Erl Purnell Sermon

cAdvent 2 ~ November 10, 2006 ~ A sermon preached by The Rev’d Erl G. Purnell at Old St. Andrew’s Church, Bloomfield, CT

Baruch 5.1-9; Psalm 126; Philippians 1.1-11; Luke 3.1-6

In the fifteenth year of Tiberius, that so long-ago time, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea and Herod the ruler of Galilee, John shouted out a message of repentance and forgiveness. How good that message sounded to ears accustomed to impossible requirements, to a bar so high pole vaulters would even fall short. So, here comes John, dressed in a mangy camel-skin robe bringing his good news out of the desert: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight…”

Can you imagine the sweet softness—softness like the softness of new-born skin, of a whisper in the dark, or of love itself—can you imagine the softness of being blessed in the baptismal waters of the Jordan and cleansed of the muck on your sandals and whatever you carry in that guilt-sack hanging over your shoulder?

The folks who found John at the Jordan probably were a lot like you and me. Some nights they slept well and other times they worried the night away with a sick child. If they were old, maybe they had grandkids to teach the ways of the family to. Some had had successes—started up a new business selling falafels or tacos—and surely some had failed, failed in their own eyes and in the eyes of those watching. We all hate that. But it’s true. We try and, while sometimes we score, sometimes we don’t make the grade. Am I telling you anything you don’t already know?

They come to the Jordan, these people who are mostly good and who try hard, because John is there making a ruckus and splashing people with water to make them clean. Of course bathwater gets us clean, especially when mom is scrubbing behind our ears and soaping up our hair like there’s no tomorrow. But John’s cleansing—what’s called baptism—is an immersion in water without the suds. It’s a symbol of cleanliness and purification. Baptism points to something greater than the water or John or the hot summer sun.

In those days, like today, public attention focused on Stars and Super-Stars—Pharisees and Sadducees and Temple priests and scribes who could do no wrong. Most people, however, did have muck on their sandals and dirt under their finger nails. Their hair was certainly always grimy, too. Where buckets of money and face-time on the red carpet distinguishes the purified from the hoy-paloy in our own time, back then, back in Palestine at the time of John and Jesus, your status in the community and, more importantly with God, was determined by ritual cleansing and maintaining the purification laws of the Temple. Those who did it well … well, they were in God’s favor; they sat in the sky-box seats and drank Heinekens in a glass instead of Budweiser from a cup. The rest—those with groundling tickets—rubbed shoulders with the impurity of each other and so guaranteed their own impurity. The system was self-perpetuating like one of those little bird toys that repeatedly tips over and sips water, straightens, and then tips again.

Along comes baptism. John short-circuits the system. He does an end-run. In a way, he creates a whole new playing field outside the Temple grounds. He summarily cancels ritual purity and offers something else. Something called HOPE.

My grandchildren, Ellie and Ruby, live across the country, in California and Washington State respectively. It takes longer to fly out there for a visit than it does to fly to London. Without a Cleveland, Atlanta, Dallas or Chicago mid-Atlantic, hopping the pond is a direct six hour flight where as getting to San Francisco or Seattle takes ten to twelve travel hours. So I don’t get to see them too often which is a terrible thing. We compensate by visiting in “Flatland,” that’s where we all are when we video-chat on the computer.

Each of the girls is a bundle of beauty, one shrouded in curls and the other as blond as a Swede, which is where her father’s family comes from. Three-year old Ellie mostly talks in bursts like, “Where’s Nana?” One year old Ruby, whose language is focusing on “Mama” and “Dad-da,” is mostly interested in eating the video camera. Be that as it may. What happens for me is the very real knowing that these two babes are alive and thriving in their homes with good parents to guide them. You know what I mean? There they are. Maybe you have children or grandchildren, and remember you own little ones just bursting with possibilities—language, climbing and running, cooking pancakes once they know about hot stoves. When I see these two munchkins, like the people emerging with water dripping out of their ears from John’s dunking in the Jordan, I think HOPE.

Without being overly political, an impossible-to-miss awareness of a monumental shift occurred last month in our collective national psyche and again this week, further cleansing and truth-telling came to us by way of the bi-partisan Iraq Study Group Report. Little of the news from them was good, most of it was sobering and distressing, but the fact of these pre-eminent Americans speaking out clearly, specifically, unanimously about the future of Iraq and of us all, can be seen, I think, as a sign of HOPE. For Iraq? Maybe. Maybe not. For us, the possibility of a new direction? Yes.

Elsewhere in the world, but unfortunately rarely on the Front Page or CNN, black Africans in the Darfur region of the Sudan run terrified from Janjaweed Arab militia. Over 800,000 have not run fast enough. They have been slaughtered simply because their skin is black. Neither Kofi Annan’s calls, the screams of the dying, nor the cries of the living seem able to draw enough attention to the 21^st century’s first genocide. Non-governmental aid workers and UN representatives are routinely massacred, too. General ignorance of the gravity of the Darfur situation and a world pre-occupied with other things mean words about the tragedy in Darfur are aimlessly batted around like a shuttlecock. Too few people—that includes you and me—even know about the genocide in Darfur and so hundreds of thousands more will die running from bullets speeding faster than them. How much HOPE, I wonder, is there for the people of Darfur.

HOPE. HOPE walking across slick beach stones after John’s impossible expression of compassion, forgiveness, and love; HOPE smiling little-girl smiles through the cyberspace of Flatland; HOPE in this fractured nation’s heart. HOPE, very little hope, sprinting for safety in Darfur. HOPE.

Dare we HOPE? Dare we HOPE for relief from oppression and hatred? Dare we HOPE for a bridge across the morass of misunderstanding? Dare we HOPE for a change in direction so we don’t get to where we’ve been headed? Dare we know in the bones of our often frightened and tired Souls that something precious is coming? HOPE.

Psalm 126 is a happy psalm. It’s filled with HOPE. Taking my lead from the Psalmist, we dreamers, we laughers, we joy-shouters, we song-singers are invited to be HOPE-filled. Maybe you still think somebody else will fix the world for you. If you do, think again. We’re the ones, you and I. That somebody is us. Don’t you remember being commissioned to be dreamers, laughers, joy-shouters, and song-singers? You were, by way of bringing HOPE to those around you? You are the baptized ones, so aren’t you to teach your children and grandchildren the family ways; aren’t you to speak out about what is right and just and vital to our national future; aren’t you the ones to save Darfur from a heinous death?

HOPE. HOPE is more valuable than fine gold. It’s to be spent wisely, often, and generously. This week, HOPE. HOPE.

Amen.