The JBap Conspiracy -- Luke 3:1-6


This week's texts:
Malachi 3:1-4
Luke 1:68-79
Philippians 1:3-11
Luke 3:1-6
"I Will Wait," Mumford & Sons

I looked at this week’s Gospel text with fear and trembling—seminary doesn’t exactly offer a class in ancient pronunciation. And then I looked at it with total confusion. What does it matter, to us, today, who was the tetrarch of whatever so many centuries ago? The details don’t matter a whole lot, but what matters is that this Gospel author wanted us to know who was in charge, so that we could know just who exactly John the Baptist was up against, and just who exactly he chose to challenge with his message.
His message of the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sin had relegated him to the very margin of society and of Judea—the wilderness. And every word he said flew in the face of every decree made by those powerful men. And his words were just the warning for the words of Jesus! He was just the warm-up act! These wilderness guys were not welcome to spread the good news among the rich and powerful.
Were we to take this Gospel text into our own context, it might start out with some more familiar names, though not necessarily easier to pronounce.
In the fourth year of the Obama Administration, when John Boenher was the Speaker of the House, when John Hickenlooper was Governor of Colorado and Mark Udall and Michael Bennet were senators, and Debbie Brinkman was the mayor of Littleton, and as Mark Hanson was the presiding Bishop of the ELCA, and Jim Gonia was the newly-elected bishop of the Rocky Mountain Synod, and Dave Palma-Ruwe was the senior pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church…the word of God came to John, in the wilderness.
This man John lives in the wilderness not of Judea but of, say, Boulder, and eats not locusts and honey but, say, a strictly vegan diet. And he proclaims the good news of Jesus Christ to the masses.
This John, like the John who came before, has been telling his friends and neighbors the good news of Jesus. He’s been selling what he has and giving it away to the poor; he’s been volunteering at a soup kitchen; he’s been working at a local HIV/AIDS clinic; he’s been worshipping with the women at New Beginnings; he’s been advocating for justice on the steps of the capitol.  And some of those big names I mentioned earlier would prefer he stuck to the status quo.
And this John, like the John who came before him, has been telling his friends and neighbors about Advent. About the coming Christ child and all that the hope of a God come to dwell with us will mean for us. This John preaches not a gospel of prosperity, not a gospel of consumption of goods for the celebration of Christmas. Remember, this John is following in the footsteps of John the Baptist, who proclaimed the original Advent Conspiracy.
You’ve heard those words around here, probably. The Advent Conspiracy seeks to bring Advent back to basics. To remove the power of our culture of buy-buy-buy instead of give-give-give. God, the original giver, started big. God gave us the whole earth we live on. And God gave us each other, and God gave us freedom from tyranny, and God gave us God’s own self in the Word made flesh. The coming of the Christ child is what we’re preparing for in these weeks. There is, of course, a certain amount of preparation for modern celebrations of Christmas that we are doing, too. Putting up trees and lights and baking a lot of cookies and crossing things off a lot of different lists.
We get pretty excited, in these first two Sundays of Advent, for it to be the third and fourth Sundays of Advent and for it to just be Christmas, already! We’re a culture that’s very good at getting ahead of ourselves. The anticipation of the coming Christ child is a four-week season in our church. And then the season of Christmas is the 12 days that begin on December 25. But in our nation, Christmas begins at 9pm on Thanksgiving.
In order to fully experience this season of joy and light and anticipation, we have to step back. We have to actually wait. If the first Sundays in Advent are already Christmas, where’d the anticipation go? Where’d the preparation go? The preparation begins with waiting. Slowing down. Reflecting. Breathing deeply. Taking time out of each day to do more than just read the few words on that advent calendar before scarfing down the chocolate from each square and going on our merry way. Honoring those we love with valuable experiences, time, and energy, the whole month of December instead of just spending our hours shopping for gifts to give them on December 25th.
Yesterday was our Advent Quiet Day. What a beautiful example of these things. We slowed down. We walked the labyrinth, pensively. We prayed, we read, we journaled, we painted, we breathed. If you weren’t here yesterday, you can have quiet Advent experiences of your own. There’s an Advent buffet table in the narthex with plenty of resources to try.
One of the things I’ve been doing is talking to my friends and family about Advent, instead of just about Christmas. I sent out Advent cards this year – blue, instead of red and green! – and have been encouraging my loved ones to light advent candles at home, and take some quiet time together in their busy lives. There are plenty of ways to let Advent be Advent.
The psalm for this morning actually comes from the Gospel of Luke, and it gives us some insight into this whole “prepare” thing. It’s a prophecy spoken by Zechariah, John the Baptist’s father. He’s speaking to his own child about his vocation as the preparer of the way for Jesus.
“You, child, “ he says, “will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people.” And he goes on to say, I think, what John might say in order to give knowledge of salvation. He says, “By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” Now that’s some good news.
And I don’t think that Zechariah’s prophecy is just for his son John, I think it’s for this other John who lives in Boulder, these days, and I think it’s for us, no matter who we are or where we live or what we wear or what we eat. This message of the salvation of God is not just for people whose names are written in this big book. It is for each and every one of us, who has been baptized by this water, to come out of the Jordan River, or that very font, and proclaim that which has been given to us, that it might be given to others. And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.
This isn’t an easy vocation, though. John the Baptist lost his life because of the Word he proclaimed! Theologian Joyce Hollyday says, “watch out for this Word. It has the power to level the hills and fill in the valleys. It is like ‘a refiner's fire’ and ‘a fuller's soap,’ according to Malachi. It will purify by the torch and rub you clean until it hurts. You were expecting maybe just an innocent baby?”
For we who know the whole story know that that innocent baby grows up to be the man Jesus whom John the Baptist is, this morning, telling us to prepare the way for. Jesus’ ministry in this world is about to take off running, and we’re going to want to be there to participate in that.
         Matthew Paul Turner tweeted this morning, “My prayer today is that we don’t simply celebrate Advent, but that we become a part of Advent. May the spaces we fill shine brighter.”
So, like Pastor Dave told us last week—wake up! And now—prepare! We’re not quite to the “start doing!” part yet. So try and take it slow for at least one more week, making the spaces you fill shine brighter. It will be worth the wait.

