The way Luke tells it, there are certain similarities in the
two nativities that ought to make your Biblical ears perk up like a little dog
listening to “his master’s voice.”
For one thing, whenever God speaks to a person, that person
breaks out in song right away. We call those songs ‘canticles’ and the two famous
Christmas songs are The Song of Mary, spoken by Jesus’ mother after the Angel
Gabriel announces that the child she is carrying will be the Messiah. We’ll
sing that in two weeks.
The other one is sung not by Elizabeth, Mary’s cousin, but
her husband Zechariah. Today, we sang a metrical version of that canticle in
our worship.
Like the Psalms, the Canticles are more than just pretty
songs but are poetic proclamations of deep spiritual truths. The Song of
Zechariah helps us understand the meaning of John’s ministry and his place in
God’s redemptive work:
In the tender
compassion of our God
The dawn from on high
shall break upon us.
To shine on those who
dwell in darkness and the shadow of death
And to guide our feet into the way of peace.
John the Baptist was born to Elizabeth, who was Mary’s
cousin. An angel told Zechariah, John’s father, that this was coming, and that
God wanted to name the child “John.” Well, Zechariah said that’s all well and
good but really, would mind so much if he named the kid “Zeke Junior” instead? Well,
the angel said “uhm, not so fast Zeke” … and took away his voice until Zechariah
gave him the name God wanted: John. The canticle we sang today was the second
thing out of Zechariah’s mouth after blurting out John’s name.
We love the idea that St. John Baptist camped in the
wilderness, living off the land, and wore camel skins. Kind of a first century BC
hippie or Mountain Man. But St. John Baptist grew up to be a tough guy. He
didn’t take any guff. There was nothing soft, cuddly, or hip about him.
John called people to repentance. He was not afraid to say
hard words to those who tried to game the system. He talked about people who
said long fancy prayers but did nothing about the suffering of the people. He
spoke up against those who used power for their own ends. He spoke against religious
and political leaders who said one thing but did evil in the name of God.
Needless to say, the powerful did not react well to John’s
words …especially after people started paying attention and going out in the
wilds to hear him preach. In the end, they decided to shut John’s mouth by cutting
off his head.
But the canticle that his dad Zechariah sang before John was
born tells us what John was really about. “The tender compassion of our God,”
the song says.
John grew up to be a voice crying in the wild places saying,
“Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” And, as the song goes,
“to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
He was preparing the way for Jesus. He proclaimed the coming
of the Messiah, and he confronted the powers of this world that work and act
against God and God’s people.
We still need the voice of John the Baptist. We live in dark,
violent times, and it is difficult to see that path towards peace. The news is
often pretty bleak. If there isn’t violence, there is news of corruption, abuse
of power, and organized dishonesty. On the one hand, we are processing the news
of yet another school shooting and this time the prosecution is asking the same
hard questions of the parents of this middle-class gunman as we all the time
ask of teenage shooters in less affluent communities.
We also hear of political leaders and watch talking heads
claim to know it all. They dream of power more than of leading; they find it
easy to voice grievance and stoke resentment while putting aside the pesky
questions of what might actually be done about it. Because it’s easy to get a
mob to rally around anger. It’s hard to lead people to solutions.
And the list goes on and on.
St. John Baptist was living in a situation not that
different from our own, and he courageously called for repentance. “Step back
from the chaos of fear.” Comfort ye my people, says the prophet. Prepare the
way of the Lord—make the superhighway of Peace, a straight road, not winding
around every up and down, but going straight through to peace—without fear, without
recrimination, and without revenge.
His message to prepare the straight way for the Messiah is
so different that our cultures messages of violence, me-first, and rage. Time
and again, we humans think that it is only the use of power and violence that
can destroy violence. Remember how angry we were after 9/11 twenty years ago?
But the anger and the war that followed did not destroy the violence, did it?
It moved it around, and along the way recruited more angry and violent people
on all sides, in our country and in others. Intolerance and xenophobia grew in
our country and elsewhere. The more that we attempted to crush violence with
anger, violence and exercise of power, the more violence multiplied in more
places. This fear-laden game of violence whack-a-mole affects everything in our
common life.
But John the Baptist tells us that God has another way.
This Advent season reminds us of “the tender compassion of
God” which guides us “into the way of peace.”
Some people think that the way of peace is the way of wimps.
Many believe that peace is a passive thing. But let’s look in Scripture at who
God sent to proclaim peace. None of the prophets, especially John the Baptist,
were particularly passive or lazy or soft. In fact, I can’t think of anyone in
the whole Bible tougher than John the Baptist. Except maybe Mary. Except maybe Jesus.
The path of peace is not the path of fearfulness, and it is certainly not the
path of surrender. The path of peace requires fortitude and courage.
Pope Francis once talked about prayer reminding us that the
life of prayer is not a life of passivity. He said, “You pray for the hungry. You
pray that God will provide for the hungry. Then you feed the hungry. That’s how
prayer works.” Or, as Pennsylvania labor organizer Mother Jones more colorfully
said over a century ago: “Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the
living.”
After the shootings in Wisconsin last week, we did not hear
the phrase “thoughts and prayers” very much because a few years ago that stock
phrase of politicians and pundits took a very public drubbing. And for good
reason. Because it equated prayer with inaction and mere passivity.
Pray, yes. But what will our prayer do about gun violence if
we lack the courage to act?
We live in a world that assumes that prayer is platitude, that
our prayers are meant to hide our inaction and our fear. Our culture assumes
that faith is as good as dead.
But our faith is not dead, when, as James says in his
epistle, we take action! Listen to what St. Paul wrote from prison toward the
end of his life in our Epistle lesson today to his friends at the church in
Philippi during a very difficult time both for the congregation and for Paul. He
said:
“I am confident of this, that the One who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.… And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.”
God guides us in the way of peace. God causes love to
overflow, clear-eyed, wise, and ready for action. God’s love in Jesus Christ
gives us power and does not concede the world to everyday… or extraordinary… evil.
In fact, the way of peace never cringes before evil, but looks evil in the eye
and overflows with love. The way of love always does the things that evil hates
and makes it retreat. In the Incarnate, Crucified, and Risen Jesus, the way of
love makes what was crooked straight and what was rough places smooth—and not
just for us, but for all the people we meet and care for as we also prepare the
way for Jesus.
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