John the Baptist reigns as the
official patron saint of, among other things, baptism, converts, hailstorms,
highways and – for reasons that escape me – birds. But I want to nominate Old
Locust Breath for another honor: Patron saint of the disappointed.
While Jesus roamed around Galilee
preaching peace, Herod had jugged John and now this ersatz Elijah sat in his
cell strumming “Folsom Prison Blues” and wondering when the Messiah would cut
loose with a little wrath-of-God kind of stuff, starting with a jail break.
He’d read his Old Testament and majored in Malachi and knew exactly the job
description of a messiah.
But Jesus reads him a different
resume: bottom rail on top, outsiders getting in, and a blessing on anyone who
outlasts despair until faith makes sense.
Far from being offended, Jesus seems
pretty sure John has the right stuff. This, he assures the crowd, is no
spin-doctor bending to the political breeze. This is no dressmaker’s dummy
whose dolled-up theology can’t take the wear and tear of belief’s hard toil.
Honest doubt is the callouses on the hands of a hard working faith. The prayer
of protest is the weathered skin of a laborer’s heart.
“John,” writes Thomas Long,
“represents, of course, all who are disappointed in Jesus because he fails to
meet their expectations.”
At Advent we wait for Christ. Part
of the waiting is the honest admission that there remains something to wait
for: Syrian refugees die in their hundreds; the earth runs a fever, sickened to
cool the overheated lust for wealth; a Christian pastor faces torture in Tehran
while the powerful negotiate economics and oil.
In his mighty Advent song “Keening for the Dawn,”
poet Steve Bell complains to the still-coming Christ, “Hardened shards of
broken bread/Small consolations in your stead/Soured wine a tonic for the
pain./Dutifully we take our fill/Still we long to see your face again.”
May Jesus’ commendation of John’s
example inspire us to howl our spiritual hunger during Advent. We may, like
John, get a lot of things wrong, expect actions contrary to Our Lord’s true
character or, at least, not the first item on the divine agenda. We may
misunderstand our own role in the rolling flood of justice. But Jesus will
appreciate the oaken refusal to buy the easy explanations, the coarse-fibred
faith that stands up to the desert drought of doubt.
I know Baptists don’t pray to
saints, but we share a last name with John, and if I could get away with
offering one up to him, it would run along these lines:
O
glorious Saint John the Baptist, greatest prophet among those born of woman, you
dared to ask Our Lord just exactly what he thought he was doing. Obtain for us
of thy Lord the grace to be wholly dissatisfied with easy answers, to stiffen
our spiritual spines to the bewildering winds of the Spirit who blows where He
will, and to dress warmly rather than fashionably for the blue norther that
blows the Kingdom in.
Disappointedly,
Doug
No comments:
Post a Comment