John is Calling us

Originally published in the South Jetty Newspaper, Port Aransas 

John is out there in the wilderness calling me, calling you. I love teaching our day school children about John the Baptist in chapel. He is such a complex character. John is described as wearing camel's hair, a leather belt around his waist, and eating (I hope you aren't eating when you read this) big bugs with wild honey. I like the wild honey part. I also wonder if he harvested the honey and bugs with his own hands out there. He had plenty of comfortable places to be, this preacher's kid. He probably could have, and maybe he was for a time, an apprentice to his father, Zechariah a priest. He would certainly have learned about the law and prophets from his mother Elizabeth, a descendent of Aaron. The prophets spoke out for God, they stood out against the spirit of the times to call people back to God, away from their greed and neglect of the needy. The prophets of the Hebrew Covenant stood out on the edge of things and often acted out in ways that both got attention and would often mirror the ways God's people had gone astray. Sometimes they would demonstrate what might happen if they continue in their ways.  

The Hebrew prophets, including (from a Christian perspective) John the Baptist, were like sacred clowns of tradition of the Indigenous People of this land. As I learned from Bishop Steven Charleston's book, The Four Vision Quests of Jesus, the indigenous sacred clowns also stand out against what is accepted as normal, they draw attention to God's divine hope for humanity, and within what Choctaw Elder and Episcopal Bishop Charleston describes as the "Native Covenant," the sacred clowns reveal what could be in dramatic and often backward ways. The funny thing about John the Baptist is that he gets Jesus all wrong.  

Unlike what the scratchy-hair-wearing, bug-eating prophet announced, Bishop Charleston writes, "As the Christ, the expected one, Jesus was telling people to love their enemies and turn the other cheek. Instead of throwing sinners into lakes of fire, he was having dinner with them. He was not using his winnowing fork to separate human beings into the saved and the damned, but going into the brood of vipers to tell them they were loved." 

I still follow John out into the wilderness to learn from him each Advent, when we are to prepare our hearts for the arrival of the Incarnate God in Jesus Christ. John the Baptist's teachings still make me wonder about how God's people are doing as we live out our redeemed lives. John and other prophets (like Micah) still speak to us across the ages demanding that we live justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. Then, when we fail, Jesus steps in and says, "I love you anyway, let me help you." Jesus is justice, and mercy, and humility. The Incarnate God we celebrate at Christmas is the embodiment of the Way of Love, and I'm grateful for that clown John who pulls us away from the spirit of the times long enough to receive the love of God anew.