ribbon curls will be six inches, and the corners neatly folded.

That’s a true gift-wrapping job.

If only more of life looked like a Christmas present, right?  If the things that come our way on a daily basis, or even yearly basis, look as good on the outside as they do once we get into them, neatly gift-wrapped.

Or, perhaps, your life as already too filled with such surprises, such twists and turns, you wouldn’t call them gifts but they end up in your life anyway, and you need some relief from them no matter what they look like.

I wonder what Mary thought about this present given to her in our Gospel reading today.  Excitement, joy, fear, wonderment…yes, all of that I’m sure.  But I imagine there were other feelings there as well.  Her situation was not exactly ideal, the timing wasn’t quite right, was it?

If you didn’t want to be the talk of the town, you didn’t want to be an unwed but engaged young Palestinian woman.  No, the timing wasn’t ideal.

And it wasn’t ideal for her relative, Elizabeth, either.  I imagine Elizabeth did hope to have a child, even at her age.  But such a thing was ridiculous and perhaps that hope was long buried…and that hope was so unbelievable that her husband, Zechariah, couldn’t even talk about it.

Literally.

What did Elizabeth feel?  A sigh of relief or resignation?

She, too, would be the talk of the town, but for a different reason.

So what was it about these women that made them the ideal vessels to begin God’s new, transformative work in the world?  What did they possess that, perhaps, others did not?

Walter Burhardt was getting at what set Mary and Elizabeth (and perhaps you and me, if we’re able) apart in this way when he writes:

“You must be men and women of ceaseless hope, because only tomorrow can today’s human and Christian promise be realized; and every tomorrow will have its own tomorrow, world without end.  Every human act, every Christian act, is an act of hope.  But that means you must be men and women of the present, you must live this moment—really live it, not just endure it—because this very moment, for all its imperfection and frustration, because of its imperfection and frustration, is pregnant with the future, is pregnant with love, is pregnant with Christ.”

Mary is the embodiment of ceaseless hope.  Not hope in the future, but a hope that says that somehow even if the timing of this whole thing, this gift, isn’t ideal, that God has gift-wrapped it…and will see her through.  That at the end of this process, whatever it is, it would be life-giving.

And that was probably difficult for Mary because, as we read later on next year, this one jumping inside her will be hanging life-less on a cross.  And yet, even then, God caused life to spring forth anew.

The hope she has now will be proven true…though it takes a while.

Elizabeth is the embodiment of ceaseless hope.  Not hope in the impossible, but rather that whatever happens, she is open to the possibility that God can and will do something new.  And when this new life springs inside her as John the Baptizer, she moves with it and goes with it, and is open to the fact that God can make water spring in the desert, a rose bloom in the winter.

In fact, for those of you wondering, I saw a rose blooming last week over on Lincoln Avenue.  Perhaps a sign of sorts for the mind open enough to see it as such…

Elizabeth’s hope was proven true…though it took awhile.

Perhaps we need to look to John and Paul…and George and Ringo…for another perspective.

The third verse of Let it Be, another Advent song, is “And when all the brokenhearted people, living in the world agree, there will be an answer, let it be…”

Mary and Elizabeth lived in hope…they let it be.  And it was not pie-in-the-sky optimism; they were not naively thinking that God would turn it all around. Rather, they were confident that, no matter how it turned out, God was with them.

That is, after all, what Emmanuel means, “God with us.”  And that is why we can let it just be…because God is with us.  And that is why we come here week after week, to teach our bodies and our souls that God is with us, that we can let it be.

So often this life seems to gift-wrap presents for us for free, whether we like these so-called presents or not.  We don’t ask for the life-changes that come our way anymore than Elizabeth or Mary did.

And yet, they carried Emmanuel with them, in one case quite literally, trusting that this present situation might be a present situation, a gift.  And so they let it be.

So, good people, what kind of people are you?  Are you people who live in the present, expecting that life changes, switches, turns can be life-giving gifts from God?  Can you let it be?

After-all, everyone likes a gift.  Perhaps we too can see that life, all life, even one full of surprises, is a gift, no matter what the gift-wrapping looks like.  In doing so we, too, are pregnant…with possibility, with hope, with the God who says, “I love you, for Christ’s sake, and will never let you go.”

Amen.

Batteries Included

John 1:6-8, 19-28

⁶There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. ⁷He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. ⁸He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. ¹⁹This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” ²⁰He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, “I am not the Messiah.” ²¹And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.” ²²Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” ²³He said,
“I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
‘Make straight the way of the Lord,'”
as the prophet Isaiah said.
²⁴Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. ²⁵They asked him, “Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?” ²⁶John answered them, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, ²⁷the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.” ²⁸This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

Batteries Included

Let us pray:

Oh Light of the world,

Without you there is no divine life in us,

no good disposition in us at all.

