LOVE'S HERESY

Sermon preached by the Rev. Michael Anderson Bullock

[Isaiah 11:1-10; Romans 15:4-13; Matthew 3:1-12]

With this Second Sunday of Advent, we move quickly and directly into the heart of this complex season.  Enter center stage: John the Baptist.  In my own Advent explorations and experiences, I have found John the Baptist to be the face of Advent; and in this second week of Advent, we meet him today in our Gospel lesson.

Matthew wastes no time with fancy introductions, no accolades, no impressive resume summations.  Rather tellingly (if not rudely), Matthew plops the Baptizer right onto our laps and into our faces.  “In those days,” is the way he provides the timing of when we receive our first glimpse of the infamously baptizing John.  Like a riveting figure suddenly emerging from the mists of our souls, Matthew brings John the Baptist onto the Messianic stage and to the Jesus Movement.

John’s base of operations was in the “wilderness”.  Matthew says that “in those days”… the Baptizer “appeared in the wilderness”.  He “appeared”.  Does anyone know from where this guy has come?  Does anyone know his family, his background?  Are there any references that can indicate what to expect of this strange man?  And what kind of person would have the “wilderness” as the base of operations?  Why the barren and foreboding “wild” place, where there is neither internet service nor the possibility of “Amazon Prime’s” next day delivery?  What is going on here?  Who is this guy?

All we know about the Baptizer is that he has a proclamation to make and that it is as harsh and piercing as the clothing and food he uses.  Standing in the barrens, John the Baptizer yells a warning – an urgent warning to “repent” and to do so (he says) because life on God’s terms is as close at hand as a breath.

As if anticipating our questions and our concerns about all this, Matthew quickly throws in some important context, saying that this figure is the one the Prophet Isaiah foretold.  He is, the ancient words say, “the voice of one crying in the wilderness”.  And the austerity of his voice announced an urgent warning: “Change your life.  God’s reign is here!”[1]

“In those days…”  These words themselves still carry the echoes of the prophets.  They were biblical code that new life, God’s new life, was about to be birthed.  The time of waiting had ended.  God was on the move … “in those days”, “in the wilderness”.

So, shouts the Baptizer, “repent”.  The time has come.  Make God’s approach straight and unimpededly direct.  “Repent.”  “Change your life”, not simply in terms of the anti-God behaviors to which we are all addicted, but more centrally, more essentially to the word’s profound and faithful point: Change something deeper; something more essential to who and what we are.  Change the way we think.  Change the way we orient our life: God at the center.  “Repent.”

The Greek term for this foundational “change” is metanoia: that is, to “turn our hearts and souls around” for the life-changing purpose of seeing God approaching us.  Dare to see the Holy One’s out-stretched arms, seeking to embrace us and welcoming us home.  “Repent”.  In the rawness of the wilderness, no buffer zone: “Prepare the way of the Lord!”

Ironically – and tragically so – daring to “repent” and “turn around” in order to see God’s embrace at hand can be among the worst news possible.  In fact, it is Hell to those who refuse to be loved and to live any life that is not of their own damning familiarity.  For the eternal truth is that God comes with the gift of intimacy.  And such closeness with the Maker of heaven and earth certainly brings change; and such change is perceived either as a life-saving gift or a fearful threat, Heaven or Hell.

And so, this is the harshness of John the Baptist.  And, for the most part, we neither like his message; nor do we like him.  He’s too much in our face, too much of that irritating and unsophisticated “fire and brimstone” puffing.  At which point, we find our excuse for absenting ourselves from this unpleasantness, from the reality of this “turning around”.

I was talking with someone this past week about how strange Advent is to most of us and how (at best) we view Advent as the “Rodney Dangerfield” of spiritual time: that is, it “don’t get no respect!”.  In that conversation, my friend uttered a phrase that caused me suddenly to pause.  In the course of speaking about loving relationships, he described certain popular notions of love in terms of “the heresy of love”.  And hearing this phrase, I immediately thought of John the Baptist and the resistance he experienced to his message of “repentance”, of how he was dismissed as too hard and seemingly so “unloving”.  And it occurred to me that our emotional expectations of love and being loved are often rooted in a notion of sweetness, of something that we find alluring, attractive, and – above all -- pleasant.  And this is where the “heresy of love” enters in because true love is life-changing; and it raises the question of what a person needs to do – what a person is willing to do -- to make room for love and its new life.

