Sermon for Advent 3, Year B
Reverend Gregg D. Wood.
Several months ago a group of people came together in a park in lower Manhattan, near Wall Street. They came with a multitude of concerns that they wanted to protest. Some were upset about the great inequalities of income and wealth between what they called the 99% and the 1%. Some came because they were jobless or homeless or the victims of foreclosures. Some came because they had borrowed a lot of money for a college education and couldn’t get a job to repay their student debt. Others came out of concern for the environment, or to protest foreign wars. They pitched tents, they attracted donations of food and other necessities to keep them going, and even set up a system of self-government which involved daily mass meetings and lots of committees. They came to be called the Occupy Wall Street movement. Before long, similar encampments or demonstrations had sprung up in several American cities.
The Occupy people came together in a public, symbolic place. It was a park near Wall Street, which they thought of as the place that had caused many of the problems they were concerned about. And they renamed the park “Liberty Park,” symbolizing their hope for change. Some of them dressed in strange clothes, reminiscent of the hippies of the 1960’s.
In many ways the Occupy Wall Street movement was similar to the movement which we read about in today’s gospel, the movement started by John the Baptist. Like the OWS people, the followers of John the Baptist gathered in a public place with a lot of symbolic value – on the east side of the Jordan River. This was the place where the Israelite nation began, centuries before, when the Israelites crossed over the river into the promised land of Canaan under the leadership of Joshua. It is as though John the Baptist was saying, “We have wandered from the path we were supposed to follow; we need to go back to the other side of the Jordan, and cross it again, and be baptized in that river, and start over again as a nation.”
Some people in the OWS movement wore strange clothes. They were criticized for being theatrical. Likewise, John the Baptist himself wore strange clothes. In fact he is, I think, the only figure in the New Testament whose clothing and diet are described. He wore a coat of camel’s hair, and a leather belt, and ate locusts and wild honey. Clearly his manner of life was considered peculiar. Maybe he too was criticized for being theatrical.
Another thing that the OWS movement was criticized for – in fact the most common criticism of them – was that they did not have a specific agenda or wish list of changes they wanted to see. The news commentators would say, “How can we take these protesters seriously when they don’t have specific goals? It’s not enough to say, ‘We are the 99%, and life is not fair.’ No political movement gets anywhere unless it has specific demands.” So they said.
But is that true? Many important things in life begin with a vague apprehension, an uneasy sense that something is wrong, which only gradually leads to analysis of the causes, and specific action, and a plan of attack.
Think of how you come down with an illness -- for example, getting the flu. It may start with a feeling of fatigue. The things you normally do seem to take more effort and energy. After a while you may get a scratchy feeling or a swelling in your throat. More time passes and you feel warm, and also cold; you get the shivers. Now you realize something is happening. It may be a cold, or the flu, or something else. You may see a doctor at this point, and he/she gives you a diagnosis, or maybe you diagnose yourself. Either way, you have now put a name on your condition. And naming it leads to a treatment plan, a plan of action.
What started as a vague sense of dis-ease, only gradually leads to specifics: to naming the problem and taking action to remedy the problem.
The same is true of social problems. Many years ago, a woman on a bus in Alabama refused to move to the back of the bus as she was supposed to. She did not know that what she did would lead to a nationwide protest movement and eventually to laws being written in Congress to protect people's civil rights. All she knew was that, on that day, on that bus, she was no longer going to be treated like a second-class citizen.
The Occupy Wall Street movement is at a very early stage. The scratchy throat stage. The move to the back of the bus stage. Mostly, they are people saying, “We don’t have the answers, but we’re hurting, and lots of people are hurting, and everyone should sit up and take notice.”
Like the OWS movement, John the Baptist’s movement looked for change. But also, like them, John’s movement did not have a specific agenda for change. John simply said, “Repent and be baptized.” He called for a change of heart, not for a specific set of political changes.
And it’s interesting. Like the people who criticize the OWS movement, the people of John’s time criticized him for not being specific enough. “Who are you? Let us have an answer. What do you say about yourself?” And John was very clear: I am not the Messiah. I am only the voice of one crying in the wilderness: prepare the way of the Lord. Or, if you will, I am the scratchy throat. I am the woman who refuses to move to the back of the bus. I am the forerunner, I am the one who prepares the way.”
So what is the message for in all this?
The message for us is that we should not ignore the signs that tell us something is amiss, even though the signs may be vague, even if we cannot tell exactly what the problem is, much less what to do about it. Sometimes we need to live with ill-defined unease for a while. If this is true of our physical health, if this is true of our social and political life, then surely it is also true of our spiritual lives.
If you are spiritually ill at ease, there may be the voice of one crying in the wilderness within you saying, repent, prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. God may have plans for you, God may be telling you that you need to make changes in your life, but you may have to live with uneasiness and uncertainty and confusion for awhile before you are ready for him to set you on the straight path.