"Clothed with camel's hair"-A sermon for Advent 2, Mark 1:1-8
So, I can almost get on board with John the Baptist’s wardrobe…the whole camel hair and leather belt thing…even his culinary choices…locusts and wild honey. I mean…I wear a leather belt almost every day…I have a few to choose from really in black and brown. And, I love my camel hair blazer…the only problem is living in Austin…because between being a really casual place and seemly always warm…there are fewer opportunities than I would like to actually don it…a few holiday parties each year is about all I get. And locusts…I might initially pass on…although I hear bugs are a great source of protein…some people think they might even be a future effective solution to feeding an ever-growing world. And, I am sort of drawn to gastronomical adventures anyway. And I can totally get on board with wild honey. The more local the better, as it is said to even help our allergies. I mean I would choose some local honey, with a bit of butter, or a toasted piece of freshly baked bread…over just about any dessert out there. And I bet that John the Baptist was really fury…with wild unkempt hair and an un-groomed beard…and just look at me…I love that look…the more curls the merrier. I dig furry. So, maybe I am more John the Baptist-y than I might have originally thought, when I first encountered this passage…about this seemingly wild man living in the wilderness…on the fringes of the civilized world and polite society.
Maybe John is more mainstream than I first imagined. Maybe John could even make it in an Episcopal Church…at least a really casual one. A church like St. Julian’s…where jeans are welcome…and the people are really kind…friendly…inclusive…and a welcoming lot. He might even make us a bit more edgy…set us a part in the crowd…feel more like the prophetic church…who doesn’t get lost in the pomp and circumstance…the formality and neat order…of Episcopal worship…the frozen chosen, as we have been called. He might thaw us out a bit…make us little more rough and tumble…ready for an adventure or two…ready to wrestle a little bit with the challenges that beset the world around us…a little more inclusive of those who look and live differently than most of us do…people like John. And I like thinking about John the Baptist this way…he feels accessible…he has something to offer me…makes me feel a little more, again, edgy and cool…challenging me to be different…but not that different…we both dig camel hair after all.
Now, before I get to far here in the comparisons, it might be important to remember that someone once said…God created us in his likeness and image…and, ever sense then, we have been returning the favor. This, if it wasn’t obvious, was not intended to be a flattering comment on us God loving folk…and of course that is just what I did with John the Baptist…recreating him in my own mage…and, again, I don’t really think that is an altogether good thing. For, John is not to be domesticated. John, I imagine, would not like me to compare my comfortable and privileged life to his own…and, thus, justify my choices and behaviors and attitudes, in favorable ways to his own. John would probably not like me to use him to feel edgy, cool, open-minded, hospitable, or profoundly sacrificial. For, in doing so, I have robbed John of the gift he offers our church each Advent. I have badly diminished the purpose for his God-given prophetic ministry, as the one crying out from the wilderness.
For John, remains ever outside of the church…thank God. He literally comes before the church is even ever established in the bible’s narrative and probably likes it that way. For the church is, indeed, the New Jerusalem, established in Jesus’ death and resurrection…to be Jesus’ witness in all the world. That is to be Jesus’ love-life in all the world…to be Jesus’ heart and hands in real substantive ways…continuing his ministry of making peace where there is violence…reconciling ruptured and broken relationships that divide God’s children one from another…continuing Jesus’ healing ministry that binds up the broken hearted and provides care and companionship for those suffering, in particular, those who are suffering alone. But here’s the rub that John’s prophetic ministry should remind us of…we accomplish these good and Godly things in glorious ways…and we fail miserably at these things in embarrassing ways. For the church may be Jesus’ own heart and hands in this world…but it is entirely made up of humans…just like us.
Thus, we must leave, we have to leave, John in the wilderness…to his blessed wild and prophetic ministry…such that he might always call us out of our places of comfort and privilege…call us to confess once again of our self-orientation and then move in a whole new other focused direction…call us to remember the promises to be Jesus for a hurting world, which we made in our own baptisms…call us out of church and into the wilderness ourselves to suffer and celebrate with all those who God has made and loves and desires us to befriend…to be with…to give ourselves to…and all for love’s sake alone.
Thus, rather than domesticating John the Baptist, we should allow him to stand outside of us, crying out the truth to us about who we really are and how we are really being, and, if necessary, allow him to entirely unsettle us. For in doing so, we are reminded that we are always, blessedly, a work in progress, individually and as a church. Always being and becoming more and more God’s own beloved, who don’t just point people to Jesus, but who are Jesus…born…like at Christmas…into the ordinary…the mundane…even the pain-filled moments that make up the life we live…and, most especially, that we live with others…all others. For this how we just begin to answer, in the most wonderful ways possible, that unique and prophetic voice of John the Baptist, the one who cries out to us from the wilderness…that voice asking us, demanding us, to really be and become, in substantive and transformative way, people baptized with Jesus’ own Spirit for the world which God made and loves…and for all those with whom we share it. Amen.