Isaiah 11:1-10; Psalm 72:1-7 Romans 15:4-13; Matthew 3:1-12
The Rev. Candice B. Frazer
Many of you know that I like to run several times a week. I use a running app that offers coaching for every run. One of my favorite running coaches on the app tells me it is ok to look back as long as I am always moving forward. I like that—the looking back as long as I am moving forward. It reminds me that there is nothing wrong with nostalgia as long as I don’t get stuck there. When I am running it is not about the pain or ease, simply how I am moving forward.
When things get tough and the road ahead seems difficult, it is easy to begin to look to the past as a comfort and a crutch. Our nostalgia around days of old is often influenced by the rose-colored glasses through which we see it. We remember the good times, the times when things seem easy, our successes. We often forget the price for those successes much less the difficult times. We tell our stories of winning, glossing over our stories of loss.
Looking back is not a bad thing. But looking back without being honest as to the truth of our past can get us into trouble. We can get stuck in a mis-remembering as to how great things used to be or assign blame to external factors that translates to current prejudices. We begin to narrow our hope and the possibilities of our future because when we succumb to a false narrative of our past life.
When we are able to look back and learn from our past—holding up our wins and our failures, the times we struggled and the times we succeeded—we can begin to embrace our future in ways that open us up to the possibilities of our life and the world. We live in a place of hope, not regret.
John the Baptist is firmly situating his preaching this morning in nostalgia. He is in the midst of the wilderness—not Jerusalem, not the city—reminding the people that God’s promise and their hope lies in this place. It was the wilderness through which God led the people after their escape from Egypt to the Promised Land. It was in the wilderness that Elijah defeated Jezebel and the prophets of Baal in the days of the kings. John quotes the prophet Isaiah. He is even dressed like him in camel hair, wild looking, and eating bugs and honey. And then he reminds everyone that they are children of Abraham. The setting, style, even words are meant to remind those who are listening to him that they are God’s people and God is their God…it is to remind them of the covenant God has made with them and their ancestors. John doesn’t situate his preaching in such nostalgic terms as a way of reliving the glory days of Israel. He offers these reminders as a choice—you can be stuck in the days of old or they can be the starting block from which to move forward.
Ascension tells her stories of old. There is her founding in the early 1900s and the families who were committed to her becoming a place of worship and God’s presence in this neighborhood; many of whom continue to have close ties today. There was the fire and the stories of all those who in the community and the parish came together throughout her rebuilding. There was the split—painful to say the least but a great lesson in how resilient she was as she faced her future with perseverance, courage, and hope. Most recently there was the pandemic—a time we continue to learn from but that has reinforced those lessons of love and connection, perseverance and courage that she has learned over her many years. To look back over our past and see how we have grown and flourished and to remember the lessons of courage and perseverance points us toward a future in which we continue to love one another and live into God’s purposes for us.
But when we can’t move forward and instead get stuck in our past, that resistance leads to brokenness. John the Baptist calls out the Pharisees and the Sadducees not because of moral culpability or because he wants to make them feel bad. It is because he recognizes that their clinging to history perpetuates a status quo that is driving society toward division. His call to them to repent is less about what they have or have not done. He is calling then to a confession that admits need and brokenness—not in society at large but in themselves. Once they can admit their truth—their weakness and the brokenness of the world are woven together. We are no different. I won’t call you a brood of vipers, but it Is not until we can look back and confess our role in the brokenness of the world by recognizing our own weakness, that we can begin to move forward into Jesus’s healing and redemptive purposes for the world.
That confession is not one of moral culpability—what we did wrong, what we might have done differently. There is a space for that type of confession—we offer it every Sunday—that asking of forgiveness for what we have done and what we have left undone. But John believes that Jesus, as the one to come, will heal our divisions and bind us to one another and God through redemption. The only way forward along that path is in releasing our expectations and inviting God’s vision to be realized. When we cannot release our own expectations we walk the path of alienation—from God, from one another, even from our selves. That alienation always leads to division and limits our participation in the kingdom.
John preaches a message of repentance in which we are invited to cast off that which keeps us from participating in the coming kingdom of God. It is less about right or wrong and more about how we might participate with the one to come. John’s message is no less relevant for us 2000 years later. We can get stuck in who we were, or we can look back while we continue to move forward discerning how our perseverance, courage, and hope aligns with God and strengthens our partnership with him and one another in the continued building of his kingdom.
Today is our Celebration Sunday in which we consecrate the financial pledges we make to Ascension as an outward and visible sign of our response to God in gratitude for all that he has given us. Our participation in the mission and ministry of the church cannot be stuck in our experience of the past. Though we can learn the lessons of our past. The lessons in which our predecessors were committed to continued growth in this church’s mission and ministry, it’s building spaces, and, most importantly, the growth and nourishment of the hearts of its people in the love of God. By accepting the invitation of God’s promises for us, we wander into the wilderness following a path of hope. When that path becomes difficult and challenging, we can look back and remember our perseverance, courage, and connectedness to help us move forward into our future.
In much the same way we also get to do that with our capital campaign: The Way, The Truth, and The Life. Though our stewardship, that we celebrate this day, is concerned with our current mission and ministry, our capital campaign is as deeply concerned with God’s vision for us and how we might continue to build up God’s church for future mission and ministry grounded in a history that has always been concerned with the building up of the kingdom—moving forward and not getting stuck in its past.
Our pledges to God’s vision and purposes for us is always about moving us forward closer to him and to one another as he repairs our divisions and heals our divides. Stewardship transforms us as individuals and as a community. It helps us to prepare the way of the Lord, and make his paths straight. John’s call to us is not one of judgment this day. It is one of invitation—an invitation to trust in God and all that he has in store for us.
May the God of hole fill us with all joy and peace in believing, so that we may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.