A Nightmare on Elmdale Streeet
Advent 3C-24
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago
In the eye of a hurricane witnesses say there is a dead calm. There are no birds chirping or dogs barking. Everything is bracing for what comes next. I’ve never been in a hurricane, but I feel what we’re living through now must be something like it. The frenzy of the election season has receded. The time between November 5th and January 20th is like the eye of a storm. There’s nothing to do now but wait to confront whatever is coming next.
The political crisis in the US feels like a hurricane, and yet, it’s not the only approaching storm we face. The horizon looks ominous on multiple fronts. There is a climate emergency. There is a technological revolution driven by artificial intelligence and quantum computing. There is a culture war and a fundamental dispute about who has the right to say what we do with our bodies. There is a religious battle between fundamentalisms and pluralisms across the world. Christians cannot name and proclaim the same gospel against the rising tide of Christian nationalism (an oxymoron) and Christian Zionism (a tragic lie).
This Third Sunday of Advent is called “Gaudete” or “Rejoice” Sunday. Yet, how are we to rejoice? John the Baptist proclaims good news to all the people. Zephaniah exhorts us to “sing aloud, rejoice, and exult” because God is in our midst, and rejoices over us with gladness (Zeph. 3:14, 17). Isaiah claims with confidence his people will “draw water from the wells of salvation” with joy (Is. 12:3). And Paul encouraged the Philippians to “Rejoice in the Lord always” (Phil. 4:4). Are we just supposed to act like everything is okay when it’s not? Too often I think this is exactly what ‘Christmas cheer’ amounts to.
Yet before we dismiss our scripture as being out of touch with the serious situation we are facing, we must pause and remember the Bible we read, and reverence is a wilderness text. It is a text borne of trauma, displacement, and loss, written mostly by the persecuted, the enslaved and the desperate. Our ancestors in faith lived through periods of famine, war, plague, and natural disaster. They suffered starvation, violence, barrenness, captivity, exile, colonization, and genocide. They were brave lonely voices, crying in the desert…of their sorrow…their rage, fear, horror, and pain…and most remarkable: they also cried of their hope. “Their fierce, muscular hope in a God who cares. A God who vindicates. A God who saves. Something about the wilderness experience birthed in them a capacity for profoundly life-changing hope. Salvific hope. Hope beyond hope.” A hope that gives way to joy. Hope and joy became the rocket fuel that propelled the early church. (Debi Thomas, “A Voice Crying,” Journey with Jesus, 11/28/21.) Can it offer an answer for us now?
John the Baptist is some strong gospel medicine. With fire and brimstone, he rained fierce judgements on the heads of religious leaders and political authorities. “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee the wrath to come?” Throughout our bible we hear the surprising message that joy and judgment are impossible to separate. “In the language of scripture, synonyms for judgment include discernment, acuity, sharpness, and perception. To judge something is to see it clearly — to know it as it truly is.” (Thomas)
So, the terrible voice and visage of John the Baptist is the bible’s pick to announce the coming Christ child because he stands and shouts from within the wilderness of our own broken dreams and disappointments. He invites us to see things clearly.
The Holy Spirit, released into our blood stream at the table and the font, works now to bring to our awareness with brutal honesty, judgement about the sin in ourselves, our household, our church, our economy, our culture, and our nation. These may seem to us more like nightmares than the gospel. Yet, if once we follow John the Baptist into the wilderness of our guilt and shame, we discover it is from there that our true salvation comes. The good news becomes truly good news. Hope and joy become like rocket fuel once we begin to have the right nightmares.
Yes. This means John the Baptist, and not St. Nick, is that dreadful and inviting spirit of Christmas who confronts us today like the ghosts that haunted Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’, A Christmas Carole. Scrooge is blessed with the right nightmares and thus is made new. He is ushered from misery into hope and joy. Could it propel us to confront the storms that we face?
You remember the story? In the beginning, Scrooge dismissed the invitation to generosity and compassion as ‘humbug.’ A mighty fortress protects Scrooge’s heart from recognizing his own sin-sick soul and the suffering he is responsible for. But Scrooge receives grace through the intervention of his dead friend, Marley. He is visited by the three ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future. Scrooge’s terrifying experience at seeing ghosts is replaced by a still more terrible vision of the waste and pain he has wrought by his own miserly, small-spirited, life. The visions end with Scrooge falling into his own grave just like we do in baptism.
Scrooge’s nightmares turn his heart toward another possibility. When he awakes, he does just that. With shouts of joy in the streets, he becomes a participant in God’s world in a new and more beautiful way. (Tripp Fuller, Divine Self-Investment: An Open and Relational Constructive Christology, Sacra Sage Press, 2020, pp. 117-118)
The priests and political powers of ancient Israel had fashioned a world in their own image. It was an upside-down world compared to the one created in God’s own image, the imago dei. John the Baptist points us to a new mind and heart in his call to ‘repentance.’
The Greek word for “repent” is “metanoia.” It is closely related to the word ‘metamorphosis’ as in to change from a caterpillar to a butterfly. It is a radical change, a transformation of mind, a new source and reason for our lives that follows the call and imitation of God’s love. Perfect love casts out fear. Perfect love lifts our spirits. Perfect love kindles our joy and renews our hope. The grace of God sets our life right side up.
In this metamorphosis the old root wrapped tightly around us like the Mighty Fortress Scrooge had wrapped around his heart, is being cut away so Christ may live in us and through us. See, even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees. With the right nightmares, our dread fear is replaced by hope and joy. This is the fuel we need. This is the right heart and mind and spirit we need. “Wakened by the solemn warning, from earth’s bondage let us rise; Christ our sun, all sloth dispelling, shines upon the morning skies” (“Hark! A Thrilling Voice is Sounding,” ELW # 246).
