December 6, 2007
Big Bad John
Advent 2A Mt 3.1-12
John, the Baptiser, was an impatient soul, a prophet with clarion lungs and precious little interest in the liturgical foolishness some of us get into. Indeed, were he to show up in one of the churches some Sunday morning, the more faint-hearted among us would likely cut and run.
It is well to pause and to remember that “prophet” means spokesperson, not fortuneteller, and that the role of the prophet is to unmask pretense. It’s not a welcome task. There is so much of it to unmask nowadays. Furthermore, there’s little evidence to suggest that anyone ever asked a prophet home for dinner more than once.
Prophets are necessary. The church is too easily tempted to think of itself as a kind of exclusive society. It seems sometimes even to glory in the idea. For example, the church rightly embraces its commission to make disciples of all nations, seems to understand this as what evangelism is all about, and can even lead the pretense parade about it.
Such, of course, is truly a noble charge and from our Lord himself. But it can become a dangerously subtle way to presume that evangelism simply means to make others like ourselves and then to overwhelm the world in “clonial” triumph. Dwelling on this, as we are prone to do, we can overlook an even more important and prior commitment, a wider and deeper evangelism to which we are called and which scares the socks off many.
When the early church was itself chosen, and given that “Great Commission” to make disciples, it was never set free to that ministry until it first attended to the “Great Commandment,” the commandment to love God and neighbor as self, and thus to become a community where that holy order is fulfilled. Some call this the so-called “prophetic imagination.” You’ll find it embodied deeply in the Baptismal Covenant.
Listening to and embracing these vows, we can hear them call us away from the presumption of grandeur and numbers and remind us that our true service to the world and an even greater evangelism is not all that different from the one described by the prophet in Isaiah… not to overwhelm the world in triumph but to suffer and die for the world in love and justice. The Baptismal Covenant’s prophetic message, as well, is not one to overwhelm, but to love. It is to that imaginative ministry that we are called.
Love, however, is singularly personal and at most a matter no wider than one’s family and close friends. The church as institution cannot love, and it is foolish to think that it can. But it can fulfill the Lord’s Great Commandment to love by creating and modeling a just community where people can live together in security and safety, and in mutual commitment and freedom to be at peace, to discover and to become who they are.
Advent calls us not only to the ultimate joy of Christmas, but as well to remind us that there is no more winsome evangelism than to become like a great magnet drawing women and men and children into this new creation.
Our colleagues in the United Church of Christ once dared such an invitation in a TV commercial, welcoming all sorts and conditions of folk. The television networks refused to run it, labeling it “too controversial,” and what is even worse, calling it contrary to the Administration’s opposition to gay marriage (which is not even mentioned in the commercial).
The UCC chose to live by such prophetic imagination and needs have no concern for its own righteousness, but only to help create a fair, just, and open community. Obviously, the networks were simply not into that sort of thing. Like the prophets, however, the UCC may well not be invited out socially a second time.
1 Comment »
RSS feed for comments on this post.
| TrackBack URI
You can also bookmark
this on del.icio.us or check the cosmos
How can I subscribe to your writings. I have enjoyed them and been challenged by them. In a move I lost the coonection for a subscription. Thanks
Comment by Mark LInder — December 7, 2007 @ 8:06 am