Tag Archive for: Barbara Brown Taylor

Advent 2B-23

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

“Comfort, O comfort my people, says our God” (Isaiah 40:1).  I wonder, where do you find comfort? If you’re like me, perhaps there are certain comfort foods like mashed potatoes and gravy that always satisfy and stir warm memories. Or maybe, music you play again and again lifts your spirits and fills your head and heart with the vibration of beauty and joy—like late night jazz.  Maybe it’s a walk along the lake front, the forest preserve, or the Botanical Garden.  Or maybe your very best most comfortable comfort place is your bed.

So, I find it a little shocking that, apparently, for the people of Israel, the promise of comfort came not with food, or music, or at the park, or in their beds –but in the wilderness.  “A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God (Isaiah 40:3).

Today’s gospel comes from the very first words of Mark’s gospel, chapter one, verse one.  Mark was the first to write the story of Jesus.  He is the inventor of the gospel. Mark became the principal source for both Matthew and Luke. Mark wrote: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1).

Mark doesn’t begin with the birth of Jesus, or with stories about him as a little boy.  There are no angels, no shepherds, no wise men –not Zechariah, not Elizabeth—not even Mary and Joseph. Instead, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” begins with John the Baptist shouting in the wilderness, “repent!”  Mark announces good news by weaving together lines from Isaiah 40 and Malachi 3. “In the wilderness” John the water-baptizer announces the coming of one who “will baptize you with the Holy Spirit” (verse 8)

Mark begins with ancient words written 500 years before Jesus’ birth. “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God…In the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord, make his pathway straight.” (Isaiah 40: 1 & 3) Mark begins with words of the prophet Isaiah written in the aftermath of conquest and slavery. Virtually the whole population of Israel at that time was carted off.  The story of a people gathered by God into the Promised Land had ended in war and devastation.  Once, their ancestors had been freed from slavery in Egypt; now they were again held captive, imprisoned by a foreign king, and separated from their home by another cruel and harsh desert.  Into this bleak reality words from Isaiah 40 broke like water in a dry land.

Comfort, O comfort my people. Build them a highway from Babylon to Palestine. Lift up every valley. Make every mountain low.  Make the uneven ground level and the rough places into a plain.  Remove every barrier that separates my people from their home.

The proclamation of John the Baptist, according to Mark, is the promise of freedom. It is a promise of safety.  It is a promise that included everyone, young and old alike. It is a promise of streets to live in, and places to love and to be loved. Comfort is no comfort without human dignity. Comfort is small comfort if it is only about what we do privately and alone. True comfort flourishes in community where all God’s people have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

But we can’t get there from here. Our second Exodus is impossible.  We cannot cross into the promised land today any more than our ancestors could cross the cruel desert by themselves to return to Jerusalem from Babylon. We cannot get there, that is, without a big dose of gospel medicine John the Baptist called repentance. The advent of our God is powerful medicine administered like a giant horse-sized pill by John the Baptist who breaks the door to our sick room shouting the word, ‘repent!’  Mark’s gospel begins with some tough love. We are met in the wilderness of our soul by God’s love and judgment (which it turns out, are the same thing).

John the Baptist offers the gift of repentance, so we may hear again God’s invitation to be joined again in the undying life of the Trinity.  Repentance –or metanoia—literally means, “to change one’s mind,” or “to turn around.”  It is to change, not for just a moment, but through a complete turnaround or transformation of thought and action.  True comfort, John the Baptist promises, comes through the death of our old self, and the beginning of our new life in Christ.  Comfort comes in the waters of baptism and at the table. It comes in the living Word proclaimed in scripture and lived out among our siblings here and now.

 Barbara Brown Taylor writes in Gospel Medicine that God’s “Judgment is above all about being known…all the way down.  It is about being seen through, seen into, and known for who we really are.  It is about the total failure of our defenses and the abject poverty of our pretensions.  It is about stepping into the light, or having the light turned upon us, so that every nook and cranny of our being is illuminated for examination.  It is about standing before God without our armor, our masks, our possessions, and our excuses, with nothing but our beating hearts and the slim volume of our life histories to commend us, waiting to hear God’s true word about ourselves.”  (Barbara Brown Taylor, Gospel Medicine, Boston: Cowley Publications, 1995, p. 130)

Mashed potatoes and gravy can take us only so far.  True comfort comes to our bed when we have good reasons to get up and get out again each morning. The beginning of the good news God’s loves. Despite your faults and your big bag of transgressions, God declares peace be upon you.  Just breath. Now go into that desert of yours and help free your siblings who are still lost in their fears and imprisoned by the culture and economy of death. The power and presence of grace, incarnate in the world and in our lives, stands ready to break us open and turn us outward.  Through repentance, we are set free from thinking only about ourselves.

Mark announces God’s surprising message from the prophet Isaiah—our story with God is not at an end but beginning again. There will be a second Exodus. The story of our ancestors has become our story. It is the story of our personal exodus into freedom through baptism into Christ Jesus. It is a story told by John the Baptist –a gift wrapped in camel’s hair, mixed with locusts and wild honey.  The advent of the good news of Jesus Christ comes unexpectedly. Here the peace that passes understanding again to mend our hearts and renew our spirit even as the world around us remains locked in fear and darkness. The healing light of grace and forgiveness comes like the new dawn.

Proper 19C-22
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

When they were little, I sang to my kids at bedtime. Always the same three hymns, “Silent Night,” “Spirit of Gentleness,” and “Amazing Grace.” I wondered, did the words and images seem odd to them? Dad, what’s a round, yon virgin? Or a Spirit of restlessness? What dangers, toils, and snares? When did grace saved a wretch like you? What’s that about? Fortunately, they didn’t ask and didn’t seem to mind. Although, for years, Leah insisted to her friends Silent Night was not a Christmas song because ‘dad sings it every day all year!’

