December 13, 2009
(Third Sunday of Advent)
(From The Lectionary Page)
Lost and Found
by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer
I’ve been thinking this week about a time in my life when I was lost. Well, actually, how lost I was depends on your perspective. As far as I was concerned, I knew exactly where I was: in the books and magazine section of K-mart. As far as my mom was concerned, however, I was not where I said I'd be – the toy department – ergo, I was lost. My lostness was brought to my attention by a loud voice, actually a loudspeaker. "Attention K-mart shoppers," the voice said, "Will Susan please come to the customer service desk. Your mother is looking for you."
Thus summoned to the service desk, I encountered my mother – all 5 feet of maternal fury. I was nearly as tall as she, but on that day she may as well have been 6-and-a-half feet tall. "Where were you?" she demanded, sparks shooting out of her eyes. "Over at the books," I said. Then I remembered I had promised her I’d stay in the toy department. "Toys were boring, so I went over to books. I've been there all along," I added, somewhat defensively. "I've been looking for you for 20 minutes," she said, tears gathering in the corners of her eyes, "I thought I'd lost you."
I have this memory of my mother's anger in part because of its rarity. Mom didn't sweat the small stuff, so my lostness in K-Mart that day wasn't something small. This wasn't about my mother being inconvenienced or especially tyrannical. This was about my mother having lost something precious – furious at that precious thing for wandering off, you understand – but beside herself that something precious was lost.
We just heard a fair amount of fury, courtesy of John the Baptist. The tongue-lashing begins with "brood of vipers" and ends with "chaff being burned with unquenchable fire." Luke introduced us to John in last week's reading. If we have spent any time in the prophetic texts of Hebrew Scriptures, we recognize an old, and tragically familiar story line. Like the prophets before him – Amos, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, to name a few – John could see clearly how far the people had fallen from the Covenant that God had called them into. Those who had plenty refused to share with those who had none. People who should have known better collaborated with the power brokers – in this case, the Roman government – by being tax collectors, profiteering at the expense of the poor. Temple guards and the soldiers hired by Herod routinely supplemented their meager pay through extortion, shaking down the very people they were supposed to be protecting. All flagrant violations of the Covenant. In other words, the people had wandered away from the ethical demands of the Torah.
The people who found themselves near the Jordan River didn't think of themselves necessarily as being lost – at least, not until John began speaking. He had been tapped by God for a prophetic mission. Like all prophets, John saw things more clearly than those around him did. But where prophets like Amos or Jeremiah spoke of coming destruction at the hands of foreign empires, John’s imagery seems apocalyptic. John also shares a distinction that few other scriptural prophet can lay claim to – that of being listened to. According to Luke, anyway, John's words got through. "What then should we do?" asks the crowd. And John is ready with the answers. God is in charge of human history, John tells them. God had called his people into relationship with him and had given them the Torah as the framework for how that relationship was to be lived. How we live in relationship with God and with one another matters, not because God is going to be inconvenienced by us if we happen to wander away, or because God is especially tyrannical or has serious control issues. Rather, God is going to react to our inattention because we are infinitely precious to God.
I chafed under my mother's anger that day. If I remember correctly, the consequence for my wandering off was that we no longer had time to stop at McDonald's for lunch. We didn't go to McDonalds very often, so that consequence hurt. I remember flouncing with injured self-righteousness into the backseat of the family Chevrolet. But I never doubted her love. Her angry response got my attention in part because it was rare, but also because it was one thread in a continuous whole cloth that was love itself. The message I got was not that my mom was a control freak, but that my actions mattered.
That's the message John the Baptist was conveying about God there by the Jordan River. God is in charge of human history and will some day bring history to a close in a way that will leave no doubt about who has always been in charge. In the meantime, we are God's people. He has called us into relationship and loves us beyond all measure, whether we stay on the strait and narrow, or whether we wander off. It's just that God does not take the lostness of creation lightly. There are consequences for us wandering away from that relationship: we don't have to look far to see them – alienation, despair, violence, cynicism, warfare. And still God looks for us. Twenty minutes or twenty centuries or twenty millennia, God seeks after us. Sends us prophets. Sends us himself in the person of his only son, Jesus.
And when God gets our attention, what then shall we do? Live as though our actions matter, because they do. Live fully and completely the relationship God calls us into every moment of every day. And rejoice. We are loved wholly and completely, and beyond all reckoning.
