Observing vs. Participating
Observing vs. Participating
Luke 3:1-14
Let’s begin with a thought experiment. You’re watching a football game on t.v. The way a game is broadcast, you normally, feel like you’re in the booth with the announcers. The fact that they know so many things makes you feel a little smarter. After a while, you’re thinking right along with them through play choices and clock management and half time adjustments. You laugh at their jokes and you’re sure they would laugh at yours if you were actually in the booth with them.
On this day, though, something shifts. All of a sudden, you are on the field. Massive human beings are lining up on both sides of the ball. For unknown reasons, you are the quarterback.
As you walk up to the line, your knees wobble. Fifteen hundred pounds of sheer muscle are lined up across from you, ready to destroy you. The good news is that fifteen hundred pounds of muscle line up on your side, too, ready to protect you. The thought crosses your mind, “What If my ‘protection’ just isn’t that good?”
The defense changes their alignment at the last minute. To your amazement, you instantly run through dozens of possible plays in my mind and pick one and call the audible. You take the snap, drop back and spot your receivers, one after another, but you never look at one for long. You know you can’t telegraph your pass. Meanwhile, the pocket is collapsing around you. Somehow, you manage to get the pass off. Instantly, though, you are smashed between two defenders. The crowd roars!
The next morning, you have the day off and happen to be in the car and do what you know you shouldn’t never do: you turn on sports talk radio. As soon as you turn it on, a voice says, “Ya, Dan this is Larry from Elgin.” “Hi, Larry!” Dan says. Larry continues, “Um…there was a pass play yesterday, a completion to the Jones in the flat. How in the world did our quarterback miss the receiver in the end zone? He was wide open! We pay that guy big bucks! Is he blind?” You think to yourself, “You step behind center for one play and tell me how that goes!”
The truth is that you don’t have to be on a football field doing the best you can to have a run in with a Monday morning quarterback. Life in real time is incredibly complicated, with all sorts of things competing for our attention, with all sorts of feelings and concerns distracting us from the task at hand. It could be a moment in a marriage or a day at work or a particular parenting dilemma. No one is at their absolute best. We’re “playing hurt,” each in our own way. However, we hang in their, we run the play and read things the best we can and sometimes pull ourselves up off the “turf” afterwards. Still, someone appears after the fact and sounds an awful lot like Larry from Elgin, “You know…that’s not what I would have done!” Or, maybe we are our own worst critic, our own Monday morning quarterback, berating ourselves.
(I used to have a resident at a nursing home where I would occasionally lead worship who would play this role. I’d pray and she’d shout out, “That wasn’t very good!” I’d read the text and she’d holler, “That’s not what I would have picked!” I’d shake her hand at the end of worship and she would look me straight in the eye and say, “Better luck next time!”)
My point this morning is that when it comes to reading the Gospels, it is so easy to assume this Monday morning quarterback posture. “Why weren’t the crowds nicer to Jesus?” Why were the disciples so clueless? Why didn’t someone say or do something different?” Honestly, though, a lot of the time we never even make it that far. We just “hang in the booth,” acting as we are just observers, talking strategy and sharing a laugh or two.
I don’t want you to be an observer today. I want you to step onto the “field” with me. I want you to enter this text.
Start with this truth: as our text unfolds, no one has ever heard of Jesus of Nazareth. If anyone noticed Jesus at all it would have only been the casual glance that was given to a stranger and maybe the instant judgment that we pass when we think someone might just be homeless. Our eyes are on him when he shows up on the banks of the Jordan River but that is only because we know what’s coming. (Remember, the announcer rolls the play back and the focus is solely on the one player who is going to make the play—because the “play” has already happened.)
