December 6, 2009
Luke 3.1-6
In this morning’s Gospel, we are faced with the formidable figure of John the Baptist. The impression we get from Luke is of someone we probably wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley. He comes across to us through the ages as a man crazed. Certainly it would be difficult for any of us to take the words of a man like this seriously. Especially when he’s saying things like, “prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
Somehow, in the way John the Baptist proclaims it, this is not so much hopeful as frightening. It is a message that startles us and jolts us at our very core.
But this is the true message of Advent. Like John the Baptist and those who eagerly awaited the Messiah, this time of waiting was almost painful. When we look at it from that perspective, we see that maybe John isn’t being quite as difficult and windy as we initially thought. Rather his message is one of almost excruciating expectation.
One of my favorite books of recent years is called The Forgotten Desert Mothers. Last week I referenced a book about St. Antony of Egypt. Both of these books are about those early Christians who tended to take the words we heard this morning from the Baptist as literally as they could. These desert mothers and fathers have a lot to teach us. Like, us, they lived in an age of uncertainty. Many had suffered dearly during the persecutions against Christians. Others had previously been pagans who lived lives of excess. It was a time when nothing in the world seemed too stable. Governments gave way to stronger governments. Differing religions battled each other for what each perceived to be “the truth.” And so too did many Christians. It sounds familiar doesn’t it?
In the face of all of this uncertainty, these men and women heard the call of the Baptist. “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”
In response they did something we might find unusual. We, as modern Christians, are taught that we must not only live out our faith, but also, in some way, must proclaim our faith to those around us. We take seriously the command to go out into the world and proclaim what we believe. Certainly that is what we will do this morning when we recite the creed. It is what we do when we go out to feed the hungry or to tend the sick. We do it when we reach out to others in the name of Christ.
These early Christians, however, did the exact opposite. They retreated from society and went off to the desert, in this case usually the deserts of Egypt and Palestine. Oftentimes, coming from wealthy homes and positions of authority, they sold it all, gave the money to the poor and went off to live alone. And we’re not talking about a few individuals here. We’re talking about people leaving in droves. The deserts were literally populated with men and women who tried to leave it all behind. More often than not, they formed loosely-organized communities, usually around a church, in which they lived and prayed alone for most of the time, only coming together to pray the Psalms or celebrate Eucharist. Their lives in the desert weren’t, as you can imagine, comfortable lives by any means. Some walled themselves up in abandoned tombs. Others lived in caves. One went so far as to crawl stop a tall pillar and live there for years on end, exposed to the elements.
Even then they couldn’t completely escape what they left behind. Many of the stories tell of these poor souls being tormented by demons and temptations. It’s not hard to imagine that, yes, alone in a dark tomb or cave, one would be forced to face all the darkest recesses of one’s soul. Part of the process of separating one’s self from the world involved finally wrestling with all those issues one carries into the desert.
Few of us in this day and age would view this kind of existence as the ideal Christian life. In fact, most of would probably look on it as a sort of insanity. But at the time, in that place, people began to see this as the ideal. People, I imagine, were tired of the day-to-day grind of working, slaving, fending for themselves in a sometimes unfriendly society. They felt distant from God and they were not able to find God in the society in which they lived.
The idea of going off and being alone with God was very appealing. Of course, even this seemingly simple and pure way of living was soon tarnished by another form excess. Some of the people who went off to live in the desert were simply mentally unsound to begin with. Others went insane after years of living alone in a tomb or a cave. They abused their bodies, sometimes to the point of death, by whipping themselves, by chaining themselves to walls, by not taking care of themselves physically, or simply starving themselves to a point close to death. Some even went so far as castrating themselves for the kingdom of heaven.
But despite these abuses, the message of the desert mothers and fathers to us is still a valid one. The whole reason they went off like they did was to shed everything that separated them from their waiting for God. They sought to make their very lives a living Advent. They were waiting expectantly and anxiously for Christ. And by mortifying themselves, by chastising their bodies and fasting, they would be prepared for his coming again. Although I hope no one here is called to a life quite that extreme, I think their message speaks to us clearly in these days before Christmas.
We should find ways to prepare for the Incarnate God’s coming to us.
If you noticed as you came to church today the message James put on our outdoor sign. The prayer James put out there is
Lord Jesus quickly come
It is, of course, an homage to the beautiful motet by the late, great church composer Paul Manz, who died in October.