Grant the reward of selfless love; that is, your very self.

Grant us perseverance to the end of this journey

toward Christmas,

and your surprising self again.

And then, everlasting joy!

Amen.

I think that this season of the year should come with a particularly appropriate tagline: batteries not included.

Just like it was printed on the side of the Nerf dart flinger that Rhonda and I purchased for our nephew.  In bold letters: batteries not included.  Except we only saw that when we were already waiting in line to check out…and had to run to find batteries.

But I find that this season truly does leave me absolutely depleted.  I run myself ragged going from meeting to appointment to hospital to party to dinners out to the store to…

I mean, it’s not unenjoyable; the majority of this running around is fulfilling and fun.

But often, quite often, my motivation for it is not so fun…and so it makes it less than enjoyable.

It depletes my battery, so to say.  And there is not a lot of in between time to recharge, to come back to life, to get batteries.

And what, pray tell, is my motivation?

I hate to say it…although I don’t think you’ll be too surprised.  I imagine you have a similar problem.  It’s a sickness that runs rampant, and has since our ancestors first trod through Eden.

My motivation is that deep down somewhere I am utterly convinced that if I do not visit every hospital patient, make every sick call, return every email, answer every phone message, go to every appointment and invitation, attend every concert, say yes to every dinner invitation, check off everyone on my Christmas list before this next week, and entertain every ounce of criticism that comes my way, no matter how baseless, that I will somehow ruin something, someone, or fail in my calling as a pastor, a husband, an uncle, and a Chicago citizen.

In other words: I am utterly convinced that it’s all up to me.  And so I pour myself into things in the vainglorious attempt to save whatever it is I think needs saving.

And this season, for as beautiful and wonderful as it is, brings out these stresses in spades.

And I have to say that my battery is drained; and I wonder if yours is, too, for much the same reason.

Have you worked yourself to death yet trying to be everything in the season of joy?

Have you worked yourself to death trying to save things that aren’t in your ability to save?

Is your battery gone?

Well, today we once again turn to the wisdom of that old-school prophet John the Baptist, for some guidance on the cause and cure for battery depletion.  And he does not disappoint.

Look at the way he answers the questions of the priests and the Levites.  “Are you the Messiah?” they ask.

His response is simply, “No.”

“Are you Elijah?” they inquire.

His response is a pithy, “Nope.”

And on and on these questions go without John the Baptist expending more voice on the issue then necessary.  And then when he does speak, he simply quotes Scripture, only saying more when absolutely pressed.

I mean, John the Baptist should get a job instructing witnesses how to testify in court, he is so adept at only answering the question asked.

But why the quick reply?

You see, John the Baptist knows something that I think we too often forget in this season: he’s not God.

I’ll say that one more time because we may be too busy to hear it well: I’m not God, and neither are you.

We can’t be everything to everyone, and that’s never truer than in this season of “get it done before year’s end.”

Because as much as I’d like to please people, I’m not able to please everyone.  Because as much as I’d like to be perfect, I’m made of the same carbon as a lump of coal.

Because as much as I’d like to save everything, to be its savior, I can’t, it’s not me, and it’s not you.

John knew that; we should relearn it.

John knew that his job was not to save anything, but rather, in everything that he did, point toward the God who had already started taking care of that whole saving business.

And in that same vein, let’s imagine, just for a moment, that you put down the need to save that thing that you are most worried about, that thing you are over-thinking.  Put it down, just for a moment.

Let Jesus be Jesus, just for a moment.

Put it down, give it up to God, and feel that battery recharge.

Give it up.

Give it up and feel that battery recharge.

So often I think our batteries are dead because we’re doing work that we aren’t meant to do; we’re trying to save things that aren’t ours to save.

We’ve forgotten what John the Baptist knew: that we are the children of God, not God.  We’re made in the image of God, not the other way around.

My job is not to be Jesus, but to point to him and rely on him.

Your job at your workplace, your family, your relationship, or even for this Christmas is not to be everything to everyone, not to be perfect, not to be Jesus, but to point and rely on him.

And that has been a freeing revelation for me to realize again, even just recently, because it has allowed me to put down some things that I’d been carrying, some voices that want me to be someone I can’t.

I’m not Jesus, I just point to him in my work and my play.

And you, what critical voices in your work place, your relationships, your life do you have to put down?  What work is not yours to bear any longer?

We need to relearn what John the Baptist knew!  He was not the Messiah, but only pointed to him and relied on him.

We are not God, we cannot be everything in this world, we can only point to the God who loves us enough to be with us in this world.

