John the Baptist: How to Change

Luke 3:15-17

In many ways, this brief passage from Luke captures the reality of being church in this point in time. We know that what we have always done no longer seems to work very well; so as soon as we hear of something new, innovative, or even simply outside the norm, we rush out into the wilderness to see what all the fuss is about. When we get there, we are not entirely sure what it is we are looking at, but it draws a crowd, so we hang around to see what happens.

So it was with John the Baptist. The crowds come from the towns and villages to see him because he seems to be onto something fresh, invigorating, and enough alien to pique their curiosity. They come because what they have always done does not seem to be getting them where they want to be. 

And where is that?

Most people come to religious practice because they are seeking something. They feel directionless and confused by the world, so they come seeking purpose and a map. They feel lost, afraid, or hurt, so they come seeking healing, hope, and a place to be. Some come seeking to maintain old family practices and rituals, so they come seeking to keep the tradition. They feel lonely, so they come seeking a place to belong.

The problem is that most of us wind up becoming “religious” in our seeking―i.e., we find a practice of faith that provides codes, rites, rules, habits, etc., giving us an order, but that is all that it gives us. We remain still directionless, lost, perhaps maintaining the traditions, but they feel vaguely empty. 

Going to church is religious. It is a practice with habits to keep. 

But on its own, it really has little to do with faith.

Pause there for a moment.

Boiled down to its barest bones, faith is trust in another built on a direct experience of the love, mercy, and compassion of that other. In spirituality, faith is trust in God based on a direct experience of God. Religion cannot really initiate such an experience because it is intended to be a response to such an experience. Thus, what happens to us is that we religiously practice our religion but miss the fundamental and foundational experience of God. 

So, the crowds came to John. 

He offers nothing if not a radical experience. He literally dropped out of the world. He lives in the weeds by the River Jordan. He wears weird clothes. He is on the most primitive of diets. He renounced most everything of ordinary life. His sole focus is on being attuned to God. He wants and waits for the promised saving work of God that is to come in a messiah. That is all his life is about.

And that is attractive because he seems like someone who has broken through the boring, stagnate fog of rite and ritual to actually gain the presence of God. 

And that is the first lesson for us within the faith community. We need to see, taste, and feel the fog all around all that we say and do. We have been about being the church for a ridiculously long time. We have cemented our ways into place. Each activity we do has its appointed space and time. We have manuals and liturgies and practices that have not varied for years, decades, or even centuries. We can do so much by heart. Someone can lead into something with just a few words, and the rest of us can easily finish the sentence, if not the whole paragraph. We are good at all the habits of our religion. But can we see God?

Can we?

Too many folks come seeking and all they see is the fog of our habits. They come wandering, lost, and hurt, but all they find is some sort of religious TSA inspection site keeping them from the actual departure gates to what they need. We need to realize we are not really the destination, but the conduit to the destination. 

John knew that deeply and well.

Hence, he really does not do much to encourage the seekers when they come. Or rather, he never claims to be the end of the road, but only a signpost to the actual road. He will welcome anyone needing a change, a refresher, and liberation from the fog of habit. He will help them find release. But then he will immediately send them packing. The real one sought is still to come, and he, himself, is still seeking that one. 

And that is the second lesson for all of us inside a community of faith―we aren’t any more done seeking than the seekers who come to us.

We are to continually reflect, revise, dare I say it, reform what we do to get us all to the right destination―that effervescent experience of the Living God. Something every group we partake of while in our church needs to do is to ask themselves whether or not their meeting, gathering, etc. felt like an experience of God. Was God in the room? Did people perceive that presence? If not, then what needs to happen, not happen, continue, be let go of, to make that presence felt?

This may feel really, really odd. Certainly John, then Jesus, felt the wrath of the religious as they turned the community on its head. They felt too weird to be true. They offered something that did not feel safe, comfortable, or particularly right. Nope―no real comfort for the religious anywhere in them. But for the faithful―a whole world opens before them. Here was a direct way into the presence of God. 

And it was a way that altered all of human history. The Temple is only a wall of stones in Jerusalem, but the kingdom of God is spoken in every language on the earth.

Note that.

Reflect.

Now, act...