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Sermon - December 7th, 2008
Call of the Wild
Rev. Gwen Drake
Scripture: Mark 1:1-8
This next year, we will be hearing a lot from the Gospel of Mark. Mark does not begin with angels whispering in Mary’s ear. Mark does not mention any shepherds keeping their flock or magi traveling from the East following a star. There are not even any wide-eyed animals standing around a straw-filled manger. Mark either did not know about these things or else he does not care about them enough to include them in his story. For Mark, the good news of Jesus Christ began in the wilderness of Judea with a wild man prophet named John, the first REAL prophet to show up in Israel for 300 years.
He was dressed in camel’s hair with a leather belt, the same outfit that Elijah wore 800 years earlier. His hair and beard looked as if they had never been trimmed. He was gaunt and hungry-looking. Surely this is a statement in itself. Those of you who are just meeting John for the first time may not be able to interpret his presence too well. He is not part of commercial Christmas. You won’t find him standing in a nativity scene…anywhere. However, those of us who have met him on the Second Sunday of Advent before, we know what he is about. He was a messenger. He was predicted by Isaiah. He dressed like Elijah. He was sent by God. He was a prophet who fit in the classic mold.
Maybe that’s why people flocked to him. I wonder about that. He certainly isn’t anyone I would like to meet on my way to church or on the streets of Tannesbourne. There’s a radio show called “Weekend America” where a roving reporter takes a few moments to ask people around the country, “What are you doing this weekend?” Responses are usually shopping, visiting family, nothing much. So far, there hasn’t been any response like this, “I’m going to travel bandit-infested roads by foot, out beyond the fringes of civilization, to get a bath and hear a strange man cry out about the need to completely change my life.” Everything I know about John makes me think I would have gone out of my way NOT to see him. He sounds too much like those street preachers who wave their Bibles and shout that the end of the world is coming soon. He reminds me of the billboard that says, “The wages of sin is death.” He is like one of those old-fashioned preachers who put the fear of God, or the fear of hell in you.
There is a difference, though. The difference is self-appointment. Self-appointed prophets tend to plant themselves right in your face so that you have to cross to the other side of the street to avoid them. John planted himself in the middle of nowhere. He set up shop in the wilderness, and anyone who wanted to hear what he had to say had to go to a lot of trouble to get there, borrowing the neighbor’s donkey or setting off on foot.
John had something that attracted people to him, apparently. He was as scary as someone from another planet, but when he spoke, it was as if he was repeating what God was saying to him right at the moment, one sentence at a time. He did not have many details. He did not know the name of the one who was coming, or what he looked like, but he knew that the old world was about to end and a new world was spinning toward him, carried in the arms of God’s chosen one.
You see, the Spirit of God had gotten all covered up in Jerusalem, with pretend piety, with temple taxes, and priestly hocus-pocus. The flame was all but snuffed out under the weight of it all, so God moved out into the wilderness, where the air was sharp and clean, out under the stars where the most socially unacceptable character anyone could imagine was. Dressed in animal hair, his breath smelled of locusts and wild honey as he proclaimed that someone was coming, someone so special that it was not enough to simply hang out and wait. It was time to get ready, to prepare the way, so that when he did come, he could walk right up to their doors.
That was the good news that started with John. He was the messenger, and the message lit him up like a bonfire in the wilderness. People were drawn to him. Not only because of who he was and what he said, but because of what he offered them—a chance to come clean, to stop pretending they were someone else, a chance to start over again by allowing him to wash them off. John set up shop in the wilderness. He proclaimed his freedom from civilization with all its rules and requirements. He called people to wake up, to turn around so they would not miss the new things that God was doing right before their eyes.
John the Baptist was no where near a religious institution. Those who stayed inside that institution never heard his message. Only those who were willing to enter the wilderness got to taste the freedom. Those in the wilderness with John expected great things and stayed around when that spectacular someone arrived, far from the civilized center of the city.
Every one of us has some idea where our own wilderness lies. We have a long list of good reasons why we should not respond to the call of the wild. After all, where we are is comfortable. We know the ropes and know we will be fed. Why should we go anywhere else to find God?
Yet, there is a voice crying out in the wilderness. One that we cannot quite make out from here. If we stay where we are, we will miss half of what that voice is saying. Good news is always beginning somewhere in the world for those with ears to hear and hearts to go wherever the way may lead. Good news that is life-giving, life-changing. It is good news that you won’t find in the marketplace. It is good news that you find at the edges of life, in the wild, from a prophet and his profoundly challenging words telling us that the only way to get to the Christ child is through a cold, sobering burst of Jordan water in the face of our pretensions. We can’t get to Christmas without first acknowledging our need for Christmas.
That’s the call of the wild. It’s a call from deep within us, calling us to believe that a savior has come, but only for those of us who honestly admit our need for salvation and wholeness and peace.
Amen.