And when we stick to our identity, I think we find our batteries full.  And what is that identity?  You hear it given in baptism, you hear it given in confession, you hear all throughout Scripture: you are a child of God.

When we’re well yoked to our identities as children of God in this world, our batteries may wane, but will never deplete, and we will find through weekly worship, through Communion, through fellowship, ample time to replenish.

And, when we live out of that identity rather than trying to be the one born in a manger, I have a hunch our running around is less rushed because we know it’s not up to us; we’re just showing up on the scene.

As we lean toward Christmas, let’s relearn our identity.  Today.  Right now.  Because Jesus came with a message, and we hear it later in the Gospel of John, “If the Son has made you free, you are free indeed.”

And freedom is the gift of Christmas.  And that gift, that life grounded in that identity, has batteries included.

Amen.

Project(ed) Runway: Ready to Wear

Mark 1:1-8

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
²As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,
“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way;
³the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,'”
⁴John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. ⁵And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. ⁶Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. ⁷He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. ⁸I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

 

Project(ed) Runway: Ready to Wear

Let us pray:

Turn toward us, Lord,

If only for a moment.

Hurry to your servants!

Amen.

 

In the beginning I would watch the show Project Runway because I couldn’t believe that people were actually that catty while designing clothes.

 

I couldn’t believe that the mantra, “One day you’re in and the next day, you’re out” could actually be the tagline of an entire industry, that somewhere there was room for grace, that a slipped stitch or a bad hem could be overlooked because of effort or grace or…or something.

 

But, nope.  It never changed.

 

If you’ve never seen the sordid reality show that is Project Runway, I hesitate to send you to Lifetime to get a view of it.  I only hesitate because more than it’s slightly addictive, even for those of us who don’t know the difference between tweed and corduroy.

 

What I’m addicted to most are the personalities.  People you like and dislike.  And, of course, they have to make them live together which makes everything more dramatic.

 

If you doubt that, think about when you used to not live with the person you live with now.  Yeah, sure, you might be in love, but there was much less drama, right?

But my prediction that my early experience with the show could not be a true indication of how the show actually was remained false: it continued and ended as it began.  It ended with the same cattiness, the same dramatic tension, and was ultimately true to its motto: people would win one day and get booted out the next.

 

It sounds like life.  But it doesn’t mean we have to like it.

 

And yet we do…as long as we’re not the one getting the boot.

 

Today’s Gospel message is the very beginning of the Gospel of Mark, and it doesn’t start out with a manger or star; it doesn’t start out with Wise Men or even an angel visiting Mary.

 

No, Mark begins like this: “The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ…” and that tagline sucks you in.

 

Like a good TV show, I think it sucks people in even more than the manger and the cattle lowing.  Hence why Mark is my favorite Gospel.

 

Good news?!  Excellent, I’ll tune in for this.

 

And immediately it moves to this weird guy shouting in the woods about making crooked paths straight and washing people in a river.

 

Now we might watch any show that starts out like this just because we love characters, and John the Baptizer is definitely described as a character.

 

Locusts, camel hair…I actually am not sure if his garb would get him kicked off of Project Runway or win him a challenge, especially if the challenge were to create a look for the wandering prophet out of an even-toed ungulate that spits…

 

But that look is actually exactly what the Gospel writer Mark is going for in describing John the Baptizer.  He wants you to notice that John is dressed like Elijah and Elisha and the prophets of old so you get this message, and you get it without mistake: John is telling you something that you better pay attention to, and that something is the Messiah.

 

That’s the Good News.

 

John’s clothes are not just laziness, and they’re not an avant garde look for this winter’s holiday party.

 

John is wearing the clothes of a prophet of God, and no one can mistake that.  And he does so in order for you, me, all of us to understand that the locus and center of his life is not himself, but is actually his words, what he says, who he is pointing to: Jesus the Christ.

 

His clothes are ready to wear for him because they match his message.  Prophetic clothes for a prophetic message.

 

How about your clothes, our clothes, in this Advent season?

 

Are we ready to wear that message, the message of the one come to blow through us, turn us around as individuals, as a society, as something different happening in this world?

 

Or would we rather just get our kicks from watching Project Runway and living out virtual drama instead of possibly being the dramatic energy in this world.

 

And when I talk about drama like this, I am not talking about the drama of the nasty sort, not the kind of drama played out on that show (and I really must admit, I like that show!).

 

I mean the kind of drama that happens when God shows up in a way you don’t expect in your life, like a baby lying in a manger.   Or perhaps like the sudden realization that you are not God.  Or perhaps the drama that happens when love so powerful invades your heart that you know it is more than just emotion, it is more than sentimentality, it is deeper than anything you’ve ever felt before.

