December 4, 2011, "Future Faith"

Isaiah 40:1-15
Mark: 1:1-8
When we cast ourselves in the Christmas story, we readily accept that few among us are kings let alone wise. Few in history have possessed the purity, innocence and humility of Mary. No, the role many of us quickly accept is of the sheep and shepherds, going about our regular routine, waiting for God to do something, waiting for a heavenly host of angels to appear and with Gloria In Excelsis Deo to tell us the miracle of God is ready. Following our routine, doing what we have done for generations, waiting for God to tell us God is ready.

Over and over, throughout the Bible, there is the recurrent phrase “THE WORD OF GOD WAS RARE in those days.” What if the role we have been assigned by God, is not as Shepherds or as sheep, and Lord knows we are no angels. What if we are to be the John the Baptists, of this time and place? John is an unforgettable figure, with an ill-temper, saying whatever occurs to him, a belly full of locusts, his beard, face and hands smeared with honey, clothed in camel skins. He is not the sort your mother wanted you to bring home. Yet, John the Baptizer does what no one else in history has done.

The people have been searching for a Messiah, a leader, a Savior sent from God to change the world, and John responds “Not Me. There is one coming, whom I am not worthy to kneel before, whose shoes I am not worthy to untie.” When is the last time we heard a leader, someone running for office, describe that anyone before or after them is better than they are? What if Steve Jobs last speech, instead of announcing the latest technological advancement, had proclaimed “Together we are creating the means for great ideas yet to come!” or if the College students who invented Social media had said “Thank you Ben Franklin, Alexander Graham Bell, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, because without having had electricity, the telephone, the personal computer, we never would have had the experience or desire to create this!” We look for Saviors, to ordain as Kings. We search for individuals with the ego and the charisma, the self-assurance to say “I am It!” John's word, in all sincerity and humility is “The world is not yet ready! We are not yet prepared to greet such a one. We are so many separate individuals in competition with ourselves/ let alone one another. I can only prepare the way for the coming Savior.”

The Gospel of Mark begins differently than the other Gospels. Not only in the absence of stories about the Virgin Birth and Manger, The Good News of Jesus Christ according to Mark begins with two monumental shifts in reality. In response to John, all the people across the countryside, from farmers, to soldiers, from prostitutes to parents, professors to lawyers, everyone who heard his word reflected upon their own lives, repented of something that had happened, repented of something they were doing, and confessed their desire to live their life differently. Everyone it seems has some story of repentance, everyone is searching for what we have not been. Without that realization, without the recognition that we are imperfect, incomplete, without naming to ourselves that we are in need, we are not ready to hear and receive the Good News. The Great Swiss Theologian Karl Barth, described that the Gospel reaches out and grabs you, the Words engage you not merely as history of people long ago, but as our story.

About a year ago, we asked this congregation repeatedly, if you were to describe this Church, this people of God, what we believe and represent, described either to someone who does not know what Church is, or as unique compared to other Churches, what would you say? Among the adjectives used, was Believing in REDEMPTION, no one is ever thrown away or abandoned. The Good News of Jesus Christ, according to John the Baptist, is that all of us have a past, all humanity are searching for God, searching for redemption. Confessing this need, bending our knee, to be baptized, bending down to serve, kneeling to untie the sandal and wash the feet of another, that confession is the only way to be prepared for the coming of the Savior.

We described that the Good News of Jesus Christ begins with two shifts in reality, according to Mark. First is that all humanity need to, want to, be redeemed to live life differently. BUT ALSO, reading on in the 9th and 10th verses of the Revised Standard Version of Mark, when Jesus did come to be Baptized Heaven opened. The Greek is more explicit: the perimeter between Heaven and Earth, the gulf between the divine and the mortal, the limitations of reality, were irreparably ripped open by God. The Good News of Jesus Christ is that all Humanity want to and can be redeemed, every person is worthwhile, no one is lost; BUT ALSO that God wants to redeem us, God does not want to see us damned, God's desire is to forgive, to see us whole, to love.

This same truth was declared Centuries before in the time of the Prophets Isaiah. There is this monumental shift at the end of the 39th Chapter, before the beginning of the 40th. The first 39 Chapters have dealt with the Fall of the nation of Israel. The Prophets preached and preached , and people's ears were thick and their vision cataracted. The people of God were conquered and destroyed, the Great Temple of Solomon was desecrated before their being carried off as slaves to Babylon, where they would labor for 150 years. George Steiner the great Literary critic and author of descriptions of the Holocaust at Cambridge University describes that a powerful thing happens when language and circumstance coincide, when our hopes of what is beyond reality and our belief in God agree. Steiner describes that in our minds, the PRESENT and the PAST are as One. Not only do we continue to live out the continuing effects of what has gone before, we also replay both in our minds, and in our experiences the events and relationships of the past, again and again. The power of language, that occurs in Chapter 40 of Isaiah, is that instead of continuing to describe the past, instead of present circumstances being a continuation of what is fact, what is dead and no longer living, God speaks of a future faith. God uses a Grammar of Creation, of WHAT SHALL BE, WHAT WILL COME, and IF. These are the passwords to a different reality. Instead of living according to what is and has been, what is fact but no longer alive, faith calls us into a different living future of what could be. Rather than a people who HAD needed to be punished, who HAD deserved retribution, who were Conquered and Abandoned and Enslaved, in Chapter 40 God commands Heavens Angels “Comfort, Comfort, My People says your God! Her Warfare will be ended, She will be Pardoned for the past. Every Valley shall be lifted up, every mountain hill shall be made low. The glory of the Lord shall be revealed as we prepare the way of the LORD.

Isaiah proclaims this double edged prophecy, that humbles the powerful, and provides hope to the oppressed. Quite simply, the Prophets asks: What should I Cry? And God 's Word is “All flesh is Grass, beauty is like the flower that fades and grass that withers, though the word of God stands for ever.” As we began this day, we search for what was before. Who created God? Who taught God? Who provided counsel and wisdom to set God up? And part of the nature of God is that God is older than time itself, and God shall always be.

In this season as we seek the latest, biggest, tiniest, fastest, the leaders of the next generation, we need to listen to the power of words. Whether we are stuck in the past, hiding only to relive our sins; or whether we can own our failures, name our brokenness and confessing faith live a future reality of being redeemed by God. There is a marvelous movie, just released, titled HUGO. While the critics will have many different story-lines, I think that what the film is about is a child who sees the world as a great machine. Machines are designed to work, perpetually to be wound up and run. Machines do not come with extra pieces, every part, every person has a purpose. The boy comes to realize that his function in life is to repair what is broken, to mend human lives, to comfort and to redeem. May we be like this, like John the Baptist, calling one another to claim our pasts as very real to our present and to claim faith as a means for embracing the future with God.