You brood of vipers! How Dare you? How dare you continue to Santa-fy the incarnation of Christ? John the Baptist is our annual reminder of that darkness is all around us. Sadly, despite this annual reminder, we are all too willing to glorify this terrifying messenger as we relegate his apocalyptic warnings about the catastrophic events that are happening all around us. Repent! the very word itself means “turn around.” Repent! Turn around! Stop focusing on your efforts to Santa-fy the coming of Christ. Repent and see that John the Baptist’s warnings continue to cry out to us from the wilderness to warn us of the fires that threaten to burn. You brood of vipers! Behold! A prophet cries in the wilderness! This is what she looks like…
Watch Greta Thunberg’s warning. (see the video above)
Every Advent, John the Baptist’s warnings are served up on a silver platter as we remember the darkness of his wilderness. After John came the ONE in whom the LOVE that is DIVINITY was embodied. Jesus of Nazareth embodied LOVE. In Jesus we can see a new way of being in the world which promises to user in the Reign of LOVE. Not the heart and flowers kind of love, but rather, the LOVE that is the source of reality itself. The kind of LOVE that is capable of changing the world, the LOVE that is willing to sacrifice and to suffer for the all of Creation. The LOVE that is the ONE we call God.
The Reign of LOVE is calling upon each of us to embody LOVE as Jesus embodied LOVE. John the Baptist described the realities of his day accurately, but John was so wrong about what the Reign of God would look like. John envisioned the wrath of God. But the ONE who IS God did not come dressed in wrath to inflict punishment, doom, and destruction. The ONE who IS God came as LOVE. In Jesus we can see that LOVE – dressed in human flesh, a baby yes, a baby subject to all the perils and dangers of life in the world; but also, as a fully-grown human being. A human being that embodied the LOVE that IS God in ways that offered us a glimpse of a new way of being in the world.Continue reading →
This sermon is an adaptation and expansion of a sermon preached way back when by one of my favourite preachers: Glynn Cardy. Glynn’s work continues to inspire me!!! We both source our favourite New Testament scholars John Dominic Crossan and Robert Funk. My adaptation is also inspired by John Shelby Spong. It is always a pleasure to work with such great material!!! The Gospel Reading was Matthew 3:1-12. You can listen to the sermonhere
Yesterday, some of us enjoyed ourselves at a carol sing. I had a marvelous time as together with all sorts of people, from various backgrounds we sang our way through most of our favourite Christmas carols and we sounded wonderful. As you might expect, all the music printed for us, so that everyone could participate. It made no difference whether you were a practiced virtuoso or an untalented wanna-be like me, our voices blended as the powerful singers among us carried the weaker singers along. The collection of carols to choose from was extensive and most of our requests were happily accommodated. That is until somebody yelled out a request for the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah. The Music was not available. But the lack of preparedness didn’t daunt this group of merry carolers. A few copies of Handel’s Messiah that lay hidden near the piano, were found, and before too long we were off, singing the Chorus from memory.
For the lord God omnipotent reigneth
Hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah
For the lord God omnipotent reigneth
Hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah
For the lord God omnipotent reigneth (Hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah)
And He shall reign forever and ever
And He shall reign forever and ever (And He shall reign forever and ever)
And He shall reign forever and ever (And He shall reign forever and ever)
And he shall reign forever and ever (And He shall reign forever and ever)
King of kings (Forever and ever hallelujah hallelujah)
And lord of lords (Forever and ever hallelujah hallelujah)
King of kings (Forever and ever hallelujah hallelujah)
And lord of lords (Forever and ever hallelujah hallelujah)
King of kings (Forever and ever hallelujah hallelujah)
And lord of lords
King of kings and lord of lords
Yesterday, we sounded like a choir of angels and all but a few of us were singing from memory. From memory. Silent night, or Away in a Manger, these are carols that most of us can sing from memory. But the Chorus from Handel’s Messiah, now that’s impressive, George Frederic himself would have been impressed. Handel’s Messiah conjures up images of a Messiah that I suspect the character that we know as John the Baptist would have loved.
Handel’s Messiah, like the Messiah that John the Baptist longed for, is a real kick ass Messiah. King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, forever and ever, and ever, and ever. Handel’s Messiah is the kind of Messiah that underdogs, the oppressed, and the down-trodden have longed for since the beginning of time, forever and ever and ever, give us a kick ass Messiah to go into battle and defeat our enemies. Give us the Lord God omnipotent.
Omnipotent, of all the omnis, omnipotent is by far, over and above the favorite of huddled masses everywhere. You can have your omniscience and omnipresence! But give us omnipotence! What good is omniscience or omnipresence when you’re being downtrodden. All knowing, ever-present are all well and good, but we’ll take the all-powerful messiah, thank-you very much. Given the choice between wisdom and presence and we’ll take power and might when it comes to a Messiah. Give us a savoir who can kick the what’s it out of our enemies and we’ll sing more hallelujah’s than any oppressor can shake a stick at. Good old John the Baptist he knew a messiah when he saw one.