But it is also the perfect summation of this Advent season.
Lord Jesus, quickly come.
It is the prayer we should all be praying as we prepare the way of the of the Lord. It should bb the prayer that is on our lips constantly in these days before Christmas.
This past week, Joanne Droppers lent me one of the most beautiful books I’ve read in some time. The book is Exiles by Ron Hansen. I have long been a fan of Hansen, every since I read his exceptionally beautiful novel Mariette in Ecstasy.
In Exiles, Hansen examines, in his fiction, the story of the great poet and Jesuit priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins. More importantly what he examines is the incident behind Hopkin’s most famous poem, “The Wreck of the Deutschland.”
On this day—December 6—in 1875, a German passenger steamer, The Deutschland, on its way from Bremerhaven to New York, ran aground in a blizzard on a sandy shoal in the Thames estuary near Harwich, England. After several hours of being trapped there, early on the morning of December 7 the ship began to take on water and the captain order the ship to be abandoned. The passengers panicked and people began falling into the freezing water. Among the several hundred who died were five Franciscan nuns who were fleeing the anti-Catholic sentiments that were sweeping Germany at the time. All five died. But as they floundered in the water, they were heard crying out one prayer. As Hopkins puts it in his poem:
“And they the prey of the gales;
She the black-about air, to the breaker, the thickly
Falling flakes, to the throng that catches and quails
Was calling ‘O Christ, Christ, come quickly’:
The cross to her she calls Christ to her, christens her wild-worst Best.”
Whether we look at our Advent as a desert or as the freezing waters that rise about us to overwhelm us, the fact is, this is our time to cry out as that sister did in those freezing waters.
Both places are frightening. John’s wilderness if frightening. And at times, these moment sof expectation are frightening. But, still, even in these frightening moments, we can still give voice to that for whom we long:
Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly.
In it, we find our hope and our longing articulated. We find that we can now see the goal for which we are working. We can look into the gloom, into the frightening future and see that all is not lost. He is coming. And he is racing to us. And the speed with which he comes to us may even frighten us as well. Or maybe, it is simply that we are excited and overjoyed by it.
He is coming to us. And when he does, truly “all flesh shall see the salvation of God” in our midst.
Luke 3.1-6
In this morning’s Gospel, we are faced with the formidable figure of John the Baptist. The impression we get from Luke is of someone we probably wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley. He comes across to us through the ages as a man crazed. Certainly it would be difficult for any of us to take the words of a man like this seriously. Especially when he’s saying things like, “prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
Somehow, in the way John the Baptist proclaims it, this is not so much hopeful as frightening. It is a message that startles us and jolts us at our very core.
But this is the true message of Advent. Like John the Baptist and those who eagerly awaited the Messiah, this time of waiting was almost painful. When we look at it from that perspective, we see that maybe John isn’t being quite as difficult and windy as we initially thought. Rather his message is one of almost excruciating expectation.
One of my favorite books of recent years is called The Forgotten Desert Mothers. Last week I referenced a book about St. Antony of Egypt. Both of these books are about those early Christians who tended to take the words we heard this morning from the Baptist as literally as they could. These desert mothers and fathers have a lot to teach us. Like, us, they lived in an age of uncertainty. Many had suffered dearly during the persecutions against Christians. Others had previously been pagans who lived lives of excess. It was a time when nothing in the world seemed too stable. Governments gave way to stronger governments. Differing religions battled each other for what each perceived to be “the truth.” And so too did many Christians. It sounds familiar doesn’t it?
In the face of all of this uncertainty, these men and women heard the call of the Baptist. “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”
In response they did something we might find unusual. We, as modern Christians, are taught that we must not only live out our faith, but also, in some way, must proclaim our faith to those around us. We take seriously the command to go out into the world and proclaim what we believe. Certainly that is what we will do this morning when we recite the creed. It is what we do when we go out to feed the hungry or to tend the sick. We do it when we reach out to others in the name of Christ.
These early Christians, however, did the exact opposite. They retreated from society and went off to the desert, in this case usually the deserts of Egypt and Palestine. Oftentimes, coming from wealthy homes and positions of authority, they sold it all, gave the money to the poor and went off to live alone. And we’re not talking about a few individuals here. We’re talking about people leaving in droves. The deserts were literally populated with men and women who tried to leave it all behind. More often than not, they formed loosely-organized communities, usually around a church, in which they lived and prayed alone for most of the time, only coming together to pray the Psalms or celebrate Eucharist. Their lives in the desert weren’t, as you can imagine, comfortable lives by any means. Some walled themselves up in abandoned tombs. Others lived in caves. One went so far as to crawl stop a tall pillar and live there for years on end, exposed to the elements.
