Dec. 4, 2016

Matthew 3:1-12

Isaiah 11:1-10

 

I’m not sure if this counts as a poem or not. But, it is called, “The best poem ever,” and I thought I would begin here.

 

What if, says a small child to me this afternoon,

We made a poem without using any words at all?

Wouldn’t that be cool? You could use long twigs,

And feathers, or spider strands, and arrange them

So that people imagine what words could be there.

Wouldn’t that be cool? So there’s a different poem

For each reader. That would be the best poem ever.

The poem wouldn’t be on the page, right? It would

Be in the air, sort of. It would be between the twigs

And the person’s eyes, or behind the person’s eyes,

After the person saw whatever poem he or she saw.

Maybe there are a lot of poems that you can’t write

Down. Couldn’t that be?  But they’re still there even

If no one can write them down, right? Poems in

Books are only a little bit of all the poems there are.

Those are only the poems someone found words for.[1]

 

Wouldn’t it be cool if everywhere you looked you saw poetry?  That, I think, would be a profoundly sacred way of seeing the world, of living your life.  The first thing it would take, according to the wisdom of this small (but evidently brilliant) child, is the ability and willingness to rethink what it means to be a poem.  If you are willing to think beyond words on a page, then your whole vision of reality and all that’s happening beyond your vision might change.  Your next discovery could happen at any moment.  In fact, knowing what you now know you should practically expect it.

Advent is the perfect time to rethink what you think.  It is the season for asking ourselves what kind of a god our God is.  Is our God big enough, or have we in our limited ways limited God into something/someone who can’t mean as much as God might otherwise?

Today John calls the Pharisees a “brood of vipers.” Who warned you to come and repent, and why would you go to the trouble if you have no plans to change anything?  Jesus, as we know, isn’t all that easy on the Pharisees either.  He didn’t mind flaws in people, but he had a real objection to those who thought it was their job to point those flaws out.  It was the hypocrisy of the “religious” that drove Jesus nuts because that hypocrisy only served to blind everybody to the greater good of God around them.

Can you imagine if, after being called to the carpet by Jesus, (pick from any number of his confrontations with him,) the Pharisees said, “We’ve heard you.  We got it wrong.  We’re here because we’re sorry.  We’re here to let go of all we’ve been clinging to and insisting upon, and we’re here to go wherever you take us.”  Can you imagine what might have unfolded in their lives?  In their hearts?  In their minds?  Can you imagine the God who might emerge for them, the opportunities for growth, for inspiration, for ministry, for love they would have encountered?

I told you a few weeks ago about the man for whom I’ve been serving as a mentor for a number of years now.  As he predicted, he failed his final round of interviews for ordination.  Though he has served many Methodist churches, he will never serve one as an ordained Elder.

We debriefed a bit the other day.  Of course, I asked how he was doing and of course he was hurting.  But, he also told me that he had peace despite the hurt.  I asked what his plans were.  Was he going to finish out his current appointment?  (Remember, in the Methodist church the bishop appoints pastors to congregations, which gives someone who has received the slap that I feel my friend has received the opportunity to say, “Nuts to you.  If I’m not good enough to be ordained, I’m not good enough to serve your church.  You can do it yourself.  I’m out of here.”)

But, that response didn’t seem to be on his radar.  He reiterated the peace he felt.  He talked about how God was already opening doors.  He said that he had learned very clearly that when he plans and work on his own he fails.  But, when it is God at work everything is different.  “I do not know what is next,” he told me.  “But, I know that my ideas are limited, and I know that God’s ideas are not.”

What a beautiful and powerful thing to know.  God’s ideas for him are not limited.  He may not see them, but he sees a God who does.  It occurs to me that that kind of vision is pretty rare.  That kind of vision would serve a church pretty well; after all, who here hasn’t had to suffer through the pain of rejection, disappointment, and deep uncertainty?  Who couldn’t use some help in learning to trust in God’s wisdom when our own has reached its limits?

