{"id":3584,"date":"2023-12-17T11:00:28","date_gmt":"2023-12-17T16:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=3584"},"modified":"2023-12-20T12:57:52","modified_gmt":"2023-12-20T17:57:52","slug":"rivers-edge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2023\/12\/17\/rivers-edge\/","title":{"rendered":"River’s Edge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the full service<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Click here to watch the full service<\/a><\/p>\n

John 1:6-8, 19-28<\/a><\/p>\n

Click here to hear just the sermon<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here we are, again, at the River\u2019s Edge, a few yards beyond the south bank of the Charles.\u00a0 On the edge, at the edge, along the river\u2019s edge.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One winter night our car would not start so I called AAA. Triple A remains one of life\u2019s great good deals. I could think of it as an almost universally useful last minute Christmas gift. Just a thought. It is highly effective, dependable, crucially necessary, and cheap. You know, it is what we can do together, when we eliminate the crushing need for greed. From each according to his automotive ability, to each according to his automotive need. All for $50.00 a year. Think of it. You can insure your driving support, nationwide, for almost nothing.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After 20 minutes the AAA truck arrived. Out tumbled a heavy-set middle-aged man, in a stubbled white beard and crimson work shirt. His truck was full of packages, piled in the dark. He reminded me of the Santa Claus we had seen the night before. In fact, I wondered if he had two jobs. We walked to the car, lifted the hood, poked around, fiddled, fussed, and started the car. He did his job\u2014automotive medical care. I did mine. So, I asked, \u201cHow are you?\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTerrible. I hurt all over. I am really sick. And my tooth hurts bad. I have a bad toothache. I have no insurance. So I can\u2019t see the doctor.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But yet, I heard him declare, as he drove out of sight: Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the next few days, I found it troubling that this little scene would not leave my mind. We are all aware of the level of pain present at the holidays. Sometimes a particular incident will illumine the whole landscape; a toothache will illumine a whole world of hurt. And we are, in the world right now, near and far, in a world of hurt.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But the trouble with the moment did lie deeper. You have already guessed it. It took me longer, though. Here was a jolly happy elf, in the employ of one of the last truly communal agencies, bringing help in the moment on the cheap, who walked and is probably still walking, in dental pain. The one representing automotive insurance had no medical insurance. We insure our vehicles, efficiently and frugally. But not always the human body. We have limits. There are limits to what we find that we can do.\u00a0 It really matters where and how we set limits. We set our limits, and then, in tragedy or in triumph, se live with the consequences. Which brings us, by the direction of the lectionary, for the second week to John the Baptist. The lectionary is a set of regularly used readings, collected in a three-year cycle. One year is based on Luke and another on Matthew. The third is left for Mark, with interruptions from John.\u00a0 So, last week, (we did not hear it because it was our Lessons and Carols Sunday) the Baptist is portrayed by Mark in his usual mode, rough and clothed in camel\u2019s hair, down by the river Jordan.\u00a0 Today John takes the older material, similar to that in Mark, and, like a jazz musician, plays a brighter, newer tune. He adds his own riffs. Today\u2019s is a word on limits.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For the Fourth Gospel, John the Baptist is the master representative of limits. Like a river needs banks to be a river, life needs limits to be life.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the Gospel of John there is no single way of talking about God\u2019s personal truth, that alone sets us free. The salvation which John preached called for many words, different words, a variety of ways of acknowledging the Lordship of Christ. Maybe John sensed idolatry in ways of thinking that limited people to just one set, and thus deadening, confession. No. There is more than one way to skin a cat. And if what is pointed out is nothing short of a truth fit for salvation, can we blame him for pulling out all the stops on his organ? Bread of Life! Word of God! Good Shepherd! Light of the World! Lamb of God! Messiah! Son of God! Son of Man! John dares to try them all. He has to be daring. He is trying to offer those who hear his voice (and now, from this moment on, that includes you) a reason for living, and a way of living with limits, a way of living at the river\u2019s edge.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I take it that \u201cgrowing up\u201d, if it means anything, at least means learning how to do some things, perhaps even how to do some things well. You are a baker. He is a builder. She is a musician. I am not a good hockey player because I am not a good skater. I guess I\u2019ll play basketball. John the Baptist has a voice that rings with maturity and truth, partly because he is assessing what he cannot do, who he is not. \u201cI am not the Christ\u2026nor Elijah\u2026nor the Prophet\u2026\u201d This too is maturity: learning one\u2019s limits. A river with no banks is a very shallow river. But John\u2019s life has banks to flow through. He knows what and who he is not.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sometimes others point this out to us, occasionally with wit.\u00a0 A young priest was sent to Pittsburgh, and the town leaders said:\u00a0 <\/span>Father you have arrived at that majestic spot where two mighty rivers, the Monongahela and the Allegheny come to a great confluence to form the Ohio River.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>To which the priest replied, with a twinkle in the eye, <\/span>Well, I am just a poor, young man from Boston, a modest place where two mighty rivers, the Mystic and Charles come to a great confluence to form\u2026The Atlantic Ocean. <\/span><\/i>It was a John the Baptist voiced warning, cajolement, reminder of limitation, at the river\u2019s edge.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Baptist is a man who knows who he is not. And while you cannot build a life on whom you are not, you can start there. Part of living is living with limits.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Over time, one begins slowly to hear the rare rhythm of meaning in the Gospel of John. His is a strange cadence, repetitive, and complex. Again and again, in these 21 chapters, the various authorial hands at work in this ancient compilation will return to repeat their various themes. In this text, the theme is limits. And John the Baptist is the representative of the limits of life.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He stands at the edge of the raging Jordan.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He speaks at the end of the long tradition of Hebrew prophecy.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He inhabits the outer edge of the wilderness.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He comes up on the shadow of divinity.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

