Advent 2C
In the name of God, who is our
hope. Amen.
A couple of years ago I read an article about a person who lives in the center of the country – or at least at
that place that most online maps identify as the center of the country, a rural
area in northern Kansas. The bizarre
thing about her experience, was that she found that living at that point –
which, otherwise, might have been described as the middle of nowhere – in the
age of the internet, she had made become the target of criminal investigations,
and harassment of all sorts that she never could have imagined.
Let me back up for
a second. Every internet device that
anyone uses is assigned a unique series of numbers called its IP address. This includes your computer, your smart
phone, your wireless printer, maybe even your car! – anything you own that’s
connected to the internet. Back in 2011,
a company began mapping these addresses to help advertisers direct their marketing
online more closely to their intended audiences. The maps can sometimes get very specific –
down to a particular street address. But
most often, they’re more general than that – just pointing to a particular city
and state. For some servers, however,
it’s almost impossible to map the IP address more specifically than to just its
country of origin.
That’s where this property in the
“middle of nowhere” comes in. It just so
happens that the company mapping IP addresses randomly dropped a pin near the
center of the map to represent the United States. And that “pin” – if you zoom in on the map
far enough – happens to be on this lady’s property.
So, when the FBI is investigating
criminal activity online in the United States, and uses the IP address map to
locate the perpetrators, often, this house comes up as the location. She’s even told stories of receiving phone
calls from irate people wanting her to stop emailing, or accusing her of
engaging in marital infidelity, and all sorts of other things.
Her family has owned this
property for three generations, and up until about 8 years ago, it was a quiet,
easily forgettable place. Suddenly, in
the age of the internet, it has become an unintended hub of the world’s focus.
In the Gospel of Luke, the Judean
wilderness is the first-century equivalent of that pin in the map. It’s that part of the region that didn’t
matter – at least not to the people in charge.
It was outside the realm of the circles of power; beyond the spheres of
influence. It was as if the Gospel of
the coming of Christ were to be announced in an isolated field in Kansas where
the nearest neighbor was a mile away.
And John the Baptist dropped the pin – sending the world’s focus to this
place that, otherwise, wouldn’t have ever been noticed.
It’s significant that that’s
where the story of Jesus gets started.
The message of Christ didn’t come into the world in a vacuum. Jesus wasn’t foretold in a church or a
synagogue. We weren’t warned to prepare
from the rotunda of an impressive building that represented the seat of all
political power. The first sign of
Christ came in the wilderness. In a
place that most of the people in charge would say didn’t matter. And from a person that almost everyone just knew didn’t matter.
But, as if to highlight the
counterpoint, Luke tells this story of the wilderness by first fixing the story
into the context of the secular and religious powers of the day.
“In the fifteenth year of the
reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod
was ruler of Galilee… during the High Priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas…”
These were the power players of
the day. They were where you’d expect
the pin on the map to drop – in the middle of the movers and shakers. The place where our attention is naturally
drawn. But the message of Christ first
comes from “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness”. That’s where this story starts.
After two millennia, and our own
lifetimes of observation, it’s easy to miss that. It’s easy to miss the radical way that God
declared that “all flesh [would] see
the salvation of God.” But it’s
important to remember. Not just the leaders, or the influencers. Not just the wealthy and the elite. Everyone.
A friend of mine reflected
earlier this week on the funeral service for President Bush at the National
Cathedral. He talked about the comfort
he felt in recognizing that those beautiful words from the Book of Common
Prayer – the same words that usher Presidents and other Figures of State
through their final journey on earth to their resting places are the same ones
that he uses when called to usher others – both pillars of the church and
paupers, left unloved and alone. The
same words that will one day be used to usher him on that same path. Words that work for the humble and the great
and all those others of us in between.
That’s the message that’s
coming. That ALL flesh shall see the
salvation of God. Even though we exist
in the real world – with its powers and influences and leaders – this message
of salvation isn’t just reserved for them.
It’s even for us. The Word of God
is all encompassing – even more so than the words of our prayers that are made
to reach both high and low. The Word of
God does even more – reaches even farther.
That’s the promise. That’s the hope that the Advent of Christ
represents. A hope that even we will be given the chance to see and
to know the glory of God. We live in
that hope. Amen.
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