We receive a confusing God in this morning’s scriptures.  Isaiah tells of a messianic king.  It’s verse 3 that stands out, “His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.”  Fear means awe.  Fear means wonder.  But, it also means fear.  And fear strikes me as a strange thing to delight in.  What an odd way to be – to delight in fear, to find joy in being overwhelmed and subordinated by a great and foreign force.

Certainly, there’s fear too in our gospel passage.  There’s wrath, and judgment, and unquenchable fire.  Yet, throughout the gospels there’s also the pervasive, persistent message of Christ and his angels, “Do not be afraid.  Fear not.”  There the king, the heavenly judge is, separating the wheat from the chaff.  But, we need to remember that wheat and chaff grow on the same plant until they are separated.  The judgement hurts but it helps.  Could it be a good thing that the chaff is entirely burned away?  I think it could if we are willing to imagine a God who doesn’t see in terms of either/or, a God who sees the wheat and the chaff within us, and burns the chaff only out of love for the whole plant.

I love the conflicting images we get this morning.  I love them because they serve to scramble our thinking and open us to something more.  Our narthex art does the same, I think.  Have you seen this painting before?  It’s Henry Ossawa Tanner’s version of the Annunciation, the moment when the angel Gabriel announces to an unwed Mary that she’ll carry the Christ within her.  I’ve seen many Annunciations, but not many like this one.   If you look at Mary you’ll see: she’s scared, but safe enough to be interested.  She’s small, humble in posture, but also available.  She’s alone, not apparently powerful in any way, and yet she’s illuminated; she’s aglow in divine light.

Mary isn’t one way or another; she isn’t either/or; she’s a different option.  She’s the embodiment of the kind of knowing that knows that God knows.

Richard Rohr suggests that God is always a third option, an unexpected and unpredicted solution.  Whereas we tend to live in a binary universe, a “this way” or “that way” kind of reality, God exists in a “ternary” world, which means that we can have our perspectives but we can also fully expect and await “some third force to arrive and surprise us all out of our neat little boxes.”  That’s the way God works.  Says Rohr, “The exact form third force takes is beside the point, nor is it that the first and second force suddenly find themselves invalidated in the face of some newer, shinier debut.  Instead, it’s that this third force redeems each position and gives everyone a valuable role to play in the creation of something genuinely new – a fourth possibility that becomes the new field of our collective arising.”[2]

Maybe this sounds abstract to you.  My colleagues at lectionary group thought it was pretty cool, so I asked them, “Can you think of times when you’ve been surprised by the third option?”  One responded, “I can think of so many times.”  He recalled his days in the business world, needing to have a meeting with a difficult boss.  He predicted all sorts of contentious scenarios, but emerged from the meeting shocked by an outcome that he wouldn’t even have thought to pray for.

Another colleague shared his struggle.  “I keep thinking, ‘Is all this really true?’”  “Is what true,” I asked.  “All of it,” he said, “God, Christ, resurrection, the bible.  It’s all so crazy.  And yet, the undeniable thing that keeps happening within me is the desire to share God’s love, to proclaim, to preach.  I feel it so strongly, and it’s just not coming from me.”

One other shared, “You know, I had imagined that a spiritual awakening would give me faith and would bring me healing.  And, it did.  But, what I never imagined and what I still can’t believe is that there’s more; it made me serve, it made me go beyond, suddenly I was actually being used.  I never pictured that for myself.”

It’s funny, there we had gathered with the intention of trying to figure out a way for old and familiar passages to take on new life, and in our sharing with one another we found that the new life was taking on us.  The discussion became sacred, and so did these old passages, and so did the work of being the church for and with one another.  For me it was a pretty unexpected and undeniable arising of that third force.

John the Baptist calls us to repent.  Repentance means turning to God.  So now and always, as we repent, I hope that will mean a willingness to be confused, and surprised, and even delighted in fear and wonder and awe.  God’s ways in our world aren’t easily predicted because God doesn’t share our limits.  There’s always a third force working among us.  The trick, I think, to the kind of knowing that will sustain and propel us is much like “the best poem ever.”  It’s there for us when we are willing to rethink what we think.

[1] The Christian Century, Nov. 23, 2016, page 13.

[2] The Divine Dance, page 93.