Matthew 3:1-12
Many of you know that I recently moved to Pasadena just a few months ago from Austin, Texas. I love my former city for so many reasons - warm winters (Now that's a plus!) excellent Tex-Mex, and a context where. . .
college town . . .
meets state capitol . .
meets land of rabid football fans . . .
meets city of green energy. . .
meets center of live music. . .
meets a home of diverse, quirky people.
Yes. That's right. Diverse, quirky people. That's not an insult by the way. In Austin culture, that's a compliment. Austin prides itself on being. . . quirky. Austin began a campaign many years ago to support local businesses and restaurants. Austin prefers unique places to established chains, and the city works hard to make sure that franchises don't run mom-and-pop places out of business. That campaign has a slogan that quickly caught on and continues to define Austin today. On a multitude of T-Shirts and Bumper Stickers, you can read: "Keep Austin Weird." That's right. Keep it weird. Don't conform Austin. Don't normalize it. Don't even sum it up. Just let it be weird, unique, less definable, and. . . quirky.
During my five years in Austin, I worked in Campus Ministry at University Presbyterian Church which is one block away from the University of Texas. The church is located one street east of 'The Drag'. The Drag is technically Guadalupe Street, right on the eastern edge of campus. I don't know how it got its nickname, but one thing is sure. It's full of wonderfully, diverse, quirky people. On one street, you can find young students, college professors, and people who call themselves "street kids," teenagers and young adults who are street-dependent now that they've run away from their homes. 40% of them grew up in the foster care system. Now that's diverse! On the drag, people with a continuum of experiences are always shopping, laughing, panhandling, you name it.
And then, there's Dave. Sasquatch Dave. Now 'Sasquatch' isn't my adjective to describe Dave. That's actually what he calls himself. I've never met anyone quite like Dave. Quirky. Funny. Wise. A Witness. Dave is in the business of holding signs. That, and making people laugh. And perhaps occasionally offending people. He also plays a mean harmonica!
I don't know all of Dave's history, but he's an Austin staple. He walks around the Drag nearly every day, generally wearing the same clothes - a couple of similar tie-dye shirts, occasionally a hooded jacket, and nearly always a beanie hat. Like I said, Dave is in the business of holding signs. They're simple signs but occasionally profound. He takes a black marker and writes a few words on large pieces of cardboard. Then he walks around the Drag or perhaps stands on a corner to draw attention to the sign. If you make eye contact with him as you pass by, he'll usually ask, "Are you having fun today?"
Here are a few signs I can remember:
"Weirdos Have More Fun Than Jerks Do." Yep, that sounds like Austin.
and --
"It's Piggish Behavior When You Don't Say Hello. Did Your Mom Teach You This?" Nice.
But frequently, Dave's signs are more profound than that, not always, but certainly often. I remember a time when a very loud, destructive group of Christians was on the eastern edge of campus, yelling at students -- bombasting them really -- preaching while using intense fire and brimstone language, not only putting their theology into the public square but additionally yelling at particular students, making assumptions about them based upon their appearance or whatever else they could use. I sadly need to say that it wasn't the first time that this happened on the campus of the University of Texas. Groups like this visited semi-regularly. Maybe it had something to do with living in the buckle of the Bible-belt. But on this occasion, Dave showed up.
He didn't use many words. In fact, he said nothing. He just held the sign right next to the loudest preacher and smiled. The sign drew attention to Jesus' love, and stood in great opposition to the rest of what this preacher had to say. Yep. Dave is quirky. Funny. Wise. A Witness.
I know he's a witness because if you sit with him for a bit instead of laughing at the weird guy or just bypassing him with piggish-non-hello-behavior, you'll get to know that Jesus has changed his life. You'll get to know that Dave doesn't take himself too seriously, but he takes his faith very seriously. You'll know that he feels called out there on the Drag, and if he can just do something strange to make someone smile, he's had a good day. He's a witness. Perhaps a witness someone wouldn't expect.
And if we bring experiences of the Drag in conversation with our scripture text, I suppose that in many ways, we could also say that John the Baptist was quirky. Funny? I don't know - but certainly quirky and wise, certainly a witness. I imagine he was a witness who some wouldn't expect. A garment of camels hair around his waist? Hmm. . . interesting. A diet of locusts and wild honey? Again. . . interesting. He certainly wasn't the man of the hour at the party or one who socialized with the powerful, high rollers of his day. He was out in the wilderness, certainly not the place for power or prestige or influence.
And yet he was influential. He was wildly influential. The scripture text tells us that Jerusalem and all of Judea were going out to him to be baptized in the Jordan River. The movement was so big that perhaps the Pharisees and Sadducees came on the scene because it was the 'in' thing to do. We can't be sure of their motivation. We only know that John was critical of their arrival. This movement was not one for show. The movement was not for people who wanted to walk into the halls of power, following some red carpet being rolled out in front of them.
The movement was in the wilderness of all places! It was on the margins. It was at the Jordan River, just a simple river. Simple, yes, but also profound. The Jordan River looked simple, but it was a place of transformation, symbolizing a crossing-over place from one way of living and existing to a new reality all together. The Jordan River was a part of the identity-blood of the people of Israel as they told stories of their heritage and proclaimed God's faithfulness to them. The Israelites had crossed over the Jordan River into the promised land as they journeyed out of captivity in Egypt. One one side of the river, they were disenfranchised former-slaves, but as they crossed through that river and stepped foot on the other side, they were people filled with hope for a new life.
