Advent 2:2014 Mark 1:1-8 Locusts and wild are gluten free

If were alive today, I think he would be a television evangelist. I’m not sure he would have the drawing power of someone like Joel Osteen, not with his message of repentance. John had a simple, straightforward word for anybody who came out to hear him: repent. He wouldn’t be a big time tele-evangelist, but maybe he could have sustained a little cable show on one of those obscure channels?

Why do I say that? Because I think John was a good showman.

In fact, I think he was an extremely clever showman. He was driven by the power of to proclaim a message to his contemporaries, but he knew that no one would pay attention to him unless he had a gimmick. Some would argue that John’s eccentricity came from a deep, internal, religious calling that was charismatic, and perhaps a bit irrational because of his extreme dedication. They might argue him to be like many before and after him; a shaman, a , a medicine man, a dervish, driven by the powerful force. But he might just as well have known what it takes to get people to listen – even if it is

1 dressing up like an Old Testament Prophet. Whatever his motivation, he was very effective. Some say he might have even influenced preaching.

This is the year of Mark, and Mark’s skips the birth narrative and gets right to the point; prepare the way of the Lord. And the way of the Lord is not what we might expect. The way of the

Lord is a radically different way, symbolized by wilderness wandering, repentance, and even a different diet – locusts and wild honey – no meat, no wine, no gluten. Unlike Luke and Matthew, who give us the story of Jesus’ birth, Mark knocks us “off balance” right out of the chute.

But the truth is, this isn’t unusual for . John the

Baptist did not just drop out of nowhere. He is the end of a long line of who have all been more than a bit eccentric and certainly have caused more than their share of trouble to the comfortable establishment.

His Preaching certainly was not meant to win friends and influence people, at least not the people who “counted” in those days:

2 the wealthy, the religious establishment, the majority. He was an abrasive judgmental prophet in the style of Amos, Micah, or .

John mimicked the OT prophet with his extreme dress code, a parallel to the behavior of Elijah in those stories from the book of

Kings. John’s message was twofold: he spoke of someone who would follow him, and he proclaimed a stern message of judgment to those who would listen. Like Elijah, who challenged King Ahab of repeatedly, John condemned the behavior of Herod Antipas of Galilee for marrying his deceased brother’s wife. This led to John’s imprisonment and eventual death.

Though John was the last of the line we call “prophets”, he was certainly not the last of those who similarly challenged the political, social and religious world. From Joan of Arc to Jon Hus, from Martin

Luther to the early church father Irenaeus, from Martin Luther King to

Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest-ever Nobel Prize recipient, there have always been those who will challenge what is, who will call for repentance, who remind us that our God is a god of new starts, new life, a new world.

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Every day and every night we are hearing news of Ferguson,

Missouri. First there were demonstrations in Ferguson against the police department and the grand jury’s decision not to prosecute the police officer who shot and killed Brown. Then came demonstrations throughout the U.S. that continue still. Now there is the possibility of Brown’s father being prosecuted and sent to jail for

“inciting a riot” by his response to the news. Where is justice? Where is hope? We need a John the Baptist to remind us all of our need for repentance.

There is police brutality in the world. There is racism in the world. There are those who will incite a riot just for the sake of rioting and who come into a community to make a bad situation worse. There are young people who do make bad life choices that put them in violation of the law. There is a breakdown in respect in our country. There is the sin of the press who will more often fan the flames of controversy for a good story than present rational and intelligent arguments to help the situation. And there is the failure of government; local, state and national, unable to write laws and

4 establish justice for all the people of our land. There is plenty of blame to go around. No one is innocent. We are all called to repentance for our involvement or lack of involvement in these pressing issues.

As you know, one of my heroes in this genre is Dietrich

Bonhoeffer. Like many others before him, he did not start out to reform, to renew, to rebel. He was a brilliant theologian who in a different time and situation would have been a world renowned professor, writer and preacher. Even in his short life, he accomplished all of that. But the circumstances of the Nazi regime in his beloved

Germany forced him to face his own challenges and then, in turn to challenge the nazification of the German Protestant Church.

Bonhoeffer was known for his staunch resistance to the Nazi dictatorship, including vocal opposition to Hitler's euthanasia program and genocidal persecution of the . He was arrested and eventually was transferred to a Nazi concentration camp. After being associated with the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, he was briefly tried, along with other accused plotters, and then executed by hanging in 1945 as

5 the Nazi regime collapsed, just two weeks before Allied forces liberated the camp and three weeks before Hitler's suicide. Bonhoeffer established a seminary before his arrest and from it came the

Confessing Church movement, the last hope for the protestant faith in those dark times..

Among his greatest and most well-known writings, are his instructions to his seminary students, which came to be called “The

Cost of Discipleship” In that work he sounds a lot like a 20th c. John the Baptist might sound in such a situation:

 “Cheap grace” he said “is preaching forgiveness without

repentance;

 it is baptism without the discipline of community;

 it is the Lord’s Supper without confession of sin;

 it is absolution without personal confession.

 Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without

the cross, grace without the living, incarnate Jesus

Christ.”

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On the other hand he told us “costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which has to be asked for, the door at which one has to knock.

 It is costly, because it calls all to discipleship; it is grace,

because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ.

 It is costly, because it cost people their lives; it is grace,

because it thereby makes them live.

 It is costly, because it condemns sin; it is grace because

it justifies the sinner.

 Above all, grace is costly, because it was costly to God,

because it costs God the life of God’s Son and because

nothing can be cheap to us which is costly to God.

Costly grace is the incarnation of God. (Bonhoeffer)

John the Baptist reminds us that Christ’s coming requires preparation. Here is a Savior who may take us as we are. But this

Lord will not leave us as we are. He demands change, turning, conversion. John’s garments, his rough coat of camel’s hair, may be the garments of repentance. He is a solitary figure who stands out

7 from the crowd and preaches out in the wilderness, far from the centers of prestige and power. He is in mourning for the sins of the world – our sins. And that, in the end, is good news. John came to remind us as to why Jesus Christ came into the world in the first place. He is savior, deliverer. And that is the good news.

 You not only need to repent, but you can repent

 You not only must repent in order to meet Jesus as he

comes into our world, but you can, you will, because

that’s the effect that Jesus has on people.

“Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength” says

Isaiah. That renewal of strength, for those who are waiting in

Advent, begins with a call to forgiveness, a call to repentance, a call to receive God’s generous offer of new life through confession, forgiveness, and renewal.” Amen

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Soren Kierkegaard said it would have satisfied our intellectual hankerings if God had appeared as a “very rare and tremendously large green bird” rather than as a homeless . God surprised us by appearing in human form, as a person who looked suspiciously like the annoying guy next door, an undeniably human person who hungered, thirsted, rejoiced, suffered, raged, wept and died as all person do . Yet some , like J, bap, said, “jesus of Nazarteth is the christt, the Father’s eternal word, the only begotten son of god.”

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