Happy Advent! Amen.

[PS -- JBap is what one of our seminary textbook authors calls John the Baptist, in case you couldn't figure that out and it was bothering you.]

On Waiting

Tonight at worship the conversation/sermon was about waiting. I played this song for those gathered, and then we talked about how it related to the waiting we're doing:


A lot of people said a lot of good things. We talked mostly about how our culture does not take kindly to waiting. And that previous generations [non-instant-gratification generations] have a completely different relationship to time than those of us who communicate instantly and simultaneously with people we know all over the country and world all the time. 

During WWII, one of my grandfathers was stationed in the UK, and wrote my grandmother hundreds of postcards and letters. Just before or just after he died, I forget now, I remember reading them with my parents and Alex. I can't even imagine being in their situation--across the world from each other in a time of war, waiting weeks at a time for responses to letters that were essentially their lifeline. Certainly, those with deployed loved ones in this war face similar situations. But they can communicate online and make phone calls and even video calls, sometimes. 

[Tangent: I just spent 1 hour 14 minutes and 46 seconds video chatting with my dearest Ben, the Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine. He gave me the tour of his home (which I'd seen a while back, but had forgotten the details of, like how his kitchen and bathroom are one room), and walked out the front door, even, to show me the buildings of the school he teaches at and the apple orchard that is, according to the students, his. Being able to sit in my apartment in Colorado and see his face and hear his voice and see his life...what an incredible gift technology can give us. But it had been probably a year since we'd been able to video chat. That's pretty serious waiting for two millenial iPhone addicts such as ourselves. Thanks be to God.]

We talked about the hardest things we'd ever had to wait for. The resounding answer was the birth of children and news around diagnoses, etc. Interesting that the situations in which life is given and taken away are the ones we spend the most time nearly helpless and must simply wait. 

And now, in Advent, we are waiting for the Christ child. For the promise of newness of life. And because we know that that is what we wait for, we can boldly proclaim that good news to all the earth, that they may join in our preparation and anticipation.

The Mumford & Sons jam is just so perfect for this whole conversation. "These days of darkness, which we've known
, will blow away with this new sun

," Marcus sings. The wordplay possible with changing that spelling to Son is just too good to be true. John the Baptist came to prophesy that the tender mercy of God will give light to those who sit in darkness (Luke 1:78-79). It was a bold proclamation then, and it is a bold proclamation now. 

My favorite words from the song, I think, are these: "I'll be bold as well as strong, and use my head alongside my heart." Preparing the way of the Lord can look like a lot of different things, I think. But I think it comes from our heads and our hearts, together, and that it’s a bold proclamation—that all flesh shall see the salvation of God. And that's worth waiting for.

It's Advent! Hurry up and wait.


