A Radical Humility (Scorched Earth Grace)

Sermon, 12/5/10 (Advent 2). The first Sunday in Advent, we began coaxing hope for new life in our world. This Sunday, lest our hope be hurried, we stand humbled by John the Baptizer’s stripping of Christmas pretense. His message of scorched earth grace reminds us that it’s only in the midst of death and dying we can receive new life in the world …

Scriptures       Isaiah 11:1-0    Matthew 3:1-12

A Radical Humility (Out of Scorched Earth Grace)

Our missionary member in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Gail Hutchison, recently provided me with a photo of a church’s program board that I now feature on my Facebook profile page.

The program board reads:

EVENINGS AT 7

IN THE PARISH HALL

MON  Alcoholics Anonymous

TUE   Abused Spouses

WED  Eating Disorders

THU  Say No to Drugs

FRI    Teen Suicide Watch

SAT   Soup Kitchen

SUNDAY SERMON: “ AMERICA’S JOYOUS FUTURE”.

In a gentler way: Such is our journey through Advent.

Our world rushes about, celebrating the consumerism mantra that passes for Christmas – that, in the midst of life, we must avoid any signs of death at all costs. And yet, the season of Advent – not unlike the season of Lent – reminds us that our God provides a reverse alternative: That only through crucifixion comes resurrection. That only through some suffering comes true joy. That only through introspection comes ecstasy. That only through daily deaths and dyings willingly undertaken – if not embraced – can we become receptive of the new life God would have to offer to us.

New life – in this crèche.

New life – in our Communion today.

Last Sunday, all we had to do as we celebrated the Church universal’s new year was to ready ourselves for a new hope to arise.

Suitably readied, we today begin to take responsibility. Responsibility to listen – to receive – God’s grace in all its unpresumptuous and unvarnished and even harshly-lit glory. The responsibility to practice repentance – two words combined into one in the Greek, to mean “a revolution of the mind”. And the responsibility to receive it with authentic humility from an eccentric, arrogant-sounding prophet in a desert wilderness, beckoning us out of our city wilderness.

A man easily caricatured – yet, a man not so easily dismissed. A man who understood, as Julia Roberts’ character said to Sally Field’s in the movie Steel Magnolias, that “an ounce of pretension is worth a pound of manure.”

Here he is, set up by the narrator as some sort of circus freak – the story’s foil, that this freak might then be shown to convey more authority than the religious powers-that-be coming out to see his show. But it’s not just a show, to these authorities; for what John seems to be doing is cleansing persons of sins, and for free. He is actually pulling off a bit of prophetic street theater: upstaging the Pharisees with all their reforms, and robbing the Sadducees of their temple authority to perform this liturgical activity at cost. So much for their respectability. So much for, “We have Abraham as our ancestor.”

When I think of the prophet addressing this pride of visiting religious dignitaries, I think of T.S. Eliot’s words from his poem “The Waste Land”:

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water. Only

There is shadow under this red rock,

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you a handful of dust.¹

Meet John the Baptist … and Advent’s good news arriving through him. A man who knows – or who truly seems to know – the good news of a scorched earth grace that God is all you need, when God is all you have.

A man who teaches us – whatever our heritage – to put the axe of our founder creator before the ancestry of our founding fathers and mothers.

A man who leads us to practice the Advent grace of a radical humility.

A radical … humility. I invite you to enjoy with me the etymology of each of these words. Radical comes from the Greek word “radix” – meaning, root. Humility comes from the Latin word “humilis”, meaning low, lowly – from “humus”, meaning ground.

A radical humility. Life rooted in the low, deep places, or one could say in the ground of all being – the favorite phrase of that great theologian Paul Tillich for God.

Ethereal hope (Advent 1) is now earthily humbled (in Advent 2).

Such is the essence of John the Baptist’s language today: Preparing the way, by way of clearing the underbrush from the landscapes of our souls. Urging us to become humbled enough to repent: not that we might achieve new standards of moral worthiness – not primarily, anyway. But that we might welcome God’s desire to restore us as God intended – enough so, at least, to dare welcome the Incarnation to come.

And yet, let us not forget: Lest we find ourselves fleeing a perceived wrath to come, we can only repent and we can only be restored when we first recognize, to quote the Apostle Paul, that we are “rooted and grounded in God’s love.” Only then can we become rooted and grounded in radical humility. Allowing our lives, once glossed over and buffed, to become seared and laid bare. Allowing mirages of peace through vindication to dissolve before visions of peace through vulnerability. Preparing our tentative, trembling, low-laden selves for a God-cum-child.

Only when we first recognize that we are rooted and grounded in God’s love can our citified souls take the desert way, and can we discover – in the poverty of others and the poverty of our spirit – the Advent revelation that we are not only cherished for who we are, but that we are responsible for what we do.”

William Muehl, a professor emeritus at Yale Divinity School, tells this story:

One December afternoon many years ago, a group of parents stood in the lobby of a nursery school waiting to claim their children after the last pre-Christmas class session. As the youngsters ran from their lockers, each one carried in his or her hands the 'surprise,' the brightly wrapped package on which he or she had been working diligently for weeks. One small boy, trying to run, put on his coat and wave all at the same time slipped and fell. The 'surprise' flew out of his grasp, landed on the tile floor and broke with an obvious ceramic crash. The child's first reaction was one of stunned silence. But in a moment he set up an inconsolable wail. His father seeking to comfort him, knelt down and murmured, 'Now, it doesn't matter, son. It's okay. It doesn't matter.' His mother, however, much wiser in such affairs, swept the boy into her arms and said, “Oh but it does matter. It matters a great deal.” And she wept with her son.²

(Moving to the Communion table.) Oh, but it does matter. It matters a great deal. When we find our expectations shattered on the dirty linoleum floor of life.

-- Whether we are too stunned to speak – or too inconsolable to clearly think.

-- Whether we have much love for God – or simply want to love God more.

-- Whether we have much faith – or we have very little.

-- Whether we have been here often – or have not been here long.

-- Whether we have followed – or we have failed.

-- When we find our expectations shattered – or at least stripped of the varnish we had applied to them –

We are invited to this table of radical humility. This preparation for new life to come.

Partaking of Christ’s body as participants in Christ’s body to prepare for Christ’s body, born anew among us …

¹Part I, “The Burial of the Dead”, lines 19-30, found – among others – at http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html.

²As told in David L. Bartlett, “Matthew 3:1-12: Pastoral Perspective”, in Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (eds.), Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary – Year A, Volume 1, Advent through Transfiguration (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), p. 46.