Home > Sermons > December 9, 2007

Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.

Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him...

(Matthew 3:4–5a) 

      The title of this sermon went through a few drafts before I came up with the one printed in today’s bulletin.  There was Finding Our Voice, because the scriptures for today caused me to think of a question that the Search Committee had asked me along the way to today, which I thought I’d like to turn around on you. And the answer to that question seems to center on the matter of expressing faithfully who one really is, who we really are.

      There was Being John Malcontent, which sounded like a popular movie from a few years ago and which it took me a long time to part with, especially since the Gospel Reading for today seemed ripe for such a message.  But the Baptist was more than just some spiritual curmudgeon as he shouted at his adversaries who had requested baptism (thus, apparently, making light of his ministry), “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath that is coming!”  And I didn’t just want this sermon to be an exercise in historical character development.

      Then, there was the title that actually was my version of the question, Can a Traditional Worship Church Thrive in a Contemporary Service World?  And, based on my sense of the answer to this question, I arrived at the sermon title we actually have today: Being John the Baptist. 

      The Search Committee had as one of its fill-in-the-blanks for us prospective clergy a rather puzzling one:

      “Formal and informal worship are...” 

I knew theologically what I would have been asking someone with this near-sentence.  And so I imagined that the Committee was inviting me to say something about either formality in worship, or formal attire for worship, or even worship so structured that it may be called “formal.”  I thought about contrasting any one of these with either its clear or seeming opposite. 

      Problem was, I had no idea which of these categories they were referring to. 

      So, rather than answer the question, I took the safe, diplomatic route, offering words to the effect of, “It is clear from the fact that the opening of this statement is so undefined, that all of you have a strong feeling about formal and informal worship.  But I am not sure, in answering, that I would be operating with the same definitions as you.  I look forward to answering this question in your presence with further information from you about it.”  (If that’s not actually what I wrote, that’s what I intended to say.)

      Well, the night came for the full committee to meet with me, and we didn’t go anywhere near this topic in the members’ questioning of me.  So, when they said, “Do you have any questions of us?” I took my opportunity... and learned that they were inquiring about something that wasn’t really anything I had considered.  Mostly, it seemed they were concerned about clapping in worship... congregational participation, if you will... hands in the air for praying or singing praise songs... or just singing praise songs.  We went for a good ten minutes or more on this subject alone.  Clearly, you have issues around such things! 

      Can a traditional service church thrive in contemporary service world?

      From what I gather, that is the question that they wanted me to answer.  But I’ll be honest with you: I’m not entirely comfortable trying to answer it. 

      I want you to answer it.  Mind you, in keeping with a certain, shall we say, formality, I’ll hesitate to have us either discuss it together just at this time or to break into small groups and then come back to the larger group with our responses.  We don’t have time for that; there’s a congregational meeting yet to do.

      So, in light of various portions of Isaiah, not the least of which is

            The wolf shall live with the lamb,

                  the leopard shall lie down with the kid,

            the calf and the lion and the fatling together,

                  and a little child shall lead them.

let me begin. 

Can a traditional service church thrive in contemporary service world? 

      Well, look here.  The first thing is to recognize the curious quality of what we do on a Sunday.  Right off the bat, you have to admit the anachronism of what we do, the environment in which we are worshiping, the instruments we use, the clothes we wear in worship.  Before a word is spoken, before a note is played, it has to be acknowledged, When people step inside a traditional service church, they’re stepping back in time. 

      Not so, the contemporary church.  For example, I wear an alb and stole, while Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, and author of a number of books, probably the most popular of which is The Purpose-Driven Life, is famous for the fact that he always wears a Hawai’ian shirt in the pulpit. 

      “It’s about being comfortable,” he says. 

      And in my alb and stole, I say, “It’s about adopting the clothing of the servant class in first century Rome.”

      So, I’ll tell you: probably, somebody coming in here and seeing what we do, who isn’t familiar with our ways is either going to be curious about the anachronism of it or bored by it, and maybe both eventually.

      On the other hand is the contemporary service church.  When you look at the advertising that most churches offering contemporary services create, what you see is the promotion of the unconventional.  The choir (actually a praise band) with electric guitar, bass, keyboard, and percussion set; the sanctuary (actually an auditorium) strewn with video screens and a sound system fit for a concert venue.  The idea is for the individual who is bored with the conventional church to discover an environment that is both familiar and alien at the same time, and therefore attractive.

      Whether or not a traditional service church can thrive in a contemporary service world is, actually, a matter of finding one’s niche, finding one’s voice in an otherwise noisy wilderness... I’m pretty sure that’s the secret.  If we want to be traditional, well and good, but it is a relative few who are actually seeking the traditional. 

      But they’re not necessarily seeking the contemporary either.  Good news for us.

      What most people are seeking, especially people looking for a church, is a place and a people where there is refuge and comfort, and among whom they can find themselves challenged and affirmed both at once. 

      So, to know how we are unconventional, how we are special, and how to embrace that and spread good news about it, that is what contemporary service churches have managed to do, and it ought to be a goal for the traditional churches, too.  Being unconventional has to be good news.  It has to have an appeal!  (And, let’s be honest, there is definitely a sufficient number of Societies of the Creative Anachronism out there.  So, we cannot afford just to be peculiar, we have to be appealingly peculiar!)

      And though it may seem to us today that John the Baptist was hardly appealing, charming or attractive, yet still he somehow managed – clad even as he was and eating even what he did – to draw a crowd. 