If this moment were on t.v., they might even pause before the replay to play a background video that they had prepared just in case such a moment arose. “Well…welcome to Nazareth where Jesus grew up. Cut to his family home. Drop in interviews with Jesus’ mother, father, and his brothers and sisters about their hopes for him. Cut to his mother talking about how heart broken she was the day he left. Pull up the shot of his tools on his workbench. Play the VoiceOver narration about how he loved the life he left behind. Cue the John Williams music in the background…Leave us with an image on Jesus walking away from Nazareth”
Remember what I said, though: no one would have been watching Jesus, not in real time. All eyes were on John. He was the man of the hour. He was the one who drew people out of the city and into the wilderness. He was the man who screamed so loudly that no one—no one—could ignore him. You just had to go see him and find out for yourself!
Against all odds, John was a human magnet. At face value, if you looked at John your first thought might well have been, “This guy looks half crazy.” He was an Essene which which meant most of the time he wanted nothing to do with people as a matter of faith. He wore a hair shirt—precisely because it was the most uncomfortable thing around. He had never cut his hair or beard. He only ate locusts and honey. John the Baptist was not eye candy!
He was a bit short on charisma, too. The Gospels disagree about who he called “snakes.” Some think he hated the Pharisees. Some think he hated the crowds. He may have hated both. His personality was about as smooth as the roughest grit of sandpaper available. John the Baptist wasn’t good company!
People weren’t coming for a relaxing dip in the river, either. To city folks, the wilderness is dangerous. People would have feared the river almost as much as they feared John. Nevertheless, People were leaving the comfort of home to come to him. People were walking to the edge of the river and placing their lives in John’s hands. “The man seems crazy as a loon. He may well hate all of us. And…we’re supposed to let him take us by the shoulders and dunk us for whatever length of time he might choose? Who does that?” The answer was—almost everyone who came!
Consider a few other facts. People are supposedly having some kind of religious experience here but John is not a rabbi. He has not been certified by the powers that be to do what he is doing. There is not a temple for miles around them and religious things are supposed to happen in temples. We may know about John and Jesus. We may see this as the beginning of something big. If you were there, though this was just a crazy guy doing something weird and something wild and full of God is happening.
This, of course, is precisely the point. Everyone expected a Messiah to be a warrior and a king, an irresistible leader, a compelling, charismatic guy. Everyone expected whatever it was that might happen to be all about the nation being restored. None of that was going to be the case. Therefore…and this is the key…if they were going to be prepared at all for something totally new then someone had to jar them from their slumbers. Someone had to say, “Get ready because everything is about to change.”
“Repent!” That’s John the Baptist’s message in one word. So…you’ve had two coats and that made you feel rich and better than the poor guy who had none. Congratulations! That’s what you’ve been taught to think. Here’s the thing, though…you need to give your extra coat to the guy who has none. I know…people will think you’ve lost your mind. Well…welcome to the new world!
So…you’re a tax collector and you don’t technically break the law but you do take full advantage of every poor sucker you run into and squeeze them for every extra dollar you can get. Everyone knows the the system is crooked. Everyone understands doing whatever it takes to get everything you can get. Here’s the thing though…from now on you’re going to do the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do. Welcome to the new world!
So…you’re a soldier and you have power over almost everyone you run into. If anyone forgets that…you’ve can make your point with the point of your spear. Here’s the thing though…you’re not going to abuse that power anymore. Welcome to the new world!
John looks each member of the crowd in the eye, one-by-one. Then, he speaks as if to each one individually: “The moment I dunked you in that river, what died on the spot was your old way of doing things. The moment I pulled you back up and you gasped for breath, what you breathed was new life. Don’t you dare go back to being who you were! Does that make you uncomfortable? You just wait.… Just wait until you meet the one who will come after me!”
If we stand on the banks of the Jordan River in that crowd—not playing Monday morning quarterback with everything we already know, not being the distant observer whose just interested in strategy—we risk running headlong into the truth that was John’s to share. We can’t pretend to actually live this faith and expect that we can just keep on doing what we’ve always done. We can’t pretend to follow the one who shows us how to walk differently through this life and expect to be like everyone else. We can’t do the wrong thing because it’s convenient and pretend like everything’s alright. The one who is coming next is not going to let that happen. We’re about to meet Jesus of Nazareth and he will change everything. He will invite us to be transformed.