And the same people who came to John for baptism in the Jordan must have remembered the story of Elijah, God's unyielding prophet, who did not die but was taken up into God's presence right there at the bank of the Jordan.
The Jordan River - simple and a part of the wilderness - was a place of transformation where people were birthed into new life and a renewed relationship with God, their creator.
If the people would have stayed in the cities, they could have missed this opportunity for life change. If all of Jerusalem and all of Judea would have stayed in Jerusalem and Judea, they might have missed this particular manifestation of witness. But it seems that the many pilgrims who sought John's baptism were willing to look for life-change in a place they might not expect, certainly beyond leaders and structures of power. Power was manifested here in the untypical, the quirky, the weird. Transformation showed up in the lowly, the humble, the wilderness-laden.
Yes, John was a witness there in that wilderness. He was a witness to life-change and new beginnings. And in this passage, we see that he was also a witness toward Jesus, one who embodied life-change and new beginnings in the flesh - God with us - one who was coming after John. Though John had amassed a great movement, he pointed away from himself toward Jesus. "I am not worthy to carry his sandals," John says. "He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire."
John was in the business of pointing - pointing toward. Again, these pilgrims could have missed these signs of transformation in the present moment, could have missed signs of the one to come if they had stayed in their homes, static and unchanged. But they were willing to go into strange places - quirky places - to experience the revelation of a God who breathes transformation into their very lives.
John is still in the business of pointing today - in the business of pointing toward.
I imagine he's a witness we wouldn't expect. Camel hair garments? Honey-covered locust cuisine? Words that are freeing but difficult? We might not choose to go to John. If we're honest, sometimes we like to stay in places that are solid and predictable, but also overly comfortable and unchallenging.
Thankfully John's wilderness voice reaches us here in pews that have perhaps become very comfortable and predictable for us. His wilderness context is thrust upon our context, thanks to the preservation of gospel-writers, like the author of the Gospel according to Matthew. And as John witnesses there, he witnesses here too, pointing toward Jesus, the author of life-change. He shows us the way to that life. He points us to the one who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Yes, John is in the business of pointing toward.
Karl Barth was one of the most influential theologians of the 20th-century - a writer, professor, and preacher who had a profound impact upon the Reformed faith, the tradition that most-informs the theological perspective of our own Presbyterian church. Karl Barth was not a typical writer - someone who wrote a book or two perhaps, as impressive as that may be. Karl Barth was a chronicler; he created theological treatises, one after another. During the professional part of his life, Karl Barth wrote an average of eight publishable pages a day! Now that's a lot of writing! And it was significant writing too. No matter what their perspective - all theologians of our day and all theologians of the 1930s and beyond have unavoidably been in conversation with Barth's insights, his ways of formulating words to describe our relationship with God.
Yes, very significant words and ideas. And in light of that, I find two things to be particularly humbling. Karl Barth used to daydream from time to time that when he died, he would arrive in heaven pushing wheelbarrows around filled with pages and pages of words. And despite his volumes and tomes and impressive theological treatises, those words would only be words. Just mere words. Just symbols, just signs, perhaps like Sasquatch Dave's scribblings on cardboard. Just arrows, just pointing toward. They in and of themselves would only be significant through the preeminent significance of the One they described. Barth used to imagine that Jesus himself would smile at at these wheelbarrows of words and in that moment, Barth himself would realize that these words were mere baby-talk - babble - in comparison with the love and wonder of Word made flesh, standing right beside him.
And in order to remind himself of who he was and how he was called to live out his vocation, Karl Barth kept a picture of John the Baptist in his personal study. It would be easy for Barth's words to point to himself, to proclaim his importance or brilliance. But instead, Barth needed a reminder - in the way we all need reminders - that he was a witness. An important witness, but only a witness. So in a prominent place in his study, he placed a painting of John the Baptist. In the painting John points an outstretched finger away from himself toward Christ. This is the posture to which Karl Barth was called. This is the posture to which we are all called. We are called to witness, to point.
And as we witness, we need the witness of others. Our witness is bound up together with more witnesses than we can imagine - the people who are mentioned in our scriptures, Christian brothers and sisters who have lived centuries before our time, people a world away, people across the street. As our scriptures tell us, we are surrounded a great cloud of witnesses, and perhaps some of these witnesses are precisely the ones we would never expect. Perhaps these are the witnesses we don't typically look for. Perhaps these are the ones who find us. Perhaps these are the ones who teach us to point in the direction of Jesus Christ, the one who brings life-change to the world.
So what will we do when these witnesses find us? Will we allow ourselves to be uncomfortable? To be inconvenienced? Will we be open to being changed? To becoming transformed? Will we smile at one another? Or will we walk by, heads turned away, staying in our comfort zone?
Whose witness does your witness need? The one who doesn't know where his next meal will come from? The one who has a theological perspective that's not your own? The one who reminds you of your deep-seated enemy? The child who really wants your attention? The one who asks you for help?
I pray that we will be discovered by such witnesses this very week! We may need to go out to the wilderness to find them. They may even bring the wilderness right to our doorstep. However it happens, may God give us strength to listen, to see, to learn - not to turn away - but to turn toward and to point toward Jesu together, the One who gives us the freedom to truly live in witness to one another.
-Renee Roederer
Director of Young Adult Ministries at Pasadena Presbyterian Church
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