December 7, 2014: May God’s words alone be spoken, may God’s words alone be heard. Amen.

There’s a road near my home in Sussex County that I really enjoy. Now, I don’t say that about roads really, but this little road is nice. It is only 2.5 miles long, and sits between Rt. 206 and Rt. 94, and it is called CR 618 or Willows Road. And I like it because it has these beautiful s-turns that go on for about a half mile – turns I am sure our vestry knows well, having had to navigate to my home once this past summer. In fact, at night – if you space the distance long enough – you can follow another car with your headlights on high beam and never be a problem for the driver in front of you because just as you round one bend, they round the next. And then there is the little hill– well, a steep one actually, and only about a ¼ mile long, but with a bit of a curve in it. As I round the corner on the way down it, I coast and I am able to get to a speed that will carry me a good ¼ mile once I am at the bottom – nearly to the place where they train hunting dogs (I did mention that I live in Sussex County, right?). But on the way up, in the snow…well, that’s a tricky thing, and at night, the deer like to hang out near the top just around the bend, so you have to really watch for them. Yes, I like this road…because its hills and turns make it interesting and fun. A straight path is very boring, I think. I much prefer the ones with loads of twists and turns. And, it is the twisty places that God calls us. A straight path is not where prophets are called to be…or for that matter, those who walk in the name of Christ.

“John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” The Gospel tells us today. A wilderness is not where one expects to find easy and straight paths, just the opposite. We are in a wilderness now – one of our own making – a wilderness of hate and violence. The prophet speaks from the wilderness.

“What do prophets do? Prophets are truth-tellers, at least when it comes to the Hebrew Testament. They are not fortune-tellers, not forecasters of the future, not doomsday prognosticators…They are analyzers of the “now” for the sake of moving toward a different future. Truth-tellers are essential, but not very popular. They say that the truth will set you free, but I like what Gloria Steinem once said, “The truth will set you free, but first it will really piss you off”. Telling someone the truth or being told the truth is an exercise in looking into a mirror. You are forced to see what you’d rather not see, have chosen to disregard, or pretend you are not.”[1]

The prophets of old knew this. In Isaiah, the prophet responds to God’s call to preach, to “call out”. This is the second call story of Isaiah, and just like the first one in Isaiah 6 (well, really, like all biblical prophets – Moses, Jonah, Jeremiah…), this is a reluctant prophet – I think the best ones are actually…or perhaps the ones truly called – the ones with a lick of sense anyway.

Now the issue with translating a language like Hebrew is in getting the punctuation right, but scholars have determined this passage to be a dialog of sorts, with God telling the prophet to “Call out” comfort to my people, and the prophet saying: “What shall I cry?” All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the LORD blows upon it; surely the people are grass.” In other words – everything I say falls on deaf ears, so what’s the point. But God answers, “The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.” In other words – get out there and do the work I called you to do – I’ll take care of the rest.

And, what it is really saying is that our communal call as a church is to preach – to proclaim – the good news of God – God with us. But is comfort what we need right now? In the fear that erupts into hate and violence in our streets and around the world, we would all like to feel comfort again – inner and outer peace. But that cannot come before change. Peace without justice – peace without fairness – peace without dealing directly at the underlying issues that pervade our society is as tenable as patching a pot hole in that winding road with mud. It won’t last, and it will only mask the problem in the short run. It’s a façade – a false peace. We want comfort from this time of trial, but what we need are some loud prophets – and they are there – in the streets of NYC and New Jersey – not burning buildings, but burning hearts!

And the truth being shouted from the wilderness into which we find ourselves is that the events of Ferguson, Cleveland, Brooklyn, and other places is NOT about what is legal, but about what is just. I am not an attorney. I don’t even play one on TV. I cannot answer the legal questions of whether or not laws were broken in these deaths. Truly, I cannot, and unless the rest of you have legal degrees and have read through all the evidence, neither can you. As I said last week, the media is a very poor filter for truth, though the media is a prophet’s tool, social media too, in this day and age to be sure.

No, I cannot say whether or not these Grand Juries were legally right. But to me – that doesn’t matter. What matters is why these events happened in the first place, and if the Grand Jury decisions were legally correct, that doesn’t make what happened in the first place just. We must have a society in which all people – ALL PEOPLE – not just those who look, think, act, or love like us – ALL PEOPLE – are treated with respect, with dignity, and like the children of God that they are. And THAT, my friends, did NOT happen in these cases.

We are in a wilderness, and we need some truth tellers. We must be those prophets, and we must, as God implores in Isaiah, “Get…up to a high mountain, and…lift up [our] voice with strength…lift it up, [and] do not fear,” And our message? Well, if I were the prophet speaking, it would be something like a bumper sticker I saw, “God is coming, and boy is She pissed!” The message is that we have strayed from a path of love, and our own pettiness, greed, and fear have made us lost in a wilderness of violence and hate. We have forgotten who we are, and we are lost.

