December 10, 2000
© 2000 Grant M. Gallup
Baruch 5:1-9 Dress up for the ride home.
Psalm 126 In Convertendo - then were we like those who dream
Philippians 1:1-11 Sharing: prison, defense, confirmation.
Luke 3:1-6 A baptism of Change.
Take from eucharist today three words from the Word. Swallow and digest them as you swallow and digest the freshest Bread of Tomorrow and the heady Wine of the best of years. Just as you take into your hands the Cup of Blessing and these Crumbs from the King's table, take also these truly comfortable words--these words of strength:
John the Baptist is the one who speaks to us the word "Prepare." He comes onstage in the musical play "Godspell," remember, with a sponge and a bucket of water, splashing it over the other members of the cast, singing "Prepare ye the way of the Lord, prepare ye the way of the Lord." John came yelling justice--he was the first New Testament liberation theologian, not a televangelist hustler. According to Jesus, he was the greatest of all the prophets. We tend to forget how great John was indeed, because we've had Jesus and Mohammad since, and Martin Luther, and Martin Luther King Jr., into the bargain. And a host of others. We tend to forget that, because John was so very great that the church at the beginning feared he might outshine Jesus, and when the gospels were written down, he too was "written down"-- and the writers went out of their way to make him only an ad for Adidas, a Fore-Runner, a curtain raiser, and not part of the main act. But Jesus never spoke of John as an "only" or as a "mere." Jesus said he was "the greatest person ever born of a woman." That's a big guy.
John came preaching PREPARE, and Luke sets John's word in history. He tells us this all occured when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, when Tiberias had been fifteen years as emperor, when Herod was quarter-horse ruler of Galilee, and when Caiaphas was High Priest (with his father in law Annas still having his hand in, though semi-retired--like old George Herbert Walker Bush).
Pretty precise in his dating, Luke was: about 27 or 28 C.E.--perhaps the month of August or Sepember. PREPARATION had to take place specifically, at some time, not at any old time. It had to take place AT THIS TIME. Luke almost clicks his stop-watch to indicate when GET READY must begin. He doesn't tell us this, but we know it anyway--that about that time the Han dynasty was beginning in China, Cymbelline was being recognized as King of the Britons, London was just being settled, Italians were first using the soap they'd got from France, the Pantheon was being built to house the many homeless gods in Rome, and the oboe had just been invented there. The Japanese had recently begun their wrestling matches, and Pontius Pilate had replaced Archelaus as Tetrarch of Galilee. Jesus was still living at home with his Jewish parents. He was preparing. As the old world drew on towards night.
When we use the word PREPARE we forget that it is made up of two words, "Pre" (meaning beforehand), and "Pare" (meaning to cut), as in paring vegetables or trimming fat off meat before cooking. To prepare is to take action beforehand, in planning and plotting the future. Look at all the agenda items there:
Everything we're living with now, what these have come to be in our time and in our experience, all had their PREPARATION back in year 27 of the Common Era, Anno Domini.
What we are doing today in our nations, states, cities, villages and hamlets (towns without a parish) --whether we like it or not-- is *preparation* for what's coming. The college of electors and the bankers of Wall Street are preparing for the new Emperor of the World to be revealed. Several great powers of the air have prepared themselves for the destruction of all life on the planet, should they find it financially profitable. Americans have been prepared for several generations now to kill Russians, Cubans, or even Martians, should it be to our advantage and of benefit to the military industrial complex. They're disappointed that Koreans are kissing and making up--there goes another gun sale down the tubes. Ronald Reagan was the first president to articulate the "threat to our world from some other species from another planet." But the world we live in is the one in which we find the threatening species, and the threatened.
You get what you prepare for. We are preparing for the dustbin of history. But J.B. says "Prepare ye the way of the Lord." Fill up the valleys of poverty, pull down the mountains of privilege, selfishness, and greed.
Whose WAY are you preparing in your own little life and times, your own commitments, your own habits, your own spiritual exercises? Are you preparing the way of the Lord? Are you preparing for a way to continue racism, class privilege, continued expenditure of your tax money and your own future on militarism and the U.S. continued bullying of the Two Thirds World. If so, you are preparing the way of death and hell.