John the Baptist is out there.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But unlike the other Gospels, this one has an extra interpretative point to make: make no mistake, John is not Jesus. A long time ago there was a vice Presidential debate in which one young candidate compared himself to John Kennedy.\u00a0 To which his older competitor replied, if memory serves:\u00a0 I worked with John Kennedy, I knew John Kennedy, I was a friend of John Kennedy, and you are no John Kennedy.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps because of early religious competition, either between Christians and Jews, or between Christians and followers of the Baptist, this passage hammers away at what John is not. It celebrates his limits. Maybe it is because he truly knew his context.\u00a0 Three college Presidents spoke endlessly about context this week, but the tragic irony, a full blown irony, was that they ignored the very context in which they were speaking\u2014a global, national, congressional, address in the context of rising antisemitism.\u00a0 Lectures about context\u2026with no sense of context\u2026.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

John was not the light. He bore witness to the light, but he was not the light. He came to testify to the light, but he was not the light. He was self-limiting, self-aware, circumspect.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He said: \u201cI am not the Messiah\u201d. He confessed it. He did not deny it. He confessed it. Do you see what I mean by repetition?\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a lot more that John also is not. Is he Elijah? No he is not. Is he this figure the mysterious prophet? No he is not.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So, they asked him: You are neither Messiah, nor Elijah, nor Prophet. So why are you here? Why do you baptize.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One has the very distinct feeling that the traditional answer (water\\spirit, not worthy to untie thong) falls flat for John.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Do you see the way that the fourth Gospel has jazzed up the story of John the Baptist? This is like Louis Armstrong playing his trumpet and singing with syncopated menace some very old hymn or tune, \u201cAmerica\u201d or \u201cRugged Cross\u201d. It is like what Frank Lloyd Wright did to houses, for good or ill. Or long ago like our own Doug Flutie changing the role of the quarterback. It is like the black church in worship, singing “Marching to Zion,” but not in Isaac Watt\u2019s 4\/4 time.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I think this is why the lectionary reads us Mark, on the voice of one crying in the wilderness, and then John, on the voice of one crying in the wilderness. John gives us soul.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We get our soul from our limits. The limit line of death makes life frightfully precious and deeply meaningful. The limit line of evening makes the day frightfully precious and deeply meaningful. The limit line of failure makes daily struggle frightfully precious and deeply meaningful. The limit line of winter makes our annual journey frightfully precious and deeply meaningful.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Humility is giving credit where credit is due. But humility is also facing your limits. Have you faced them? John the Baptist seems to have done so. And you? Life has limits, spaces and places where you have to repeat to yourself: <\/span>I didn\u2019t cause it.\u00a0 I can\u2019t control it.\u00a0 I can\u2019t cure it.<\/span><\/i> Here are some.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n