I admit, I sang in those days as much for myself as for them. It was a once-a-day dose of spiritual medicine during divorce. Amazing Grace is the sending hymn today. When I wasn’t sure who I was anymore – or who I would become those words written in 1772 by John Newton, a slave ship captain turned pastor and abolitionist, sought me out, found me, and walked me out of the wilderness. “I once was lost but now am found. Was blind but now I see.”

I am a witness, Jesus, the Good Shepherd, laid me on his shoulders and carried me. God is with us when we are lost. God finds and brings us through disasters and upheavals like divorce, illness, job loss, or tragedy. God’s grace is truly amazing, not only in times of acute distress but also in the fast pace of every day. Because the truth is my lostness isn’t over. “We get lost over and over again, and God finds us over and over again.” Maybe the great good news of the gospel today is lostness is not a blasphemous aberration; it’s part and parcel of the life of faith. (Debi Thomas, “On Lostness,” Journey with Jesus, 9/08/19

Look at the children of Israel. They were lost, and found, and lost again. It’s one of the great stories of the Hebrew bible. In mid-conversation, on top of Mt. Sinai, God ordered Moses, “Go down [the mountain] at once!” (Exodus 32:7). Impatient at waiting for Moses to return, and with the help of his brother, Aaron, the people had melted their jewelry, molded it into a golden calf, and began to worship it in place of the living God.

Hadn’t they experienced the plagues of Egypt? Could they have already forgotten the pillar of cloud that guided them by day and the pillar of fire that led them by night? Didn’t they walk upon dry ground after God parted waters of the Red Sea? Had they not tasted the quail, or eaten the manna, or drank the water gushing from a rock which God provided to sustain them in the desert? God was, understandably, exasperated!

In fact, as the story goes, God was ready to destroy them—these children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He proposed to start all over again, beginning with Moses. You might think that would sound good to Moses. But Moses talked God down. And remarkably, scripture says, “the Lord, changed his mind” (Exodus 32:14) So, what did Moses say to persuade God to change their divine mind? Notice that he didn’t try to defend the people. In fact, he didn’t appeal to God on behalf of the people at all. Instead, Moses appealed to God’s own character. In essence, Moses asked God, ‘Who do you want to be? Do you want to be the God of steadfast love? –the God who keeps a promise? –or not?’ God relented and the people were not destroyed, and the divine-human drama begun with Abraham and Sarah, that always reaches forward to encompass the present moment, and stretches beyond it toward a hopeful future, continued up to and including this very day.

We, like the children of Israel, get lost. We, like sheep, will go astray. Like a precious coin gone missing, we are often unaware just how lost we are. Yet, the great shepherd, our great Father and Mother, the great lover of our life and soul, whom we know as Christ Jesus, seeks us out and brings us home. Like the children of Israel, lostness happens to God’s people. It happens in the most basic and exasperating ways. It happens within the beloved community. Yet, God has chosen the path of steadfast love, forgiveness, and mercy. God calls us to walk the same path showing forgiveness and grace to others.

“What does it mean to be lost? It means so many things. It means we lose our sense of belonging, we lose our capacity to trust, we lose our felt experience of God’s presence, we lose our will to persevere. Some of us get lost when illness descends on our lives and God’s goodness starts to look not-so-good. Some of us get lost when death comes too soon and too suddenly for someone we love, and we experience a crisis of faith that leaves us reeling. Some of us get lost when our marriages die. Some of us get lost when our children break our hearts. Some of us get lost in the throes of addiction, or anxiety, or lust, or unforgiveness, or hatred, or bitterness.”

If only we had learned the lessons of Mt. Sinai in the days following 911. How might we have responded differently to that tragedy? Instead of vengeance and righteous violence that led to two wars that stretched over two decades, I wonder, could God have shown us a different pathway bending more toward restorative justice?

It seems our lostness has only multiplied since then. Pandemic, systemic racism, climate crisis, a threat to democracy, and anxiety about the future of the church—to name but a few. We take comfort knowing “God is where the lost things are. God experiences authentic, real-time loss [with us]…God searches, God persists, God lingers, and God plods. God wanders over hills and valleys looking for his lost lamb. God turns the house upside down looking for her lost coin. God is in the darkness of the wilderness, God is in the remotest corners of the house, God is where the search is at its fiercest.” If we want to find God, we need look no further than to seek out the lost. We have to get lost. We have to leave the safety of the inside and venture out. we have to recognize our own lostness, and consent to be found. (Thomas)

In her book, An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor makes a strong case for these virtues. She argues that lostness makes us “stronger at the edges and softer at the center.” Lostness teaches us about vulnerability. About empathy. About humility. About patience. Lostness shows us who we really are, and who God really is. From lostness comes wisdom and maturity. The 16th century Spanish noblewoman turned Carmelite nun, Teresa of Avila, wrote, “When one reaches the highest degree of human maturity, one has only one question left: ‘How can I be helpful?’” Like a loving parent, God’s righteous anger on Mt. Sinai turned from destroying the children of Israel to guiding, reforming, and transforming them…very slowly, over time.

“The 13th century Sufi mystic, Rumi, said, “What you seek is seeking you.” This is true, and this is grace. But maybe it’s even truer that what I can’t or won’t seek is still seeking me. God looks for us when our lostness is so convoluted and so profound, we can’t even pretend to look for God. But even in that bleak and hopeless place, God finds us. This is amazing grace. And it is ours.” (Thomas)