Monday 7 December 2015

A Wild Word (Luke 3:1-6)



(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on Dec 6, 2015, Advent II)

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“As Long as You’re Not Finished…”

Norbert Young sat nervously in the Texas courthouse. The judge returned to his high seat and said a single word: “Guilty.” With that, Norbert Young went to jail. He had been caught, charged, and convicted of bank fraud.

Some time later, Norbert was sitting in his jail cell when someone came by and dropped off a postcard addressed to him. Personal mail was a rarity. A handwritten note was hands-down the highlight of his week.

Not even stopping to look at the front of the postcard, he turned it over and found a short note in his brother’s handwriting. It was a poem. No real surprise there. His brother, Harvey “Tex Thomas” Young, was a west Texas, country-music cowboy, the front man of the Danglin’ Wranglers, who had a poetic streak deep beneath his rough-and-tough persona.

The words on the postcard, which would later be put in song, began like this:
From deep dark wells comes pure clean water
And the ice will melt as the day gets hotter
And the night grows old as the sun climbs into the sky.
And then a few lines later, there was this simple promise:
As long as you’re not finished, you can start all over again.[1]
Simple words. But if you take them seriously, they’re a bit wild. They’re nothing like the reasonable word of the law, that says if you do something wrong, you pay the price. Nothing like the judicious word of the judge, that says if you’re guilty, you serve the time. The words on the back of the postcard said, You may be broken, but you are never broken beyond repair. You may have gone out of bounds, but you are not bound to what you have done. Within you is a wellspring of goodness. You are good.

What Norbert Young read on the back of his brother’s postcard in prison is goosebump-giving good news. It is a country-flavored rendition of the same gospel that we hear in today’s scripture. If Luke had been living in Texas in the 1980s, he may well have written today’s scripture just the same:

“Sometime in the presidency of Ronald Reagan, when Bill Clements and Mark White were governors of Texas, and during the papacy of Pope John Paul II, the word of God came to Harvey ‘Tex Thomas’ Young in the tumbleweeds of west Texas. He sent a postcard to his brother, proclaiming a baptism of ‘deep dark wells [and] pure clean water,’ a second chance for a broken soul. As it is written many times, Jesus said, ‘Your sins are forgiven.’”

The Wild Word of Second Chances

I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the word of God, a word of forgiveness, bypasses the chain of command, flying over the heads of Tiberius and Pontius Pilate and Herod, over the heads of Ronald Reagan and Mark White, to the wilderness of the Jordan and west Texas, to the little-known wasteland wranglers John the Baptist and Harvey “Tex Thomas” Young. What could be a better illustration for the word of forgiveness, a word that disregards status and strength, a word that is meant for everyone? Whereas the words of our world establish order from on high, in a Christmas-tree shaped hierarchy, in which the word on top rules whatever is below, the rowdy and insurrectionary word of forgiveness confounds the established order.

According to Luke, the wild word of God belongs not to the rulers of the world but to the wilderness, where it makes home like a wild animal, unruly and untamed. It has not been domesticated in the ways of reward and retribution, it pays no attention to merit. It does not make a list and check it twice, nor does not it give people grades and put them in a pecking order. It does not reduce people to the deeds they have done but sees the goodness that people have it in them to become. It jailbreaks us from guilt and debt and obligation, deserved or not. It frees us from cycles of anger, fear, and resentment. The words of the world, laws and commands and shouts and raised voices and verdicts of power, maintain order by force and intimidation and violence. But the wild word of second chances that came to John and Tex Thomas is a midwife to the birth of peace.

Clearing the Stable of Our Heart

God’s word of forgiveness that brings new life is nothing new, according to Luke. It came to Israel through Isaiah. It came to the Jordan through John. And it came to Norbert Young through his brother Harvey. God has always desired for “all flesh” to know salvation.

Many of us have been setting out nativity scenes in our homes. But the story of Christmas is about more than Jesus’ physical birth in a manger. It is about Jesus’ birth in our hearts. And the wild word of forgiveness that comes to us is what clears the stable of our hearts, what readies the manger within. It is not like the words of emperors or governors or high priests, not a word of command or coercion or compulsion. It is not a raised voice that controls us, so that we are little more than dogs on a leash or puppets on a string. It is a gentle but firm word that clears away the debris, the sin, the broken pieces of our lives, whatever threatens to keep us within the prison of ourselves, and invites us to grow and to change, to allow the life of God in our hearts to blossom, to bloom, to be born.

“All Flesh Shall See…”

But the story does not end with our forgiveness and the birth of Christ in our hearts. Forgiveness is a straight and level highway to God, a highway for everyone, and so even as we hear the word of forgiveness, we proclaim it—to everyone. We make way for Christ this advent by proclaiming this wild word, as John did, and welcoming Christ not only into our hearts but also to our households and our schools and our workplaces and our community. So that, if Luke were living in Richmond right now, he might well write today’s scripture just the same:

“In the seventh year of President Obama, when Terry McAuliffe was governor of Virginia, and Dwight Jones was mayor of Richmond, during the papacy of Pope Francis, the word of God came to a group of Christ-followers who gathered at Gayton Road across from Ollie’s on the outskirts of Richmond, Virginia. They went into their workplaces and their friends’ homes, into the supermarkets and supply shops and schools and hospitals, loving people just as they found them, warts and all. They proclaimed good news, and they proclaimed it using different words. Sometimes they used religious words, like God, sin, forgiveness, repentance, and resurrection. Sometimes they used regular words, like goodness, brokenness, second chances, change, and new life. Sometimes they used no words at all. They used whatever the people would understand, whatever would open their eyes.[2] As it is written in the gospel of Luke, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord…. All flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”

Prayer

We hear your wild word, God, calling in the wilderness, looking for a home. May we welcome your forgiveness even as we share it with others. In a world that lives constrained by fear and distrust, may we trust in the unruly, unpredictable power of your forgiveness. By your mercy, may it dawn upon our world, to give light to the many who sit in the darkness of anger, guilt, terror, resentment—and may it guide our feet, all our feet, today the way of peace. Amen.


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[1] See the song as it has been popularized by Joe Pug: “Deep Dark Wells,” on The Great Despiser (Lightning Rod Records, 2012). This homily’s retelling of Norbert Young’s story is dramatized from the account found in “As Long as You’re Not Finished: the Harvey ‘Text Thomas’ Young Story,” http://www.artslabormagazine.com/as-long-as-youre-not-finished-the-harvey-young-story/, accessed Dec 1, 2015.

[2] Dorothee Sölle, Theology for Skeptics: Reflections on God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), ebook loc. 36: “[I]f God is really God, then God is ‘that which is most communicable,’ as Meister Eckhart said.”

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