“Prepare for Something More” was preached at First Presbyterian Church of Allentown, PA on December 6, 2020. You can hear/watch this sermon here, starting at 35:00.
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Mark 1:1-8
1 The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of
God.
2 As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,
“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare
your way;
3 the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way
of the Lord,
make his paths
straight,’”
4 John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming
a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5 And people from the
whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him,
and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. 6 Now John
was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate
locusts and wild honey. 7 He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I
is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his
sandals. 8 I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the
Holy Spirit.”
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It’s been a year.
We have been together for one year.
A year ago, on the second Sunday of Advent in 2019, I
started at First Presbyterian Church of Allentown as your Pastor for Youth and
Faith Formation.
And what a year it has been.
To say I never could have guessed what this year would hold
for us would be… an understatement.
This year has been so much more, both joyous and terrible,
than any of us could have ever imagined. It has been difficult for all of us.
But here we are, one year later, and that feels like an accomplishment, so
today, I celebrate this and you and our relationship. I hope you feel like
celebrating this too.
Because despite some of the obvious hardships we’ve
experienced together over the past year, such as global pandemic, we’ve also
experienced more discreet and unspoken hardships.
One of them being is listening to and supporting the call to
ministry of a young gay pastor.
And for any of us who want to wave this off and say it’s no
big deal… don’t! This is a big deal!
Because when you all called me to be your pastor a year ago,
you committed to learning about what it means to care for and be cared for by a
queer pastor who’s experience with the church is unlike any of its
predecessors.
For example, ten years ago, when I was a freshmen in college,
when I was pursuing a degree in finance and not divinity, the idea of someone
like me being called a pastor was not only farfetched, it was forbidden. For it
wasn’t until a year later that the ordination of LGBTQ+ individuals as
Ministers, Elders, and Deacons was no longer prohibited. This doesn’t mean it
was fully approved and it definitely wasn’t affirmed; it just was no longer
prohibited.
This means for the first twenty years of my life, or the
first 2/3rds of my life, the formative years as a child and youth (the very
years you’ve entrusted me to form the faith in your very own children in
youth), the church made it very clear that was no place for people like me.
That is… until one person made room. And then another made
room. And then others and others and others.
I think of The Rev. David Sindt, who during the 1974 General
Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church of the USA, stood on the Assembly
floor holding a hand-written sign that read, “Is anyone else out there gay?”
I think of any pastor who deviated from the norm, which once
upon a time, pastors were exclusively straight white men. Countless women and
pastors of color who have opened more doors for people on the margins of our
society and the margins of our church. This includes Margaret Towner and every
woman pastor that has followed in her place here at First Presbyterian Church
of Allentown.
And now First Presbyterian Church of Allentown has a gay
pastor and queer members.
It was the ministry of trailblazers like Sindt and Towner
whose actions led pivotal and holy transformations within the church that we so
love. But what about those who came before Towner and Sindt? Because I’m sure
that there were women who preceded Towner and queer people who preceded Sindt
whose actions ended with rejection, ridicule, and pain. We don’t hear about
them. We don’t celebrate their accomplishments. Their stories aren’t told
today. They garner minimal attention, because they are the forerunners—those
who plow the ground, destabilize the terrain, and make ready for change that is
to come. They are not The One; they are those who come before The One. But we
know it is forerunners who are the ones who pave the way for the rest of us,
just as John paved the way for Jesus.
We heard that in our Mark passage. John is preparing the way
for Jesus.
This passage is equivalent to the Christmas story as told in
the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. But here you will find no babe in a manger or
a weary young couple. Rather, here in the Gospel of Mark, the Good News of Jesus
begins with the introduction of John the Baptist. Clothed in camel’s hair and
leather, with a plate of locusts and honey nearby for a later meal, John’s life
speaks of One who is to come. And we here that this scene is set in the
wilderness.
Most of us would – I would assume – attribute the wilderness
as possibly the desert or forests – I’m thinking of Tom Hanks from the movie
Castaway – or maybe in the context for John, we’re possibly thinking the
wilderness as life outside of human structure and civilization, similar to the
Israelites wandering through the wilderness for forty years. Regardless, most
of us would assume the wilderness that John was in was dirty, crazy, uncomfortable,
and daunting – a place that needed to be conquered and defeated.
