The Voice Crying in the Wilderness

A Sermon Shared With St. Matthew’s, St. Paul, December 11, 2011

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; Psalm 126; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8, 19-28

Blair Pogue

The third Sunday of Advent is often a time when churches have their Christmas pageants. Knowing that a quite a few members will be away for Christmas, many congregations bypass the end of the already short season of Advent and leap into Christmas. Hopeful waiting is hard. It’s hard to keep looking at those tempting presents under the tree without being able to open them!

I am thankful that St. Matthew’s has its version of the Christmas pageant on December 24, and that it is a low key affair. If you haven’t been yet, the children present and I retell the Christmas story Godly-play style with wondering questions, and any child can participate.

The first church I served had a fairly elaborate Christmas pageant that I both looked forward to and dreaded each year. To begin with, we had to put together a wooden stage, which had to be carried by at least three of us from one of the outbuildings to the church and then carefully reconstructed. Even more than this, the children were hyped up on sweets and excitement about Christmas and stressed out about the lines they had to memorize.

The other part I struggled with was the rector’s insistence that Jesus had to be a flashlight. My first boss out of seminary could barely make up his mind about anything, but when he did, he wouldn’t budge. For whatever reason or reasons, he was convinced that baby Jesus was best portrayed by the office flashlight.

I will never forget the looks on the faces of the cherubic angels and sheep as they crept over to the baby in the manger wrapped in swaddling clothes and took a look, expecting to see a cute baby doll. Their horror got in the way of any interest in thinking about Jesus as the light – or flashlight – of the world.

What, I wonder, would an Advent pageant based on today’s Gospel look like?** I guess you could have a lone child – ideally an inspiring actor or actress on a spare stage set – perhaps in front of a black curtain. He or she would be John the voice, crying in the wilderness, pointing and testifying to the light. They you would have a few religious leaders from the Jerusalem Temple enter stage left and interrogate John, trying to pinpoint his identity. Is John the Messiah, the anointed one, the long-hoped for savior of the Jews? No. Is John Elijah? No, but he sure looks and acts like him. Is he Moses? No.

Evoking imagery from Isaiah that everyone present would have been familiar with, John describes himself as the voice crying out in the wilderness: “Make straight the way of the Lord.” Here John is not identified as the baptizer, but the voice crying out from the margins, a voice crying out from a place of transition and challenge. Wake up. The Messiah is here. Get your house in order. God is about to do a BIG THING.

John points to Jesus, the light of the world. John makes it clear that he is not the light. He testifies to Jesus with his words and with every fiber of his being. He points to Jesus by the way he lives his life, the choices he makes, his clarity about who Jesus is and who he is in relationship to Jesus. How many public figures can you name who humbly point to someone and something beyond themselves as the ultimate source of truth and meaning?

There is no baby in this Advent pageant. John – and by implication Jesus – are adults here. In Advent we begin at the end of time and work backward until we come to a place on the margins of the Roman Empire next week where an unknown, poor unmarried Jewish girl is pregnant with the savior of the world.

What Advent is about is the promise that God’s going to make things right. What does this look like? Our reading from Isaiah 61 gives us a picture. There’s healing, freedom, release, comfort, praise, renewal, justice, accountability, and right living. Debts are wiped away. (Does that sound like good news to anyone in today’s world?) Slaves are freed. Fields are allowed to lie fallow to be rejuvenated. There is rest for the weary. Cities are rebuilt. It is no accident that Jesus reads the same passage from Isaiah in his hometown synagogue as his public ministry begins. This is what Jesus is all about.

So it is that we gather, not yet at Christmas, and listen and look for a different voice, one that speaks directly to the hurt in ourselves and in our world. We stave off the flashy bustle of what our culture has made out of Christmas long enough to tend to the quieter yearnings and emptiness underneath. We acknowledge, like Isaiah and John, the pain of our broken lives and our broken world.

An Advent pageant would definitely be less merry and more stark than a Christmas pageant, but perhaps it would speak more clearly to some of the longings and realities we actually face. While we are eager for the Word made flesh in the manger, the Light of the World, we can only embrace him wholeheartedly if we sit in the darkness, if we journey through Advent patiently.

Can you hear a voice of promise amidst the world’s cries of pain and sorrow? Can you hear a message of peace speaking through the disquiet of our lives? Can you feel the comfort of a presence that endures when the bright, shiny bustle and distractions of the season fade away? Listen. Look. God is coming, not where the world expects him. God is coming in vulnerability and power, coming in the deep silence and the deepest darkness, bringing light. Let’s receive it and spread it around. Amen.

** The idea of an “Advent pageant” came from the Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor in her reflection on today’s Gospel in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year B, Volume 1 (Westminister, 2008). She is one of the best preachers around and my role model. I dedicate this sermon to her.