- Take a minute to study the painting on your bulletin of John the Baptist
- It was painted for a monastery church in the Netherlands by Dutch artist Geertgen tot Sint Jans in the late 1400’s
- Chin in hand, alone by the Jordan River, he looks pretty dejected!
- The scriptures tell us he was a desert prophet who ate locusts and honey and wore scratchy clothing and preached, sometimes to no one, usually to the outcast and forgotten who came to him in the wilderness hungry for good news;
- Sometimes he preached to religious leaders from the Temple, who came to scrutinize him and were dressed down pretty severely
- And once, he was encountered by the very person he believed to be the Messiah, and pointed him out to everyone as being sent by God.
- In this painting, the artist depicted John in a moment of lonely disillusionment.
- He is accompanied by the lamb, a sign that he saw Jesus as the lamb of God
- His large feet are crossed in a way that symbolizes the feet of Christ hanging on the cross, so there is a sad foreshadowing of the future in the painting
- But John, if he would only look up, might notice he is not in a desert wilderness, but in a lush green garden.
- In the background, there are deer, hawks, bunnies and sheep grazing in the fields.
- This is also a foreshadowing: the desert will be watered by God and will bloom with lush foliage someday!
- So there’s promise and hope here, too.
- My personal title for this painting is: John the Baptist Having a Bad Day;
- a day when he doubted all the threats and all promises God had given him to preach about.
- Can any of you relate to the way John seems to feel in this painting?
- There are so many emotions swirling around us in Advent, 2024, about what the future might hold
- In John’s era, there was fear and foreboding, too: upheaval between nations, natural disasters, civil unrest.
- The people of Israel had lived with repeated upheaval, war, exile and domination by other nations for centuries;
- John the Baptist, like prophets before him, had both good news and bad news
- About “the wrath to come” for those who did evil
- And also about the promise of a way God was making in the wilderness,
- And how ordinary people of faith could navigate through peril by correcting their own behavior and attitudes.
- I looked at the stories about John the Baptist to see what he did and didn’t do, to see if he could help us respond to the crises and opportunities of our time
- He didn’t gather an army or run for Congress or study to be a Pharisee in the Temple system of his time
- He followed the lead of the Essenes as a wandering desert prophet;
- He went out into the wilderness; away from the center of power
- He made anyone who wanted to listen come to him
- He chose not to send people for cleansing and forgiveness back to the Temple, where they would be judged worthy or unworthy of blessing
- Instead, he claimed his own spiritual authority to include them, to bless and cleanse them in the Jordan river, without demanding they jump through any hoops before they were forgiven.
- But John could be fiery and judgmental too!
- He spoke harshly to the sins of his own time;
- Especially to religious leaders (people like me)
- Then he gave people practical ways of purifying their lives with more faithful, compassionate living day to day:
- Share your coat, share your food
- Don’t extort from others; don’t lie to benefit yourself
- He taught people they could oppose the domination system of Rome and the Temple by treating each other with abundant generosity
- So he proclaimed both good and bad news:
- People were sinful AND beloved
- They could be cleansed and redeemed, but they would have to change
- The change wouldn’t come by magic rituals or following laws
- But simply by readiness to live in a new way
- And he also called to account King Herod Antipas for his personal behavior,
- Herod divorced his wife and illegally married his sister in law;
- John’s open criticism of Herod got him arrested and executed
- So the last thing John did was accept suffering and martyrdom
- He was not promised “success” when he delivered his messages; And he had to live and die with that
- John’s way of resisting Roman and Temple rule was to walk away from the culture’s sources of power and invent his own rules for blessing and empowering people,
- All while listening to God in the wilderness
- His preaching told an alternative story that the culture didn’t tell
- But that some were hungry to hear and follow – both the good news and the bad
- How are you like John, or different from him?
- Are you warning people about hard times coming? Sharing some important bad news?
- And if you are, are you also giving people ideas about how to change their situation or their behavior to cope with what’s coming?
- Do you have any good news to share about inclusion, cleansing, blessing?
- Are you a person who listens to God in solitude and then shares the truth you hear with others?
- Are you someone who is willing to take some heat in order to speak truth to power?
- Jesus, at the end of his life, also had some bad days.
- He sensed that things would get worse before they got better.
- At the end of Luke’s gospel he predicts
- Distress among the nations
- Roaring of the seas
- Fear and foreboding
- Yes, hard times will always come,
- We all have times of disillusionment, anger, fear and foreboding
- but his advice to us is to be alert, not alarmed; to stand up
- pay attention to what is happening around us
- And don’t let your hearts be weighed down;
- Don’t resort to drinking your way through Christmas, or the next four years!
- keep praying and staying connected to Christ’s teachings
- Keep practicing those spiritual disciplines of deep generosity, fearless truth-telling, and extravagant welcome
- Keep connecting to those who are willing to listen to the good news along with the bad news of the times we are living in.
- And keep offering others a little space for welcome, cleansing and acceptance along the wilderness road.
- That will come back to bless you, too.
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