St. Paul's On-the-Hill Episcopal Church
The Rev. Stephen C. Holton, Rector
Advent 3; December 14, 2008
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
John 1:6-8, 19-28
LIFE ON THE STEPS
Have you ever been to a big church service, and perhaps you arrive there late. As you walk up to the church you notice that there are a few people hanging out on the steps – smoking or talking. Technically they are in church, but not actually in church, more at church.
You go in and sit down. Later they come in and join you. By then, they know you, for you were a newcomer when you passed them on the steps – that borderland between inside and outside – and they welcomed you if only by nodding their head and giving a friendly smile.
Life on the steps. Sometimes we are called to ‘life on the steps,’ we who belong to religion on the inside of life, but are aware of the world on the outside of life; we who are comfortable in both and, being comfortable in both, are called to welcome – with a friendly nod and a smile – those who pass from one to the other, from one point of our existence to another, more intimate part of our existence.
John the Baptist was such a man.
“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.”
He was not sent from the synagogue. He did not rise up through the ranks of religion or government or business. He does not have another identifier. He is not from Galilee or Nazareth or even the desert. No one says who else he is or where he’s from.
He’s simply – “a man sent from God.” It is as if he dropped into the world somehow, from some other place. He’s just: “from God.”
Are you the Messiah, the people ask? No.
Elijah? No.
The prophet? No.
Do you fit any of our religious categories? No.
Do you fit any of our government categories? No.
Business categories? No.
What are you here for? Someone else.
Who’s he? Someone greater.
Is he the Messiah, Elijah or the prophet? Not telling. He’s just – someone greater. You’ll know what to do when you meet him.
He’s coming from clear off the steps, from way beyond the borderlands of religion, from way beyond the borderlands of power. Keep watch with me, keep watch with us this Advent season of watching and waiting; for the coming one is coming, and all we know is – he’s greater than anyone who came before. And all we know, from our religious tradition in Isaiah, is that he’ll teach and heal and love. That’s it.
So wait. Wait.
And he comes.
In the words before this scripture, the bible says in that marvelous hymn: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. It was in the beginning with God.”
It says nothing about religion and traditional categories. It’s just the Word and God; and now – “the light.” John is a prophet of “the light,” a category that would have been as familiar to philosophers and physicists as it was to religious people.
God seems to be trying to reach people both in and out of religion. God seems to be trying to reveal himself to anyone who is watching, not just those who have found safety in religion, but those who seek after philosophical or scientific knowledge too.
The only way religious people will see this new revelation, is if they spend time on the steps – so that when the Word becomes flesh and dwells among us, full of grace and truth, all kinds of truth, we’ll know him when we see him and realized he fulfills those old categories of being a teacher and a healer and a spreader of justice.
So, in this Advent season, keep an eye out, for a new thing that God may be doing in the world. Look for the unusual, that does not make sense in the usual business categories, or the usual power categories, or the usual religious categories.
Keep an eye out for the new thing God us doing, and the new people he is sending, and the new ideas that are coming to birth.
The hallmark of these new things, is that they do not come from the usual places. They do not rise through the usual ranks.
They will have some familiarity, for they promise some solutions to the old, unfilled needs. They teach with love, or heal with love, or bring comfort.
They will do what nobody else and nothing else has ever done.
God – in that new revelation, that new clothing in which he takes on flesh and dwells among us – will teach and heal and love in ways that things that fill the old religious categories, and rise through the same ranks of religion and power – never do.
God comes as a stranger. He comes from the outside. Welcome him in, with a friendly smile. When you sit beside him – or her – in church, be nurtured together by the same old ancient traditions that God began a long time ago, and that God changes, or adjusts, with his renewed presence, now.
Last week the Episcopal Church was much in the news, with some dioceses that have left the national church. I neglected to mention it because we were so busy doing the work of the Lord and talking about it here that it just didn’t come up. That’s appropriate.
They have left – and at last count that’ s100,000 which is less than twice the size of the Diocese of New York which gives you an idea that we are not so endangered as all that – they have left because they do not find God or the traditions of God in the Episcopal Church as it is presently constituted.
And yet God keeps doing wonderful new things, so how could he not be here? As Jesus says in Matthew: “every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.” (13:52)
But they find that they cannot find God here, and so they depart. So we wish them well. May they find God – who loves all his people – somewhere else. May they also, this advent, stay alert.
We find God still works in many parts of our world. We find he still walks in many parts of our world. We find he still talks in the language of philosophy and science, as well as religion, as the Gospel of John finds.
He comes through crazy people who live out in the desert and fit no religious category we are familiar with.
But he comes. We mean to stay alert, and welcome him in every new stranger and idea, every old friend and beloved tradition.
Amen