John
A letter to our ancestor, John.
Dear John,
Who are you? Under all that sweat and dust and camel hair? Behind all the drama and noise? What do you think about out there when the crowds have gone home, and the stars are glowing above you, and the sounds of the desert creatures and the wind are all the noise that’s left? What keeps you awake, tossing and turning? What gets you up in the morning, for another day of locust-eating and yelling yourself hoarse with passion and fire?
You are pissing people off, you know. You don’t live much longer than this – you’ll die soon for telling Herod like it is and calling him out on his adulterous marriage. And you don’t get much sympathy from the establishment after your criticism of them and your direct competition – baptism for repentance? Really? The people can get that in the temple. The favor and forgiveness of God is already available…for a fee. But you offer it for free? All the while saying something greater is brewing and you’re just the warm-up act?
I’m sure you heard the story over and over in your childhood, in those few short years your ancient parents had left - between all their prophet-grooming, their stories of prophets of old and messages to Israel and encouragement to listen, listen for the voice of God, the surprise of God that would bring life to deadened wombs and laughter to creaky voices, lay mountains low and raise valleys up, bringing hope and wholeness – between all of that I am certain you heard tell time and again of when Mary came to see your mom, the moment your fetus self bumped belly homes with the embryonic Messiah, as you jumped for joy, recognizing already that everything was changing, and there was nothing to do but celebrate it.
And the messages, all those prophets swimming in your mind, taught to you from Torah, spoken in story from your priest father and your devout mother – it must have meant even more to you than to others…
Did you three carry this secret promise, this crazy truth that you had come from impossibility? Were you always aware that God had broken in, and nobody knew it yet, but the time was coming when they would all see…?
And did you ever forget, John? We forget all the time. Did you? Did you ever wake up knowing there was something to remember and then have the truth wash over you in wonder once again? That God was making good on all those promises of old, that God was coming in?
Did you recognize him in the prophesies? Jesus, I mean. When you were kids, did your cousin seem like the one? Tell the truth now – was he just so ordinary? Or did you know all along? Did you know before he did? Or more than he did? Or did the two of you whisper about it together at sleepovers?
What was it like, by the way, the day he came to the river, the day you plunged him under the water and the sky opened up and the voice of God claimed him? After the elation that it had come at last, were you psyched to retire? Be finished with your message? Or was it anti-climactic? Or even disillusioning?
Who are you now, once the one you’ve prepared the way for has arrived in our midst? When the thing your whole life has been about has been accomplished, what is your life for then?
If you knew then what you know now, would it all have gone the same?
Mark begins all of it with you, you know. “The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ the Son of God,” then he has you bursting out like you couldn’t contain the secret any longer, the message ripening within your young body and mind until you had to get out of the city, flee to the wilderness and give the message room to breathe, give it space to expand or it would swallow you and everything else with its magnitude and power.
The others don’t begin with you – Luke and Matthew, they tell Jesus’ genealogy and his birth, and the book of John starts with the very, very beginning, with the Word of creation, light in the darkness, but Mark starts with you.
Where would you begin the story?– I bet you’d go back to those prophets – your lifeblood, your mother’s milk, your father’s breath in your ear, whispering their messages and hope.
You’d begin the story by saying there were those who said it was coming… remember those voices? Remember those promises? Then you’d say, It’s true. It is coming. It’s already begun.
You spoke fantastic visions as well—baptized with the Holy Spirit? The very Spirit that hovered over the water at Creation, is claiming and cleansing us? Now? It was a fact. You spoke these things like they were a fact – preached the future with a present tense. Perhaps you had such bold confidence because you yourself had come from the impossibility that was becoming. You believed it and you made them believe it too.
I heard someone say once that ‘repentance is what happens to us when the truth of who we are and who God is enters our lives and scatters the darkness of competing ideas.’ (Nadia Bolz-Weber) It’s like being found, being grabbed on the shoulders by love and turned from death toward life, to see it all stretching out before you with a different horizon.
Trading our way of perceiving for God’s way - it doesn’t just happen once. It can happen any and every time we start to drift back to the fear, to hide ourselves in the anger, to barricade ourselves in the false security. When the truth of who God is and who we are enters in, we can repent, and are freed again. It’s an option available to us at any moment.
It happened to me yesterday. There was a conversation I’d been dreading, practicing what I’d say in defensive language, couched in self-protection. Then a friend told me to bring my honest self to it, my sadness and fear, and tell the truth. She invited me to repent. She’d probably laugh to be told that’s what she was suggesting. But it was, and I did, and I felt my armor fall away and the fears subside. I found myself feeling hopeful again, and secure in whatever God might do there, because the truth is we all belong to God and each other no matter what, and I could feel that truth again.
What did it look like, John, to see so much repentance on people? Could you see it in their eyes? Was it relief? Joy? The darkness scattering, the truth seeping in… Did their faces change as the light entered their lives? Did their bodies feel lighter coming up out of the water than they did going down? Did seeing it strengthen your own hope and trust?