Now, there is an odd thing about humans who find themselves lost in the wilderness. See, “If you’re lost in the woods and you feel like you’re walking in circles, you probably are. Without landmarks to guide us, people really do go around and around….and Jan Souman, a psychologist at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Germany conducted an experiment to prove just that.

Souman’s project started when a German popular-science television show approached his group with a viewer question: “Why do people walk in circles when they’re lost?” At first, Souman wasn’t sure if that common sensation was actually true. When lost, he suspected, people might veer to the left or right. But he didn’t expect them to actually walk in true circles. To find out, he instructed nine people to walk as straight as possible in one direction for several hours.

Six walkers forged through a flat, forested region of Germany. Three trekked through the Sahara desert in southern Tunisia. All walkers wore GPS receivers so that the researchers could analyze their routes.

The results, published in the journal Current Biology, showed that no matter how hard people tried to walk in a straight line, they often ended up going in circles without ever realizing that they were crossing their own paths.

But there was a twist.

Circular walking befell only the four forest walkers who had to walk in overcast conditions…. Those who could see the sun …managed to travel fairly straight.”[2]

Those who could see the sun…walked a straight path. And in our wilderness today, we are walking around in circles, pointing fingers at one another like a dog chasing its tail.

Christians have an important role to play in this wilderness of hatred and violence. We have, in Christ, Christ, the Son – the message of justice, mercy, love and peace, and a deep knowledge that no darkness can overcome his light – no death is stronger than his resurrection. Because we have the Son to guide us, like those walkers in the experiment, the wilderness doesn’t entrap us in never ending circles – it only gives us the experience we need to speak truth. And because of that, we have to stand up, shout out, and work tirelessly in his name until all people are truly free, until everyone – all races, cultures, creeds, sexual orientations, gender identities, religions, physical and mental challenges, everyone can live without fear. Until we realize the great truth – that we are all children of God, and because of that – brothers and sisters who are unconditionally loved for all time. Because we have the Son to guide us – we are called to lead others out of the wilderness that binds them.

In Advent we await the coming of God – the God that was, is and is to come – in Jesus – the Son that sets us free. Jesus proclaimed good news to the poor, cared for the marginalized, sought justice for the oppressed. We who are called to be as John, to prepare the way for the coming of Christ into our lives again, are to shout out this truth from every hilltop and into the valleys below – that God that comes to us in the form of this little baby, this vulnerable child, and because of that, as our Psalm today proclaims so beautifully, “Mercy and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Truth shall spring up from the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven.” I love the poetry of that…”poetry takes over where theology cannot go.” And the truth that springs up from the earth, is that we are called to clear the wilderness, to make straight the paths, to lay a pathway of peace for God…not stand around hoping God will make it happen.

Prophets are called to prepare the way for God. The God that is already here, but is also on the way. The ultimate paradox of cleaning up when the guest of honor is standing in the middle of your home. But maybe that is the key to it all…the reason even reluctant prophets are able to do the work God calls them to do, to proclaim the good news to people who are like grass, is because they never do it alone. God is with them.

And God is with us now, and is coming again too. God is calling us to bring comfort to the people – and the only way to do that – to really respond to that call – isn’t to hope the streets get quiet soon – that shouldn’t be the comfort we seek – but to open our lips to proclaim the good news – the good news that into this dark world light has come, and will come, and will always be. The good news that because God came to us as a child, we are given new life and hope. It is as we sing in our closing hymn today, ““Comfort those who sit in darkness mourning under sorrow’s load. To my people now proclaim that my pardon waits for them! Tell them that their sins I cover, and their warfare now is over.” As the hymn suggests, Advent heralds a new beginning – and that if we only turn from our sins, we can be pardoned, and peace will prevail. And as we know, sin is turning from God, from the light, from all that would guide us and set us free from the bondage of our human made wilderness in which we have become lost. But God, our light will lead us out, if we only open our eyes to see the Son above us.

In this Advent, in this time of great pain for so many of our brothers and sisters – let us prepare for God in our hearts, minds and souls by walking the way of Jesus into the darkness of our times, spreading his light until all the world is healed by the love of God that we carry with us. Until “Mercy and truth HAVE met together; righteousness and peace HAVE kissed each other. Truth …springs up from the earth, and righteousness… looks down from heaven.”

Comfort, O Comfort my people, says God…let us go forth in the name of Christ. Amen.

[1] Karoline Lewis, Luther Seminary.

[2] Emily Sohn, “People naturally walk in circles,” August 19, 2009, The Discovery Website. http://news.discovery.com. Retrieved July 8, 2014.

[Sermon as written may not be as delivered on any given Sunday]

The Rev. Diana Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
December 7, 2014
Advent 2 – Year B
1st Reading – Isaiah 40:1-11
Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13
2nd Reading – 2 Peter 3:8-15a
Gospel – Mark 1:1-8