 

Or perhaps its the kind of drama that happens when two people who dislike one another come together to rally behind an issue of importance.  If you want an example of that take Bono from U2 and Pat Robertson from the 700 club and realize that they came together behind the One Campaign in an effort to eradicate hunger.

 

Or maybe, just maybe it’s the kind of drama that happens when a man starts taking empty, trash-ridden lots and turning them into something life-giving for the neighborhood.

 

There’s a video out there about the “gardening vigilante,” who found a small empty plot of ground in front a parking long in neighborhood in Brooklyn.  He got the crazy idea to plant a garden, and tried to gather his friends together to help him in this endeavor.  It wasn’t without risks, of course.  Planting on someone else’s land is illegal…and he didn’t know who owned the land.

 

He emailed all his friends, but one by one they came up with an excuse to not make it.  So it finally came down to him and just two or three others to head out at midnight and do this vigilante planting.  Mums, tomatoes, squash.  They slowly started to make a garden out of this small plot of land…after they removed tons of trash.

 

And it started to grow as the spring wore on.  People started to take from the garden what they needed: tomatoes, squash, flowers.  Some even started to help out by donating tomato supports and doing some impromptu weeding.

 

And then he found out who owned the garden: a local church.  So he went to the church one Sunday morning, bringing some homemade salsa that included ingredients from the garden.  When he went to the priest to hand over the gift, the priest said, “Oh, it’s you who has planted that garden! We were going to tear it down, but then we saw what it was doing for the people.  We want to continue it…”

 

And that’s drama: where someone who probably never set foot in a church before taught the church how to wear its clothes properly; how to be the drama of God in the neighborhood.  That’s the kind of drama I’m talking about.

 

Or a dusty, crusty back-water mountain man being the first to announce that God was on the scene baptizing not with water, but with fire…fire that changes you forever.

 

Water, you wash with water and you can get dirty again.  But fire?  Fire leaves an irreversible mark.  Fire, that’s life-changing…

 

And if you don’t believe him, look at what he’s wearing.  He’s got the mark of a prophet, and as I’ve said before, prophets don’t tell the future, they tell the truth.

 

So, again today we encounter John the Baptist whom Mark says is the first pointer to the Good News of Jesus Christ.

 

And yet here you are, here I am, sitting back thinking, “That was then, this was now.  This can’t actually be as dramatic as it sounds.  What does this mean for me today?  Christmas, God’s work through Jesus in the world isn’t so dramatic now…”

 

But it is.  Even now.  Lives are still changed by this Good News.  The ending is exactly as the beginning.

 

And if you doubt that, skip to the end of Mark where we find Jesus hanging just as crudely on a cross as camels hair hangs of John the Baptist.  Instead of locust and wild honey it’s sour wine that’s tasted.

 

And at that moment, a Roman soldier looks at the Jesus whose only words was a quote from Psalm 22, and says, “Truly that was the son of God.”

 

And I ask you, do you not think that soldier’s life was changed?

 

And Mark tells that story at the end, so that you’ll come back to the beginning, to this part right here, and realize that what you are about to hear is Good News.  What you are about to experience, this year, at the beginning, now at Advent but especially starting at Christmas, is the story of Good News for your life.

 

Good News for us…who are so used to virtual drama that we need to hear it from a source that leaves us little room for doubt about what it is.  John the Baptizer, in the garb of a prophet, telling the truth about you.

 

A truth that is ready to wear on your hearts, on your life.

 

And we need to wear it again on our hearts.  And not in any sentimental sort of way, but on a way that truly gives us a change of heart.  And we wear it on our hands as we open them for communion.  And we wear it on our heads bowed in prayer to a God who has come, is here, and is coming again.

 

In an unexpected way.

 

And if you doubt that, listen to John again: Prepare the way of the Lord!  Make straight the highway!

 

John’s projected it for us again.  And if this path, this “highway” in the literal Greek is actually thought of as a runway, then he’s projected the runway.

 

Which is good for those of us who are fans of the show, because then we are assured that the ending is just like the beginning.

 

And here the beginning is Good News…and that must mean that the ending is, too.  The ending of this story, the ending of a life walked with this Jesus guy, the ending of all things where the Holy Spirit is at work.

 

So, people of God, are you ready to wear the Good News on your heart again?  Are you ready to see God show up in an unconventional way?  Are you ready to open your hands to the mystery of the incarnation found in communion, to bow your head to God’s Advent in a new way despite the commercial Christmas raging around us?

 

John has projected the runway for us again, are we ready to hear it and to wear it?

 

Amen.