Specificity

Luke 1:68-79, Luke 3:1-6

December 6, 2009

Rochelle A. Stackhouse

In Evelyn Waugh’s marvelous novel Brideshead Revisited, a conversation about Christianity occurs between the two young men who are the center of the book. Charles is a self-proclaimed atheist, while Sebastian, who lives a decidedly un-Christian life, says that he does have faith, he does believe. When pressed by Charles to explain why, at one point Sebastian says that it is such a lovely story.

Well, friends, we are in “lovely story” time of year. The cable channels are full of heartwarming Christmas tales, as are the shelves of the big chain bookstores. Families find each other, children are saved from harm, the poor find relief, the disbelieving find faith. For at least the month of December every year, it is as though Zechariah’s song comes true in popular fiction: “By the tender mercy of our God the dawn from on high will break upon us to give light to those who sit in the shadow of death and to guide our feet in the way of peace.” And while those fictional feel-good stories capture our imaginations, more troops head to Afghanistan, preparations are being made to house the growing homeless population of New Haven in churches and synagogues, families are being broken by divorce, people die too young, in short, the world goes on much as it does the other 11 months of the year, when Zechariah’s song seems at worst a cruel joke or at best a far away hope.

And in this season, the church, the faith itself, threatens to become irrelevant because all this story about peace on earth and good will and all flesh together being guided to peace seems like another fairy tale or Hallmark Channel movie.

This problem is not new to us in our time. The early church felt the same way. Within the first decades after Jesus’ death and resurrection, those who became Christian faced persecution from both Jewish leaders and the powers of Rome. Violence broke out in Jerusalem and elsewhere, and the poor remained poor, families struggled, and people died too young. The great powers of the world and just the inexorable struggle to live seemed larger than any power of good or life could stand against.

So Luke, writing decades after Jesus’ birth, does not begin any part of his telling about John the Baptist or Jesus with the words: “Once upon a time.” He does not offer a lovely story to make us feel better in the midst of the constant tragedy around us. He offers us instead another kind of transformational power in the world and he invites us to join it, to claim it, to see beyond the shadows of death that grip our hearts and cloud our vision.

John’s birth story begins “In the days of King Herod,” and Jesus’ birth story begins “In those days a decree went out from the Emperor Augustus that all the world should be taxed,” and the story of the beginning of both John and Jesus’ ministry starts “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius.” Luke’s telling of these stories is woven through with reminders of the awful powers of his world. It is not fairy tale ogres or witches that we hear about as the villains of the story, but real people about whom the history books tell us, people who lived in a specific time and place. Into a world dominated by the rich and violent, Luke tells us about John, a nobody wandering around in the wilderness of a two-bit province of the great Roman Empire. Luke tells us that John is preparing the way not for a great Prince of Rome or even Israel, but for a carpenter’s son from a Podunk rural town whose mother’s sexual morality was in question when he was born.

Luke tells us that John, rather than fomenting rebellion against the powers and principalities of the world, spent his time and considerable gifts calling other people-- of low account to the above listed rulers-- to stop sinning and seek God’s forgiveness, to turn their lives around and live as God called them to live. Given the build-up Luke has given John, with a miraculous birth and prophecies of greatness, it seems a bit of a let down that John has set his sights so low.

And yet, it’s sort of like that story that makes the rounds of viral email every once in a while about the woman going along a beach and, one by one, throwing sea stars that have washed up on shore back into the ocean before they die. When someone sees what she is doing and stops to ask her why, since throwing a few back in the midst of so many lost won’t make much difference, she responds as she throws another one back, “It makes a difference to this one.”

It started with a few people being immersed in the life giving waters of baptism, but ultimately, John and Jesus made a difference to the world. Augustus was not troubled by the birth of child in Bethlehem of Judea, in fact he’d probably never heard of Bethlehem. Tiberius was not troubled by this crazy prophet on the banks of a small river. The powers of the world took no notice at all of this movement, until they couldn’t NOT take notice because it changed their world. Within 400 years of the events described by Luke, the Christian movement had spread over millions of miles and changed the lives of millions of people for the better in very specific ways. The poor were fed, widows and orphans cared for instead of abandoned, and most important of all, people discovered or rediscovered God, God who did not seek their destruction but who loved them fiercely and showed them how to love fiercely. A couple of nobodies from nowhere with the power of God in them began the continuing work of turning the world right-side up again, and that is the work we inherit and remember when we remember Christmas and how John and Jesus got their start.

Zechariah’s prophecy was that John would begin the work that would lead people into the way of peace. For John, that meant first repairing the broken relationship between individual people and God, for it is by the power of God working in us that we can become peace makers in our families, communities and even on the world stage. When we forget God, or when we believe any power is greater than God, then we let those who break peace on all levels have a power that is not truly theirs and we give in to apathy or hopelessness. When we connect with God, we discover anew and actually believe in the possibility of transformation. When enough people did that in the first century, and when enough people have done that in very specific times and places in the world since, transformation has happened. Poland, East Germany, South Africa, the Philippines, the U.S. in the 50’s and 60’s: transformation for good is possible. What is often needed is that one more specific person to believe and participate, even though they may feel they are only throwing one sea star back into the ocean. You may be that one snowflake that lands on a branch and adds just the weight needed to bend the branch and release the snow. John the Baptist encourages us, not with a lovely story, but with a call to claim our role as those who transform the world in whatever way our gifts lead us, one person, one act, one day at a time. We are those who will show that this is not just a lovely story.

We gather around this table today to find strength to live out our calls as John lived out his. When I was ordained, a friend gave me a rendering of a quote from the author Frederick Buechner that hangs in my office and always reminds me both of John the Baptist and of my own call. I read it when I forget or grow weary or disappointed or feeling like a failure or disillusioned. It is my question to you on this second Sunday of Advent. Buechner asks:

“Are there in us, in you and in me now, that recklessness of the loving heart, that wild courage, that crazy gladness in the face of darkness and death, that shuddering faithfulness even unto the end of the world through which new things can come to pass?”

Amen.