Like most of you, I have seen many
movies about characters in the Bible: Moses, Samson, King David, Paul
and Jesus. But I have never seen a movie about John the Baptist.
I thought he would be a good subject for a movie, but the more I
thought about it, a movie about him probably would not sell because it
would be hard to create voluptuous women and wild parties with John as
the subject. Still, I’d
like to make a movie about John.
You sit down in your comfortable seat
and as the movie opens there is a panoramic scene of the barren desert
east of Jerusalem. There are row after row of burnt brown hills,
interrupted only by an occasional wandering Bedouin Arab leading his
sheep with, if he’s lucky, a camel for himself. As you are watching, words flow
across the screen even before the credits are given, and a voice says,
“The voice of one crying in the wilderness: prepare the way of he Lord,
make his paths straight.” We see a crowd standing out there in
the waste land, and as the camera eases through the crowd, we see a
strange little man standing in the river with a soaking wet person
standing beside him. This
man is dressed like no one else present. He is bearded and
wearing a garment of camel hair with a leather belt around his
waist. As he comes out of the river, he sits down for a snack.
and we see that his diet is wild honey and locusts, which have a
crunching sound as he bites into them.
Who is this guy? The only clue we have
comes from the gospel of Luke, who tells of his elderly parents,
Zechariah the high priest and his wife Elizabeth. Luke says, Zechariah went into the
temple and saw an Angel who said to him, “Don’t be afraid Zechariah,
for your prayer is heard; even though you and your wife Elizabeth are
advanced in age, she will bear you a son, and you shall call his name
John.” Zechariah was so dumbstruck that he was speechless, and
remained so for the entire nine months of Elizabeth’s pregnancy. That’s
a tough thing to happen to a preacher. Zechariah regains his
speech when the baby is born. But wait a minute! Doesn’t this all
sound familiar. Abraham, you’re going to have a son; Abraham falls down
laughing as does Sarah his wife, because they’re both over 90.
Now Zechariah and Elizabeth and, remember there is also a vision to a
man named Joseph about a son being born to his fiancée Mary. These unusual and extraordinary
birth stories are always the forerunner of something great that is
going to happen. Abraham and Sarah become the first parents of an
entire nation. John the Baptist becomes the forerunner, the announcer
for the ministry of Jesus. Jesus was born under amazingly
similar circumstances, and became the fullest revelation of God.
Why is this character dressed like one
out of place within his society? The clue comes from Luke, who says, in
chapter 1: verse 17. “He will go before him in the spirit and power of
Elijah. There’s the clue we have been looking for, because now the
camera fades into the dust of a desert storm, and we see Elijah the
great prophet of the Hebrews who lived 500 years earlier than John the
Baptizer. Maybe that is
why John is attracting crowds out in the desert. These are Jewish
people, and seeing someone who reminds them of Elijah, the great
prophet of the people, is enticing. He reminds me of some street
corner evangelist, or someone at the “Spit and Argue club” in Hyde
Park, London. His repent
and be baptized message tells me that he is still part of the
Monarchial thinking faithful, who felt that you had to believe, so that
you would not miss out on the rewards that God has prepared for
believers only. He cries out about one greater than he who is
coming, but he does not have any of the message and the insights of the
very one he proclaims. Grace is not a part of John’s insights or
vocabulary.
John is legal and rigid; Jesus is
spiritual and embracing.
John is strident and severe; Jesus is loving and forgiving. John
proclaims a future destination for the faithful; Jesus seeks
transformation in this life. John seeks total obedience to a system of
beliefs; Jesus invites us to a way of life. They are so differen, and yet Jesus
comes to John to be baptized. Isn’t it strange? But why is John cast in
the likeness of Elijah? A
bit of history from the book of 1st Kings. Elijah is a resident of
Tishbite a town in Gilead. Elijah announces to Ahab the king that he is
a prophet of God, and Ahab is to live by his words. This pronouncement
is followed by a number of great stories that illustrate the power of
God as made known through Elijah.
Most of us are aware of the story
where he asks the prophets of Baal to pray for fire to consume the
altar that has a cut-up bull on it. Nothing happens, so Elijah
pours water all over the altar and the meat, and prays to Yahweh.
Then, fire consumes everything, including the water on the ground. It’s
a story to demonstrate God’s power.
