Beginning the Gospel, Take Two

When John the Baptist was about to die, his disciples went to Jesus and asked him to affirm "are you the one to come." He said to them, "Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the good news brought to them.  And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me."

              And then, after John's disciples left, Jesus turns the question around to the crowd.  He asks them three times, what did you go out to see in the wildness?  What were you looking for?  In essence, what did you expect to find when you went looking for John the Baptist?  Jesus goads them a bit by saying, what, did you expect luxury?  Did you expect soft robes?  What about a prophet? 

              He doesn't wait for the crowd to answer. He answers for them: a prophet.  Yes.  You went to see a prophet and you were not disappointed because John was the greatest prophet, no one is greater than him.  But, as Jesus tends to do, he offers a contradiction; he is the greatest because he is the least in the kingdom of God. 

              What did you expect to find?  Who is John the Baptist to you, for you?  It may surprise you, but this somewhat arcane question, offered some 2000 years ago, is a question we ask all the time; it is a living question, something we want to know.

              If I recast it this way, it should come clear.  When will there be justice?  How long must we wait for truth to prevail over falsity?  Perhaps the clearest example is when the question is asked in cynicism.  What did you expect?  It's cynical because what we are really asking is: why would you expect anything but greed and falsity and delusion.  What did you expect?

              Well, the truth is, I expect, you expect a lot more than that.  We may enjoy the false security of cynicism too much to confess our hope, but we are hopeful.  We hope justice will prevail, not a little, but a lot; we dream of justice flowing down like water, washing away our sins. And for this reason, John was the greatest.  His life was the recovery, the restoration of our hope in justice. He prepared the people for "the one to come." 

              At this point your eyes might be glazing over a bit.  And I get that.  Justice like water, wilderness, the least being the greatest.  Metaphors and poetry again.  In our reading, it is as if Luke anticipates this, and offers the very unpoetic, very literal call to justice that John offered.

              If someone needs something to wear, if they are cold, clothe them, give them your jacket.

              If you take money from people, be fair, be honest, don't take more than your due, and certainly don't take more than what is required.

              If you have power over someone, don't abuse it, don't extort, or intimidate or coerce. 

              John's message wasn't, go and search your soul for demons and darkness, or seek to find how the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed.  That is what Jesus teaches.  John's message was be generous and don't be greedy.  The preparation of John was to challenge our fear of money which creates our lack compassion, and the lack of compassion creates abuse of power. 

              In the same way, the good news John preached, was not that the messiah had come or that new day from on high had dawned.  The good news was that you could overcome fear, you could be freed from greed, and in this you could avoid the temptation of abusing power.

              For many years during presbytery meetings, and this was long ago when they met each month and there was soup and a sandwich and the elders were all elderly and small churches had the joy of being filled with folks who sang out loud, for many years during this monthly ritual, there was a point I didn't enjoy.  The point of frustration was what I called the litany of shame.  During the worship service, usually during the communion prayer, the designated pastor of the day would read through our misdeeds: our sexism, our homophobia, our gender bias, our disdain for the poor, our oppression of women's bodies, our racism and classism and all the wrongs of "just-not-very-good-ism."

              Each month, year after year, this list of shame would be read, and each time I struggled.  I did.  Part of the struggle was reading the room. Here was a band of well-intended not highly mobile folks who were loving Jesus, serving the poor, and trying their best to not be a jerk.  This was not a very sinful lot.  Maybe they were back in the day, but now they looked pretty harmless to me and, well, not really the icons of sinfulness, let alone shame.

              Another part of my struggle though was how hopeless it felt.  Month after month we were back to the litany of shame as if it were a predestined verdict of guilt to be read like a Greek tragedy.  Our fate was sealed. Sigmund Freud was our only hope.  We are there to sit in our neurosis, wallow in our tawdriness.  I like Freud, but in small doses.

              Yet, where I really struggled was this: there was no recognition of the good. We are sexists, homophobes, gender biased, haters of the poor, oppressors of women's bodies, racist, classist, bigots.  Amen.  But what about the ordination of women?  What about the blessing of same-sex marriages?  What about our food pantries and leveling of church polity to no longer reward the powerful at the expense of the meek?  What about the good we have seen and the struggle to change? 

