The Reverend Carolyn Estrada

There is compilation of "Children’s Letters to God" which contains this letter written by a little girl named Harriet Ann: "Dear God, Are you real? Some people don’t think so. You’d better do something quick!"

You’d better do something quick!

I think of those 1^st Century Palestinians: poor, marginalized, oppressed; their lives organized around the sheer effort for survival, their powerlessness to provide adequately for themselves or their families rendering them fearful and despairing as they struggle to eke out a meager existence. Sometimes I think the poetry of Isaiah – "the people who walked in darkness" – masks the reality of their life situation.

These were a desperate and despairing people!

It is into their midst that John the Baptist, that fire-brand preacher-prophet, comes, walking out of the wilderness. He stands in contrast to the crowds he draws as much for his ascetic appearance as his words, a combination of abuse, exhortation, and hope:

"You brood of vipers!" he addresses his listeners, and speaks of axes and winnowing forks and unquenchable fire.

Not exactly nicey-nice listening… And yet we are told he draws crowds - people come, eager to hear what he has to say, seeking his baptism.

I don’t think things have changed much in the intervening 2,000 years.

We are still a people who walk in darkness.

We may have food and shelter and clean water at the turn of a tap, but every time we turn on the evening news we are aware of the barbarians at our own gates: the implications of global warming, the tail spinning economy, war and threats of war, a fragile infrastructure, violence…

And our personal lives often have their own share of darkness: substance abuse, divorce, financial worries, health crises, loss…

And we despair..

Are you real, God? You’d better do something quick!

We are a broken and hurting world - fear and anxiety on the one hand, and spiritual hunger on the other.

People today express, as never before – at least in my memory – a spiritual hunger.

And yet – look around: this church, as is true of so many, should be filled with those very people, people seeking to assuage their thirst for God.

And instead what we hear expressed is "I’m spiritual, but not religious."

I’m spiritual, but not religious.

It saddens me to hear that expression.

Why?

Why don’t people think to look to the church to satisfy that spiritual hunger?

What could or should we be doing differently?

Because I think we have a lot to offer: we could be a gift to them. We could help them on that spiritual journey, help them satisfy their hunger…

There just seems to be a breakdown in communication.

How do we get our message out? How can we be heard?

Where is John the Baptist when we need him?!!

And no, I don’t think ranting on the steps of City Hall or the jail would work, even – or especially! – if we were to dress in camel skins, remnants of our diet of locusts and honey caught in the mess of our hair and our clothing…

But the question is as urgent for us today as it was for the Jews of Jesus’ time!

How can we get our message heard?

How do we draw a John-the-Baptist crowd?

Have we lost the passion – or the vocabulary?

Who in today’s world DO draw crowds, and what can we learn from them?

If we look at the people who DO draw crowds, they tend to fall into two categories: figures in the entertainment industry or professional athletes, who offer diversion, a "distraction from real life" – or a few politicians, talk show hosts or political pundits whose "politics-of-passion" seem to have become our new medium of salvation. Notice the following of Sarah Palin or Rush Limbaugh.

And yet – passionate as many of those "new salvation messages" may be, they tend to be messages which offer "salvation on our own terms." That’s a "feel good message" that says WE don’t need to change: the darkness, the problems, the brokenness, isn’t our fault at all – it’s the other guy’s… All we have to do is get rid of "him" or "them" – whoever that happens to be – and we will once again be walking in the light.

I compare that attitude to John’s message, which begins:

"Repent!"

Repent!

The change begins with us! What can we do differently?

And John goes on to link hope and justice as a means of linking us to God:

Whoever has two cloaks must share with anyone who has none

Whoever has food must share with anyone who has none.

Do not collect more than the money prescribed for you.

Do not extort money by threats or false accusation…

Sin and grace.

Comfort and challenge.

Justice and mercy.

John challenges us to imagine a different future; not a future in which we are victims or perpetrators, winners or losers, "bad guys" or "good guys," but a future in which we are participants. The passion of his message seems to tell us that those unable to embrace such a future will be condemned to be prisoners of the present.

It is CHANGE that will save us, difficult as that might be…

The Roman philosopher, Cicero, writes of a prisoner who had spent his entire life in a dark cell. The prisoner’s only view of daylight was through a small crack in the wall. One day people came to tear down the wall, and the prisoner protested vehemently: he didn’t want to lose his sliver of daylight.

For some of us our vision can be as narrow as the crack in the wall of that prisoner’s cell. Like the prisoner, we have no sense of an expanded world in which daylight is abundant.

We are afraid to lose the little we have, and we hang on to it.

And then John the Baptizer’s voice cries out to us from the wilderness: "Bear fruits worthy of repentance!" And we hear of the ax, lying at the roots of the trees.

Change!

And so, with many other exhortations, John proclaims the good news to us.

The world is bigger than the prisoner’s cell!

The light is greater, more abundant, than the sliver that comes through the crack in the wall!

There is our message. It is an important message, a message people long to hear, a message we need to proclaim!

Come!

Here is our hope!

Look: your spiritual hunger can be satisfied in the church! We DO offer what you are looking for… Here you will find sin AND grace; justice AND mercy; comfort AND challenge!

Now – I’m not sure if the question is WHY DON’T we communicate it – or do a better job of communicating it – or HOW DO we communicate it?

It is a crucial question.

The world longs to hear the message of John, to catch a glimmer of light, to know that somewhere in the darkness, in the midst of our pain and brokenness, there is also hope!

Perhaps articulating our faith some of what we need to learn to do differently, some of the change we need to embrace – moving from the "comfort zone" of our privatized religious experience to the more uncomfortable public spaces of sharing, testifying, witnessing. Are we prisoners afraid to give up our crack of daylight here in our un-crowded pews, when what awaits us is that expanded world of daylight (which may mean we’re pressed closer together in these same pews)?

Little Harriet Ann’s question resonates with me this morning:

"Are you real, God? You’d better do something quick!"

And God replies, "I will – with your help."

Amen.