In II Kings, there is a second story that illustrates the strength of
Elijah's message and the fact he is well known. King Ahab has died, and his son,
Ahaziah has succeeded him. In this story, Ahaziah fell through
the lattice in his house in Samaria, and is sick. Perhaps he
broke his leg, or maybe he got an infection. In any case, he calls his
servants and tells them to go and inquire of Baalzebub, the god of
Ekron. If you look in the Bible you will see this name begins with
Baal- it is a fertility God, and regional to the area called Ekron. Elijah encounters the messengers on
the road, and asks, as the angel in the story commands, why go there,
is their no God in Israel? Go tell Ahaziah that he will not get up from
his bed, because he is going to die. The messengers return and Ahaziah asks,
why have you returned? They said, we met a man on the road and he asked
us if we were going to Baalzebub because there was no God in Israel? He
sent us back to tell you that the Lord God of Israel says, “ you will
not get out of bed because you are going to die.” Ahaziah asks, what kind of a person
was this? They said, he wore a garment of haircloth with a girdle of
leather about his loins. The King said, damn, it’s Elijah the Tishbite.
He commands 50 men to go and seek out Elijah. Elijah faces them and
says, “If I am a man of God, let fire come down and consume you.
And the fire does come, and kills all 50. No wonder the people of Israel saw
Elijah as the greatest of the prophets and the one who would come
first, preceding the Messiah to usher in the golden age of Israel’s
restoration.
To this day, every Jew knows of
Elijah. It is customary, at the Seder meal, to pour 5 cups of wine.
During the meal, the fourfold promise of God’s redemption is remembered
from the book of Exodus. The fifth cup is God’s promise of bringing the
people of Israel back to the land and, according to their tradition;
Elijah will usher in the Messiah and thus that ingathering.
Now, in New Testament times, we have
another story about the coming of a Messiah and the one who announces
this is also dressed in a cloak of camel hair with his loins girded
with leather. And like Elijah, John lives in the desert. We have
two intermeshing stories, both proclaiming the greatness of God: both
preparing the way for a coming Messiah. The movie flashes back and forth between
these two characters. Both are fervent believers; both are
fearless in the face of adversities. Both proclaim the greatness of God
and the need for people to believe, and both of them are out where
people have to come to them. These guys don’t show up in cathedrals or
even in small churches. In
fact, as Barbara Brown-Taylor points out so vividly, the ones who
stayed in the cities, in their churches, missed the message. They were
so busy in being Church; so involved in the machinery of the
organization, that they failed to see what the Church is all about.
They forgot that the Church is primarily to HEAR and to DO. Unlike the
prophets, most of the Churches I know are not driven by a dream of
greatness, a vision of service or a discipline of obedience.
The greatness of Elijah and John the
Baptist is that they held a dream before their people; a vision of a
better day when a leader would usher in a new and visible way of living
wisely and well. The problem is that prophets and visionaries don’t sit
too well with most people. After an initial burst of enthusiasm, most
settle back into their old safe ways of living. It’s lonely out there
on the edge, when most people are content to stay behind. But that is
the message of Advent. There is hope, and it is worth all of the work
and all of the effort that we put into trying to be a serving and
obedient Church of Christ.
Elijah was censured because of his
unwise zealousness for God and he was carried away in a fiery chariot
after his successor Elisha was named. John the Baptist was beheaded and
his head was presented on a platter to the wife of Herodias while her
daughter Salome danced a seductive dance. Now we are called to be the prophets
for our day, right here in Squamish. We do well to remember that the
gospel always starts with a messenger: three strangers talking to
Abraham and Sarah; a sense out of the still small breeze on a mountain
top to Elijah; a personage coming to Zechariah and Elizabeth, or an
Angel whispering in Mary’s ear and speaking to Joseph in a dream.
It’s still so. A committee comes
to a contented pastor, and says we have a challenge for you. The gentle
and brave soul, who quietly says to her Church, we are here to serve
those who are hurting and those who need love. The teacher who isn’t
sure she has all the information right, but she loves her students and
they never forget that. The youth who quietly observes to see if this
is what serving God means. The musical person who sings or plays out of
love, and finds that more important than perfection. That’s the message
of this Advent to this Church.
And so, the movie comes to an end. The
camera shifts from the desert to pictures of towns where there are
Churches all boarded up: dead! They never got the message. They were
too busy trying to be right, or big, or attractive. The camera focuses
on a cement wall. It is covered with graffiti and over in the
corner, near the garbage dumpster, a young person huddles up trying to
inject herself with another dose of heroine. Around the corner, two people stand begging
for a handout- whether for food or booze we don’t know. Meanwhile,
there are two people committed to each other, and they are sad because
one is dying of Aids, and they are even sadder because their parents
won’t accept them. Just
yards away, there is a Church, brightly lit with happy music ringing
out and well dressed people enjoying the presence of each other, all
oblivious to the pain and the misery just outside their door.
The scene shifts; again we see a weird
little man standing in the middle of a river screaming, Prepare the way
of he Lord. Suddenly, another who looks strangely like him joins
him and as they walk away, a third joins them- this one has wounds in
his hands and his feet. They link arms and slowly fade into the
sunset--- and all that is left is the sound of them weeping.