Come to think of it, good old John the Baptist now there’s a man who knew what it meant to be oppressed. Downtrodden, don’t even get the Baptist started. He could tell you about being downtrodden and condemn a brood of vipers while he was at it. That Baptist, he had it all sussed. He had it all figured out. He knew who to blame. Those vipers, those Pharisees and Sadducees sold the people out! They’ll get theirs when the Messiah comes. The Messiah will turn it all upside-down and shake up those high and mighty mucky mucks who are living it up in the Capital, selling the people out. When the Messiah comes, he’s gonna kick some ass. No stone will be left unturned. The Messiah is going to make Jerusalem great again! Mark my words.Continue reading →
I didn’t know it at the time, but I actually met John the Baptist when I was fifteen years old. She didn’t look much like you’d imagine John the Baptist would look, but she had that same crazy intensity, that same focus on the fact that we’d better change our ways, we’d better repent, and start doing things differently or we’d be in real serious trouble. Lola was my friend Valerie’s mother and she simply couldn’t stop going on and on about the environment and how we were destroy the earth. At the time, I remember thinking she was a bit of a nut-case and on more than one occasion I wished she’d just shut up about it. I was just a kid, and the earth was just something I took for granted. The earth was just there to provide for our needs. I couldn’t believe how much Lola went on and on about all the stuff we humans were doing to destroy the earth. I just wished she’d leave us along to get on with things, I couldn’t abide her incessant nonsense about how we were going to destroy the planet. All her feeble little attempts to be kind to the earth, made me seriously question her sanity.
I tolerated Lola not just because she was my friend’s mother, but I didn’t really understand her until one day when the three of us were travelling together. We were coming home from church. I had only been going to church for a few months. I was trying hard to understand this whole God thing. So, I went to church a lot. My friend Valerie had persuaded me to start going to church with her and family had become like my second family as they supported me during my first attempts to explore the mysterious world into which I had begun to feel pulled. As we drove home from church, I was feeling a little glum. Try as I might, I couldn’t really understand this church thing; all that singing and praying didn’t really help me to feel closer to God. Mostly I just liked how people at church treated each other. I liked how they went out of their way to help me feel at home. Whether or not God was there, well I really wasn’t sure.
Anyway, we were driving along the road. It was a partly over-cast day on the west coast of British Columbia, just a few clouds. You could see the mountains off in the distance. We were chatting back and forth when all of a sudden Lola pulled the car over to the far side of the road, switched off the engine and got out. Valerie followed her mother out of the car, so I figured I had better do the same. Val and her mother scampered down from the road and onto the beach. When they reached the water’s edge, they stopped and just looked off into the distance. Apart from a tanker-ship making its way across the horizon, I couldn’t see much of anything. Lola had the most amazing expression on her face. She positively glowed with happiness. Valerie wore a similar expression. I must have looked somewhat puzzled because Val smiled at me and said, “Isn’t it the most beautiful thing you have ever seen?” This only confused me more. What were they looking at that had made them stop the car, scamper down the bank and stand there at the water’s edge on a cold autumn evening? Continue reading →
There was a young woman who lived in an apartment, in a very rough neighbourhood. It was the east end of a very large city. Many of the people who lived in this neighbourhood got by on welfare, others earned their living any way they could. The young woman moved into the apartment because it was close to the office where she worked, the rent was cheap and quite frankly she was young and foolish. She ignored all the warnings of her family and friends and moved into the apartment convinced that she could handle anything that came her way.
Her neighbourhood contained the most unsavoury of characters. The office where she worked was just down the street from her apartment and every morning as she walked to work she would meet some of her neighbours returning home from an evening of plying their trade on the streets and in the alleys. Each morning, she would be met at the entrance to her office by an old man named Ed.
Ed had been living on the streets for years. He was very hairy, very dirty, and he tended to rant and rave a lot. Ed was a wild man. He slept on the doorstep of the young woman’s office because it was somewhat protected from the winter weather. Even though Ed made the young woman nervous, she got used to seeing him in her way.
Ed always gave the young woman a warm welcome when she arrived. He knew that when she got inside, she would brew fresh coffee. He used to tease her that, she was a sucker for a sad face as he waited patiently for her to bring him a cup of coffee. They never talked much, though. Ed would just rant and rave about the injustices of the world. The young woman never found out how Ed ended up on the streets. She didn’t know how he spent his days. Continue reading →
In addition to Isaiah 11:1-10 and Matthew3:1-2, the readings today included Maya Angelou’s poem “His Day Is Done: a Tribute to Nelson Mandela“. I am indebted to Glynn Cardy for much of this sermon and we are both indebted to John Dominic Crossan and Robert Funk for providing historical perspective.