Even then they couldn’t completely escape what they left behind. Many of the stories tell of these poor souls being tormented by demons and temptations. It’s not hard to imagine that, yes, alone in a dark tomb or cave, one would be forced to face all the darkest recesses of one’s soul. Part of the process of separating one’s self from the world involved finally wrestling with all those issues one carries into the desert.
Few of us in this day and age would view this kind of existence as the ideal Christian life. In fact, most of would probably look on it as a sort of insanity. But at the time, in that place, people began to see this as the ideal. People, I imagine, were tired of the day-to-day grind of working, slaving, fending for themselves in a sometimes unfriendly society. They felt distant from God and they were not able to find God in the society in which they lived.
The idea of going off and being alone with God was very appealing. Of course, even this seemingly simple and pure way of living was soon tarnished by another form excess. Some of the people who went off to live in the desert were simply mentally unsound to begin with. Others went insane after years of living alone in a tomb or a cave. They abused their bodies, sometimes to the point of death, by whipping themselves, by chaining themselves to walls, by not taking care of themselves physically, or simply starving themselves to a point close to death. Some even went so far as castrating themselves for the kingdom of heaven.
But despite these abuses, the message of the desert mothers and fathers to us is still a valid one. The whole reason they went off like they did was to shed everything that separated them from their waiting for God. They sought to make their very lives a living Advent. They were waiting expectantly and anxiously for Christ. And by mortifying themselves, by chastising their bodies and fasting, they would be prepared for his coming again. Although I hope no one here is called to a life quite that extreme, I think their message speaks to us clearly in these days before Christmas.
We should find ways to prepare for the Incarnate God’s coming to us.
If you noticed as you came to church today the message James put on our outdoor sign. The prayer James put out there is
Lord Jesus quickly come
It is, of course, an homage to the beautiful motet by the late, great church composer Paul Manz, who died in October.
But it is also the perfect summation of this Advent season.
Lord Jesus, quickly come.
It is the prayer we should all be praying as we prepare the way of the of the Lord. It should bb the prayer that is on our lips constantly in these days before Christmas.
This past week, Joanne Droppers lent me one of the most beautiful books I’ve read in some time. The book is Exiles by Ron Hansen. I have long been a fan of Hansen, every since I read his exceptionally beautiful novel Mariette in Ecstasy.
In Exiles, Hansen examines, in his fiction, the story of the great poet and Jesuit priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins. More importantly what he examines is the incident behind Hopkin’s most famous poem, “The Wreck of the Deutschland.”
On this day—December 6—in 1875, a German passenger steamer, The Deutschland, on its way from Bremerhaven to New York, ran aground in a blizzard on a sandy shoal in the Thames estuary near Harwich, England. After several hours of being trapped there, early on the morning of December 7 the ship began to take on water and the captain order the ship to be abandoned. The passengers panicked and people began falling into the freezing water. Among the several hundred who died were five Franciscan nuns who were fleeing the anti-Catholic sentiments that were sweeping Germany at the time. All five died. But as they floundered in the water, they were heard crying out one prayer. As Hopkins puts it in his poem:
“And they the prey of the gales;
She the black-about air, to the breaker, the thickly
Falling flakes, to the throng that catches and quails
Was calling ‘O Christ, Christ, come quickly’:
The cross to her she calls Christ to her, christens her wild-worst Best.”
Whether we look at our Advent as a desert or as the freezing waters that rise about us to overwhelm us, the fact is, this is our time to cry out as that sister did in those freezing waters.
Both places are frightening. John’s wilderness if frightening. And at times, these moment sof expectation are frightening. But, still, even in these frightening moments, we can still give voice to that for whom we long:
Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly.
In it, we find our hope and our longing articulated. We find that we can now see the goal for which we are working. We can look into the gloom, into the frightening future and see that all is not lost. He is coming. And he is racing to us. And the speed with which he comes to us may even frighten us as well. Or maybe, it is simply that we are excited and overjoyed by it.
He is coming to us. And when he does, truly “all flesh shall see the salvation of God” in our midst.
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