Did you know how they looked at you? How they saw you? You must have. You dressed like Elijah, you sounded like Isaiah, you were a prophet, and the people came. They came from far and wide to hear you, to catch a glimpse of that modern day prophet who was just like the ones of old. But the others thought you were dangerous, crazy, threatening, an embarrassment, a freak show. Did all that bother you?
Once someone well-known and respected who speaks in front of large crowds told me that what is hardest is the admiration, being admired. You feel you either have to live up to people’s expectations or disabuse them of their notions, is that how you felt? Is that why you were always so quick and forceful to point out that it wasn’t about you at all, that you were paving the way, clearing the clutter, making the paths straight, because the one who would bring life to the world was coming -?
I know what’s ahead for you too, John – when you’re in prison and you hear about what Jesus is doing and you send your people to Jesus to ask if he “really is the one who is to come or if we should wait for another?” when you question if it all really is real. Even you! That doubt and fear are such an intrinsic part of being human, such an integral part of faith, that even YOU wondered, faltered. You, who told everyone else so confidently, that God was doing this thing, you too had those scary secret moments when things didn’t look like you thought they would, and you weren’t sure if you could trust what you had believed. It gives me some comfort to know that.
And when your messengers reached him and asked your question, he answered, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”
What was it like for you to hear that? Did it put you back inside the cosmic story? Could you trust again that what the prophets had said was really happening when your friends had seen it unfold right in front of them?
Did you repent then? Let the light scatter the darkness of competing ideas? Sitting there in prison, just days away from your unexpected and senseless death, did you feel the chains fall away and the trust return? Let the truth of who we are and who God is release you from your fear? Did it bring you peace?
I’ll bet you never heard that right after he sent away your messengers and they were hot-footing it back to you, he told the crowd with conviction in his voice that you were a prophet, just like those of old, actually, more than a prophet, he declared, you were the ‘One who announced the Messiah.’ Then he said, “Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist;” and then did what he does and added, “yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”
I think you would have liked hearing him say that. About the least being great, I mean, the poor and forgotten being lifted up that way in God’s kingdom. Maybe even more than his message to you, it would have affirmed that this is all really happening after all- God’s kingdom really is breaking in, showing how upside down we have it all. You would have liked hearing him say that, I bet.
When you died, John, it crushed him. He left everyone to be alone with his terrible grief. Did that shake his faith, I wonder, bring him to doubt? That even though the way of God has begun and the light is in the world, the darkness is still here too, for a time? How did he reconcile that? How can we? What would you say to us now about that, John?
What would you think of the world right now, John?
What would you shout at us if you were here?
You see, we have the benefit of hindsight, we get to see all of this WAY after the fact, so we don’t have to stand on the banks of that river with the mud in our sandals and the insects buzzing around us, listening to you roar out your message and wonder who to believe –wonder whether what you say is even remotely possible, or whether you’re just another fanatic off his rocker. We know who you are and how it all goes down from there.
So we can ask you now, and we’re willing to listen, what would you say to us? What would you have us do?
How can we receive our Savior?
Ah, but you’re long gone. You’re silent now. And so it’s on us.
See, John, it’s like this every year. It might have been all new and amazing to you, but we’ve beat this message to death with jingle bells and sentiment and buried it in a sea of candy, carols and wrapping paper and when January comes it is behind us and we’ve moved on. We’ve put Jesus in the manger and we like him there; he’s so cute and clean.
So if we really take you seriously, what does it mean for us?
How does it shape our lives?
Does God still come? Is God still coming? We need a little taste of your honey and fervor, I think. A sense of wonder and awe once again. A longing to be stirred enough that it feels like absolute refreshment to be plunged under and feel the water roll off us along with all that keeps us in darkness, to be baptized into a promise that holds us even when we can’t see it. How should we live a good life, a meaningful life, a life that matters, a life that sees God? What should we do, John?
But you would never really say, would you? When we plead for some direction, Tell us how we navigate all of this, desert prophet! You’d just point your finger again at him and tell us God has come. In the flesh. Right here.
“I’m just using water, people,” you’d say, “he’ll immerse you in the Holy Spirit, you’ll be surrounded and filled by the life-creating breath of God.
So get ready. Be ready. Live ready. God is coming. God has come. Repent.”
And you’d leave us to it, this holy exchange of our way of seeing for God’s, that scatters the darkness of competing ideas, and welcomes us back to the impossible that is becoming.
So, because I’ve not said it before, John, thank you.
Thank you for your words and your life. Thank you for preparing the way. Thank you for reminding us what’s real. Thank you for pointing us back to Jesus.
Sincerely,
Kara Root, and your sisters and brothers at Lake Nokomis Presbyterian Church, Minneapolis, MN, 2020 AD.
This is part of a series, journeying with some of our Biblical ancestors: Hannah, Mary, Anna & Simeon, John, Samuel, David*, The Samaritan Woman,
(*This is an older message about David, in this series, we had a wonderful performance of 'David" by Theater for the Thirsty)
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