"Celebrating Advent means being able to wait. Waiting is an art that our impatient age has forgotten.
 Whoever does not know the austere blessedness of waiting, that is, of hopefully doing without, will never experience the blessing of fulfillment. Those who do not know how it feels to struggle anxiously with the deepest questions of life and to patiently look forward with anticipation until the truth is revealed, cannot even dream of the splendor of the moment in which clarity is illuminated for them.
 For the greatest, most profound, tenderest things in the world, we must wait. It happens not here in a storm, but according to the divine laws of sprouting, growing, and becoming."
These are words from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as collected in God is in the Manger: Advent and Christmas Reflections. I got the audiobook as the free download of the month from christianaudio, which is pretty cool sometimes. I'm not a huge fan of audiobooks in general, but these snippets you just listen to for like 3-4 minutes each day, and I can definitely make space for that.

What's awesome about today's little blurb is that Bonhoeffer, writing in the 1940s, thought that he lived in an impatient age. Can you imagine what he'd have to say about our instant lifestyle these days? If he felt that people struggled in that time to set aside reflective moments in Advent, how much more critical is it that we set aside that time in our even busier lives? [And don't you just love that last little nod to process? Boom.]

This Advent, as church is my life and livelihood, I've decided to get intentional about it.

Our church put together a World Hunger Advent calendar -- each day, you put coins in a jar based on its prompts: boxes of cereal in your cupboard, pets you have, sporting events you attended this year, faucets in your home, etc. After Christmas, we all bring in our jars/piggy banks/coffee cans (mine) and send the cash off to ELCA World Hunger. It's an interesting way to check your abundance and give to a very worthy cause. So far, there are 50 cents in my jar. (But one of the prompts is 25 cents per trip to Disneyland, which might just break the bank for me...)

We're also encouraging people to participate in the Advent Conspiracy, which calls us to reflect on the ludicrous amount of spending our nation does each Christmas season. (Spoiler Alert: It's 450 BILLION dollars.) Their slogan is Worship Fully, Spend Less, Give More, Love All. That should probably be my new life motto. The totally rad thing that Advent Conspiracy inspired me to do this year is, rather than spend a lot of money to send mailably-small, probably dumb things all around the nation to the people I love [as I have been known to do in the past], to put the dollars I would have spent into giving ELCA Good Gifts to some kiddos in need in the developing world. I went with chicks (cute, helpful, plentiful) and textbooks. I think that showing love through reading and education as a whole is the greatest gift I can ever give anyone. Check out the website and see if there's anything that strikes your fancy. Ducks, cows, blankets, vaccinations, water jugs, goats -- you name it, the ELCA will help you give it away.

In much sillier Advent news, I made a (neon, obvi) paper chain calendar, with the daily scripture readings on each link. Here it is, hanging from my staircase, because obviously that is where it belongs:


I made an at-home Advent "wreath" from a little Nativity shrine I have and some tea lights. I'm not normally a candle person (being allergic to artificial fragrances makes scented candles a no-go) but it was so nice to have that little light flickering. And I'm so excited to light the rest as the weeks go by! Here it is, lit up yesterday for the first Sunday in Advent:



On Saturday, our church is hosting an Advent Quiet Day, where the church is open for all sorts of quiet (not silent) activities. We'll have a labyrinth downstairs, yoga upstairs, process painting, the sanctuary open for praying, a room for reading/writing, knitting, crafting, etc. It will be so so awesome and I am super looking forward to it.

I'm also spending like 90% of my time listening to Sufjan Stevens' Christmas albums. They're just that good.

I'm preaching this week, so I'm all up in the Gospel of Luke, which is the Adventiest place to be. It's all John the Baptist all the time, which is cool, because he was a rad dude that I think I would have been friends with. Just kidding -- he lived in the wilderness and wore camel hair and ate locusts. No thanks, bro. I do think he was a rad dude, though. Speaking truth to power and whatnot. The original Advent Conspiracy, you might say.

The important thing about Advent, I think, it is to get counter-cultural. December is the busiest month in this country, by far, meanwhile the Gospel is telling us to slow down. If at all possible, take some time out of this frenetic cultural season to participate in the quiet anticipation of Advent. Yes, Godspell gets stuck in your head as "Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord" loops through, but what we seem to always forget around here is that the preparation for the coming Christ child doesn't involve a whole lot of doing. It's mostly about waiting. It's only the first week of Advent. Wait. Sit. Wonder. Try not to jump ahead to week three and four juuuust yet. There will be plenty of time for week four in week four! Week one is an invitation to slooooooow doooooown. Consider it.