              We were in essence preaching like John the Baptist and not listening to the sermon of Jesus.  Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the good news brought to them.  And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me. When it is just the litany of shame, which it was month after month, it was not a moment leading to freedom.  And I can tell you after preaching for 30 years if it doesn't lead to freedom, then it's not the good news.

              It feels like 10 years ago, but I don't think it was that long ago.  I preached a sermon on bathrooms.  Not my usual sermon focus.  But there was a bit of controversy in North Carolina, if I remember right, and there was uproar about transgendered folks and what bathrooms they could use and not use.  The point of my sermon was: as a church our voice should be a call to justice.  Justice here was to remember or reimagine bathrooms as something for human beings, not genders.  It may be hard to see at first, but we can come at this in a whole new way for justice to be done.

              After the service the clerk of session came to my office.  He started right in.  I have to tell you I hated your sermon.  It made me hot.  Here I get all dressed up, put on a tie, and find my seat in the sanctuary.  I didn't do all that to hear about bathrooms or genders or politics in North Carolina.  It really made me mad. 

              He paused a moment for effect.  Then he said, so I get up to pass the plate with the offering, here I am not only a faithful attender I am serving as well.  I get to the back, and I am still torqued.  But then I looked down at the last pew and there, no lie, there was a transgendered kid.  I knew they were.  And now my head starts spinning.  I am walking down the center aisle, plate in hand, and I am thinking, hey pal, maybe the sermon wasn't for you.  Maybe the sermon was for that kid in the last row.

              He looked at me as if to say, "you can talk now." 

              "It was for you too," I said.

              The clerk made some remarks that should not be spoken from the pulpit and then, then we started to talk.  We talked about who needs to hear what, and why it needs to be said and where and how.  And for just a moment, for just the briefest moment, John and Jesus were in the room talking.  The good news of John where we wrestle with our sins and step toward freedom; and the good news of Jesus where we find the kingdom of God, where lives are made better.  For just a moment there was the blessing of not being offended.

              I would be remiss today if we didn't speak to the words of John to the Pharisees.  John is not nice to them; he is caustic.  In his belligerence, though, he gives an important warning: the ax is at the root.

              A few years ago, Brenda Day told me a story about her neighbor who is a Methodist pastor how this Methodist pastor neighbor was really upset.  The Methodists, like the Roman Catholic Church, decided to exclude folks based on their sexuality because the Methodists in Africa would leave if the denomination embraced homosexuals. The African churches said, "no."

              What Brenda recounted next was powerful.  "He turned to me and said, at that moment I could see the next generation of the church get up and leave; we had just lost a generation of the church in that moment."  By this he meant, the ax is at the root.

              I must confess there were times earlier in ministry where I would not have preached about bathrooms in North Carolina.  I would have said something like that is politics or that is a cultural issue not a church issue.  We need to respect everyone's opinion or let's dialogue about this.  Change is hard.  We want to be a purple space where there is red and blue.  But for me, that day has passed.  It has because the ax is at the root.

              I am not here to create a political dialogue.  A church is not a forum of political ideologies.  We are here to listen to John, and we are here to listen to Jesus.  You can get all the political dialogue you desire without any help from me or the church for that matter.  What you should get here is a call to justice and a call to see and hear the kingdom of God, justice made manifest.  Part of listening to John is the litany of shame.  Not an easy moment.  If we are silent about this, then the ax is at the root.  And the ax is at the root if we fail to see and hear the change, the strides, the leaps forward we are making. Good news of a great joy.

              The sermon about bathrooms in North Carolina was for the trans kid in the backrow and the sermon about bathrooms in North Carolina was for the clerk of session as well. I want to be as clear as possible here.  It was for both.  Yes. But I was in no way trying to create a balanced perspective, a dialogue of competing cultural views.  Bathrooms are for human beings was not good news to the clerk.  And it was in no way what he wanted to hear on a Sunday morning in a pew with a nice tie on.  Made him mad.  But let's be clear: what he heard in his heart looking down at the young person in the back row was not "I am sure your opinion is as valuable as mine."  What he heard was: the ax is at the root. Amen.