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.