This is a sermon that I preached on Sunday, 12/8/24, at Berkeley Friends Church. The scripture reading for this sermon was: Luke 3:1-18. You can listen to the audio, or keeping scrolling to read my manuscript. (The spoken sermon differs from the written text.)
Today is the second Sunday in the season of Advent, a time in which we prepare ourselves for the coming of Jesus into the world.
Advent is a liminal time. A time of expectation. A time of transition. There’s a reason that the church has centered the seasons of Advent and Christmas around the winter solstice. At this time of the year, we are literally plunging into darkness, waiting with expectation for the days to stop growing shorter and, finally, to begin growing longer again. We are at the end of one year, and awaiting the beginning of the next.
Advent is a liminal time, and so it’s no coincidence that the church spends a lot of time reflecting on John the Baptist’s ministry as a part of the Advent season. John’s was a liminal ministry. Later on in the gospel of Luke, Jesus says that “among those born of women, no one is greater than John; yet the least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.”
There’s this weird double role that John plays: He’s both the greatest, and the least. He’s the forerunner, the prelude to something new; but at the same time he’s the last act of something old. In effect, John is the last and greatest prophet of the Old Testament.
John is, spiritually speaking, Elijah, who comes to prepare the way for Messiah. He stands on the border of time and space, a voice in the wilderness, making the paths of the Lord straight. He is making the rough ways smooth, so that all flesh shall see the salvation of God: Jesus.
I’ve always thought that John’s ministry must have been incredibly hard. It’s hard to stand on the edge, literally and historically. To live your life in the wilderness and to prepare the way for a new age that you yourself will not see. Have you ever found yourself in that situation – where you’re preparing for something you don’t have and may never have?
I’m reminded of the saying that, “the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago; the second best time is now.” And a related saying: “A true act of faith is planting a tree whose shade you know you’ll never enjoy.” John the Baptist was that kind of guy. He was planting trees whose shade he knew he’d never enjoy.
John says of the coming Messiah, of Jesus: “One who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals.” John says, “I baptize you with water… [but] he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
As Quakers, we practice a form of worship that we often call “waiting worship.” It’s a form that we use to practice preparing ourselves to hear God’s message, and in hearing it, respond. John was a master of waiting worship. His whole ministry was one of waiting, prayer, and preparation. He also taught the people how to prepare themselves to hear God’s message – for the coming of the unexpected, unpredictable messiah.
When people asked John what they were to do to get ready for the coming kingdom of God, John’s answer was consistent: Stop trying to win at the games of the current system. Be content with what you have. Share your wealth with others. Become part of a community that no longer has a stake in the current system, but which instead is ready to hear the good news when it arrives.
I wonder what that would look like for us, in our time and place. What would it mean for us as individuals and as a church to release our grip on the things of the current order and open ourselves to the new age that God has in store for us?
I’m feeling a lot of kinship with John the Baptist these days. I feel connected to John’s sense of liminality. I feel like I am living on the border between one reality and another. I sense that I am living in a world, an age, an era that is coming to an end. I am living in expectation of a world that I can sense beyond the horizon, but which has yet to be born.
This is a hard feeling, because – like John – I sense that this new thing that is happening is something that I can help pave the way for; it’s something I can prepare for; but fundamentally it is a new reality, a big surprise, a new world that I don’t get to architect and shape. The new world that is coming will be a place that, in many ways, is alien to the world that I grew up in.
John the Baptist had to die before Jesus began his ministry. Like Moses, he wasn’t permitted to enter the promised land that he guided his people towards for so many years. Not only did John have to die in a literal sense, he also had to die to his own ego. Because for all his efforts and faithfulness out in the wilderness, John never imagined himself to be the hero of the story. John knew that in whatever drama was coming next, he would be a supporting cast member at best – probably just an “extra”.
Can you feel that too, in our day? Can you hear a new story being written, a new order being forged, a new day ready to dawn, just beyond the horizon?
Like John, we can sense that whatever new world is coming will be one that is forged by the Holy Spirit, but also by fire. A new world is being born, and birth is painful, bloody, and unpredictable. Usually we get through it and a new life emerges, but things can go very wrong. Like John, we are caught in a liminal period where a great struggle is unfolding, and all we can do is prepare ourselves and help others to prepare themselves to face this new reality.
I’m reminded of the Quaker theologian Thomas Kelly, who lived through another liminal period, during the lead up to World War II. In 1938, he traveled to Nazi Germany to encourage the Quaker community there. Upon his return, he delivered the following remarks to an audience of Quakers in Philadelphia:
One returns from Europe with the sound of weeping in one’s ears, in order to say, “Don’t be deceived. You must face Destiny. Preparation is only possible now. Don’t be fooled by your sunny skies. … Be not deceived by distance in time or space, or the false security of a bank account and an automobile and good health and willing hands to work. Thousands, perhaps millions as good as you have had all these things and are perishing in body and, worse still, in soul today.”
An awful solemnity is upon the earth, for the last vestige of earthly security is gone. It has always been gone, and religion has always said so, but we haven’t believed it. And some of us Quakers are not yet undeceived, and childishly expect our little cushions for our little bodies, in a world inflamed with untold ulcers. …
One comes back from Europe aghast at having seen how lives as graciously cultured as ours, but rooted only in time and property and reputation, and self-deluded by a mild veneer of religious respectability but unprepared by the amazing life of commitment to the Eternal in holy obedience, are now doomed to hopeless, hopeless despair. …
One comes back from Europe to plead with you, you here in these seats, you my pleasant but often easy-living friends, to open your lives to such a baptism of Eternity now as turns this world of tumbling change into a wilderness in your eyes and fortifies you with an unshakeable peace that passes all understanding and endures all earthly shocks without soul-destroying rebelliousness. Then and then only can we, weaned from earth, and committed wholly to God alone, hope to become voices crying in this wilderness of Philadelphia and London, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Make straight in this desert a highway for our God.”
This is the message of John the Baptist: Great change is coming. A new order is emerging, and there will be struggle. There will be struggle, but the kingdom of God will emerge victorious. We don’t get to choose whether or not to be exposed to the struggle. We don’t get to choose whether or not to endure hardship and suffering. We only get to choose whether or not we will side with the old order that is dying, or the new reign of God that is being born.
We cannot protect ourselves. We cannot escape. We can only make choices about how to live, now. Any promise of stability or security is a fairy tale. As Kelly writes to his audience facing the outbreak of total war in Europe: The last vestige of earthly security is gone. It has always been gone, but we haven’t believed it.
Will we believe it now? Will we join John the Baptist and Thomas Kelly beside the river and accept the baptism of repentance? Will we prepare ourselves for what we know is coming, for the kingdom of God that is about to break in, through a baptism of the Holy Spirit – and yes, of fire?
What does it mean for us to bear fruits worthy of repentance, to change our lives and pick the side of the kingdom, despite all the terror and violence that the current order threatens?
What would it mean for us to abandon our attempts to get along in this current system, and instead to throw ourselves entirely into the work of prefiguring and clearing the way for the kingdom of God? Like Dorthy Day and Peter Maurin of the Catholic Worker communities, what would it mean to build a new society in the shell of the old?
What does it mean for us to become a community crying in this wilderness of California: “Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Make straight in this desert a highway for our God”?