      It is not as though his was the only voice in that wilderness.  Ancient Palestine was just as noisy then as it is now, with the exception of broadcast technologies that bring the noise inside where people live, so that the refuge of the home no longer exists.  Somehow, John’s voice rose above his contemporary, noisy host.

      Perhaps he was able to do this because a majority of his listeners were familiar with scripture, and because he had the wisdom to quote the traditional saying of the prophet Isaiah.  I think he must have had the wisdom to quote: 

How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of the messenger who announces peace,
who brings good news,
who announces salvation,
who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” (Isaiah 52:7) 

It certainly seems as though he must have.  The words “Your God reigns” imply a kingdom full of good news for an oppressed people.  And John’s own words, as Matthew phrases them, “The kingdom of heaven has come near,” would have been heard, pregnant with that meaning.  Was he a rebel? the leader of a revolutionary group?  The message would have pricked at the ears of practically the full range of listeners and set them wondering: How has God’s kingdom come near? What possible evidence does he have?

      My guess is that John would have been quoting Isaiah often, finding the attention of oppressors and oppressed alike with words that promised justice and relief, with words that could make nervous people like the Pharisees and Temple authorities who did their best to stand upon the conventional, middle ground, and who if they left that ground would have looked to anyone like “a brood of vipers” and hypocrites.  His words were thus traditional, but their impact defied convention.

      Here’s a question for you, then: How shall we make a traditional message unconventionally attractive?  And right off the bat, let me say that dressing me in camel’s hair and leather is not going to be careted into the Terms of Call now!  Nor am I going to add insects to my customary vegetarian diet.  (I have been known to go higher on the food chain, but I am not backtracking to that point!  Now, as far as you all are concerned, if individually you want to adopt a new fashion or a new diet, you go right ahead...  You can test the church’s “open and affirming” stance.  (Will they really welcome EVERYBODY?)) 

      Isn’t it curious that the more “traditional” in worship style a church is, the more progressive its perspective (I’m speaking in broad terms here), while the more non-traditional a church is in worship style, the less progressive its worldview, theology, etc.

      But being John the Baptist, or something like him, is likely where we have to be headed: bringing our own style and emphasis to the traditional message of salvation: Repent! The kingdom of heaven has come near!  Get on over here, and you’ll see it!

      That’s the point of this sermon, after all, or at least its title:  Being John the Baptist.  Just as Jesus said of John that he was the personage of Elijah predicted at the end of the book of Malachi, work this right, find your perspective, your niche, your voice, and others may say of you that you... are... John the Baptist.

      There’s a warning to this, however, before you go out and buy your own camel’s hair and leather and start snacking on grasshoppers and bee juice, and relocate to the Cook County Forest Preserve, or set up shop along the North Branch of the Chicago River.

      Jesus appears to have thought that John the Baptist needed to be thinking more outside the box, that the old boy wasn’t being unconventional enough.  My guess is that even Jesus found the Baptist’s outfit and diet to draw some people’s attention away from the message.  You know, you want to be attracting, not distracting.

      Though Jesus also maintained a mendicant lifestyle, depending as he did on the kindnesses of others to provide him with roof and table, he did so in order to be able to go to the people.  John did it so that the people would come to him.

      Rather than have the people come to him, Jesus would set aside John’s asceticism and introduce himself to the party circuit.  His first miracle, they say, was to turn 180 gallons of water into some very strong wine. The same folk who complained that John fasted from normal food and would drink nothing intoxicating complained that Jesus was “a glutton and a drunkard.”

      Jesus took the good news John had been delivering and, rather than having the people come to him, went instead to the people.  (Or, more accurately, he got himself invited to where the people were and then they would stay and stay.)  That’s an interesting way, I think, of encountering this matter of an attractive or appealing word.  If the news is good enough, you will take it to others, rather than wait for them to come to you.

      Paul worked still another marketing strategy: Broaden the appeal of the good news; show how it applies beyond the conventional borders of Jewishness.  Bring everybody in by taking the message to everyone!

      In a reading for today that we did not read, from Romans 15, Paul would come to profess his understanding of the meaning and purpose of the Messiah as Jesus lived out that role: namely, the Gentiles are now declaring the glory of the God of the Jews.  This was wonderfully good news, still steeped in tradition, but defying just about every convention that the tradition maintained, and making practically necessary the delivery of the good news, not just its proclamation.

      At each step along the way, from John to Jesus to Paul, traditional words and worship were offered in new and unconventional ways. 

      Can a traditional service church thrive in a contemporary service world?

      Can we still speak the good news provocatively, give meaning to it unconventionally and attractively, and act upon it effectively?  Can we, to paraphrase the great Pilgrim pastor John Robinson, reveal that “there is yet more light and truth to shine forth from God’s Holy Word”?  Can we find our voice, to cry out in the wilderness... that noisy, noisy wild place that encroaches upon our quiet places?  Can we answer needs?  Can we heal the broken, touch the sick, raise the dead?

      Will we really permit a little child to lead us wolves and leopards and lions?  Will we actually feed with the lamb, the kid, and the fatling, and not on them?

      Can we be Christ’s repentant and restored people... Paul’s vision of a non-discriminating household – male or female, Jew or Greek, barbarian, Scythian, slave, or free?

      Can we be John the Baptist?

      I’ll tell you something: we’d better.

      Amen.