However, theologian Delores Williams offers a different
version of the wilderness, one rooted in the experiences of enslaved persons
and that remains present in the traditions of many American Black churches.
Rather than a place to be feared, Williams reinterprets wilderness through the
lens of the biblical Hagar: wilderness is a place of struggle and Spirit, both
problematic and promising. For in the wilderness, Hagar meets God. Hagar’s
experiences become symbolic of the African American experience of wilderness as
both sacred and struggle-ridden. “For African American slaves,” writes
Williams, “the wilderness did not bear the negative connotations that mainline
white pioneer culture assigned to it.” Further, “The wilderness was a positive
place conducive to uplifting the spirit and to strengthening religious life.”
The symbolic wilderness Williams describes reminds us to
remember those who came before us and navigated the difficult terrain,
preparing the way for generations to come. Forerunners. Perhaps understanding
wilderness as a space where faith is cultivated and strengthened illuminates
why “all the people of Jerusalem” went to John in the wilderness (1:5). They
were drawn to a man on the margins with a message. And that message would lead
them to Christ, who also was a figure on the margins with a message.
A few months ago, Stephen and I in our conversation sermon
talked about liminal spaces and moments of liminality. A space and moment we
are as a congregation are currently in… and in that sermon, we compared it to
us wandering through the wilderness. Jan has also reminded us than we are in
this moment of great transition; this wilderness.
But what if this wilderness we are in is more than just
dirty, crazy, uncomfortable, and daunting but rather a space and time – a
moment – in which we can find the sacred in our struggle? And what if the
wilderness any of us experience as individuals is more than just a place that
needs to be conquered and defeated but rather a space that is necessary for our
faith to be strengthened by the Spirit’s intercession? And what if the wilderness we are in right
now is not a time in which we feel so isolated and alone but rather a time that
we are called to remember that there has been and always will be a communion of
saints – forerunners who have paved the way – that we too are now a part of? What
if the invitation to wilderness is a call to prepare for something more? What
if wilderness is not death to the church but rather a gateway to the
resurrection?
Back to John – many of us know that the lives of Jesus and
John ran parallel, up to John’s execution preceding Jesus’ execution. This
reminds us that the journey of forerunners is not without risk and consequence.
Margaret Towner was never recognized as a pastor or allowed to preach here at FPCA
and David Sindt was never allowed to serve another church as a pastor after he
came out as gay. Like John -- Towner, Sindt,
and so many other unknown and unsung forerunners were ridiculed and denied for
what they believed was right; what God was doing in their lives. In the same way
that John called early believers to repentance and suffered for his message, forerunners
like Towner and Sindt called communities to equity and just practices and
suffered for their message. Even today, those who dare to defy the status quo
and speak truth to power, even naming what can be before it is realized,
experience threat, peril, and endangerment. Yet with fortitude, forerunners
persevere.
What is interesting and curious about the Gospel of Mark is
the way that it starts in verse 1 of chapter 1 that we heard today: “The
beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” – “The beginning.”
The Gospel of Mark makes it clear that Jesus’ story is just the beginning of
the Good News of God coming to us, because according to Mark, that story has
not come to an end. It is continued into the life of communities of faith today.
And that brings us to us, here in the right now, a
congregation in the wilderness made up of individuals who for whatever reasons
are also experiencing our own versions of wilderness. And it may seem daunting… but we must remember
the good news of Christ also continues in our story. This is an opportunity for
us to prepare the way of the Lord in new way built upon the foundation of the
forerunners who prepared the way of the Lord for us. This day in Advent – may
we all pause in gratitude for the sacrifices and the ministry forerunners have
done in the wilderness for us. And may we gather their strength with our
strength and continue to plow the ground, destabilize the terrain, and make
ready for change that is to come. Because every Advent we remember it is the
One – The Word Made Flesh - who will
come.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
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Barry Smith, Rev. Beth Brown, and Rev. Janie Spahr in 2014
holding up the David Sindt Collage that was created by Barry Smith. The collage
is housed in the archives of Lincoln Park Presbyterian Church in Chicago.
Photograph courtesy of Barry Smith.
Read more on the ministry and life of David Sindt in this article.