For instance, if seeing you about to cross a busy street with no awareness of the traffic, I might yell at you: “Watch out!” and in an instinctive impulse grab you by the collar and yank you fiercely away from the immediate danger.  Understandably, my actions can be experienced as “unpleasant” or in the common verbiage, offensive, certainly not “nice”.  Yet, at the highest level, my intention in giving the warning and acting to intercede might actually be expressions of love – or at least an expression of a humane sense of caring.  But since my words and actions were unpleasantly received (I may have torn your brand new shirt in the process), you might view me as harsh or unloving or even worthy of police intervention.

A less abstract example of this occurred in the last year, when a member of this parish died in assisted living.  She had no family, save for two distant members: one a nephew, the other a niece.  When I was given the only contact information available – that of the niece, I called her to introduce myself and to convey my sympathies and to offer my pastoral services.  In particular, many among us here at St. Philip’s and in the larger community desired to hold a funeral to mark the death of a person who had been a visible presence among us for decades.

So, over the course of two, extended phone conversations and several emails, I asked the niece questions about what would be helpful to her in this time of her loss and how we might construct a community funeral.  Fast forwarding this pastoral situation, it became painfully clear that (on the one hand) the niece didn’t know what she wanted; (and on the other hand) she clearly didn’t want what we had to offer: namely, a Christian burial.

My best efforts concluded when, in so many words, the niece told me that I was not a “nice” person and, by implication, a bad priest: that she knew of someone who she felt more comfortable working with who would produce a more pleasant offering.

Prepare the way of the Lord.  Make his paths straight.

I am painfully aware of the penchant all of us have to confuse love with controlling manipulation – a kind of attitude that “I know what is good for you!”.  But while manipulation is never an element of love, neither is rejecting what is offered in caring truth simply because we find it unpleasantly hard.  Such perception speaks to the “heresy of love”, as my friend put it.  For in many cases, that heresy avoids the truth that the first word of love is often “No!”.

John the Baptist, Advent’s poster boy, would never get a chance at ordination in the formal church; nor would he likely be considered as the priest of this parish.  This is so because John the Baptist’s love was passionate enough -- was of God’s love so much -- that he addressed what was keeping people from the very thing they needed and could not provide for themselves: namely, the love and life of God.  And the urgency of the matter of being separated from God and the God-life drove him to speak and act in the truth.

For some, his words brought hope of the kind of change their lives never could create.  For others, those whose life was an insulation against anything beyond their own sense of control and pleasure, John’s words were a target of derision and easily and conveniently dismissed.  After all, calling the self-made men and women a “brood of vipers” is no way “to win friends and influence people”.

I will close this sermon with a prayer I have mentioned once before to you.  It seems a fitting summation of addressing the “heresy of love” and the approach of John the Baptist’s message.  It comes from the late Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, Desmond Tutu.  The prayer is the Archbishops’ adaptation of the prayer of the famous English sea captain, Sir Francis Drake.  Archbishop Tutu entitles this prayer: Disturb Us, O Lord.

Disturb us, O Lord

When we are too well-pleased with ourselves

when our dreams have come true because

          we dreamed too little,

because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, O Lord

when with the abundance of things we possess,

we have lost our thirst for the water of life

when, having fallen in love with time,

we have ceased to dream of eternity

And in our efforts to build a new earth,

we have allowed our vision of Heaven to grow dim.

Stir us, O Lord

to dare more boldly, to venture into wider seas

where storms show Thy mastery,

where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars.

In the Name of Him who pushed back he horizons

          of our hopes

and invited the brave to follow.

Prepare the way of the Lord.  Make his paths straight.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

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[1] Matthew 3:1-2 – The Message.