J.B. says: Prepare ye the Way of the Lord.
St. Paul writes to us today a lot of words--they are the usual "religious" words we hear from Paul. We hear them so often that we don't really listen to them anymore. Here's the list I made from the epistle reading: Grace, Peace, Joy, Partnership, Good Work, Defense, Confirmation, Affection, Love, Knowledge, Discernment, Excellent, Pure, Blameless, Justice, Glory, Praise. I want to pick just one out of this list, one we don't often year from St. Paul, or think of as a particularly "religious" word. It means INSIGHT. The Greek word there is AESTHESIS, from which we get our English word aesthetic. We associate this word with "taste". Aesthetics is the discipline concerned with recognizing the good, the true, the beautiful. What is it that makes some poeple able to see that Pablo Picasso was a great artist, and Norman Rockwell only an amusing illustrator? That Jerry Falwell is a bigot and a humbug, and Desmond Tutu a saint? The answer is, DISCERNMENT. What is it that made some people able to recognize Sandino as "El General de Los hombres Libres" and Somoza as "El Monstruo." What is it tht makes some people able to hear the Johann Sebastian Bach was a genius, Stevie Wonder immensely gifted, and the Cambridge Singers angel voices amongst us, and that "rock music" is a contradiction in terms. Taste. Discernment. Aesthesis.
Discernment is a gift of God which helps us to appreciate the gifts of God, and it helps us to see not only into such things as Beauty, but to hear and taste and smell goodness and truth as well. Bishop John Robinson said that the Christian was equipped with a set of invisible antennae that twitched so as to inform him or her of the moving of God's Spirit in a matter. That's discernment. Without it there will be no growth, no growing up into maturity, no growing into God.
The word from J.B. was "Prepare." The word from Paul is "Discern." Figure out what's gloing on around you and in you and in your world. Figure out where God's spirit is leading you.
Finally, from Baruch, the secretary of Jeremiah the Prophet, there is the final word to take home and chew up and swallow for our Advent II Sunday brunch. CHANGE. (It's in the other readings, too--John calls it "repent" and Paul uses many words, like "improve, increase, deepen". Baruch wrote for a people about to return from exile, from diaspora, from years of being away.
In the U.S., we have been "away" for a long time; we have abandoned the charters and covenants upon which the republic was founded, and the commitment to character upon which it was built. Think of it. How wonderful it would be if we could summon up not only John Baptist to stand here today, and throw some water around (Dubya would disappear like a devil in holy water), but John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine, to throw some ink around to compete with the propaganda of the U.S. Press. Wouldn't it be good to have some revolutionaries like them back in Washington? They'd get along fine with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez and Jesse Jackson.
Baruch says we need to CHANGE. WE need to change clothes, to begin with: to take off the clothes of sorrow and distress and suspicion and put on some beautiful clothes of glory, a cloak of integrity, and a new hat: a diadem of life for the coming age. "Since God means to show your splendor to every nation under heaven" Well it isn't the splendor of our people and our republic that are being shown to the world now--it's the underhandedness, the uncleanness, the selfishness, the bullying: that's been shown to all the nations in the "free and open" election for President and Emperor. Baruch says CHANGE YOUR CLOTHES: Peace through Integrity, Honor through Faithfulness. Get up, Jerusalem, Get up Gringolandia, and turn around and take a look. The nation needs to come back to itself. God says that 'though the values of this nation have gone into exile, like prisoners roped together in a chain gang, they're coming back like royalty sitting in sedan chairs. For God has decreed the flattening, the levelling, of the high and mighty, and the lifting up of the low and humble, so that there will be safety and equality. And God will guide the people in joy, with mercy and integrity as its escorts, its "guardaespaldas". But there will have to be change from the way we're doing things now as a people--maybe even the way we choose our leaders.
Three witnesses, John, Paul, Baruch, offer three words.
Swallow them with the Sacrament. Be nourished. Grow. Change.
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