St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, Owings Mills MD
December 5, 2021
Year C: The Second Sunday of Advent
Baruch 5:1-9
The Song of Zechariah
Philippians 1:3-11
Luke 3:1-6
Into the Way of Peace
This past Thursday I had the pleasure of visiting The St. Paul’s Schools. The chaplains showed me around the impressive campus of this Episcopal institution, and I even got to spend a few minutes with our own parishioner Margaret Green in her classroom.
Walking through the halls of St. Paul’s and seeing the students hurrying to their classes or horsing around in the cafeteria made me nostalgic for my teaching days.
I taught for about 16 years, mostly high school history. It was the job – the life – that I left in order to go to seminary and prepare for ordination.
Some of you know all that. But, what you don’t know is that about five or six years ago I briefly returned to teaching.
St. Peter’s Prep, my alma mater and former employer, was looking for a religion teacher. I decided to apply for the position because this was a chance to get back to teaching, a vocation I really missed. I also decided to apply because getting this job would take some financial pressure off my church, and, frankly, it would give Sue and me a bit more security.
It sure seemed like a win-win-win proposition.
Well, I got the job and returned to the classroom, while also continuing as rector of our church in Jersey City.
It didn’t take me long to realize that I had made a big mistake. Yes, my teaching skills were definitely rusty after more than a decade out of the classroom, but most of all I recognized a little too late that I just didn’t have the energy to do two full-time jobs, or at least I couldn’t do both of them well.
So, after a few exhausting and anxiety-filled days, I worked up the courage to go see the school’s principal, who had hired me and who has been a very close friend since we were in high school together, and I told him I just couldn’t do it.
I left teaching a second time.
I guess I’m more or less over it by now, since I’m up here telling you about it, but the whole experience was embarrassing, and made me feel so bad about making other people’s lives more difficult.
During my brief return to the classroom, I noticed what any veteran teacher will tell you: teaching has changed a lot over the past couple of decades.
There is way more technology, of course.
And there are the active shooter drills.
During my brief time back in school, I participated in one of those drills. When the alarm rang, I happened to be with one other person in an office. Door locked. Blinds drawn. And we waited silently, awkwardly, until the all clear.
I wondered what effect these drills must have on the children and staff.
And, I couldn’t help imagining what the real thing would be like.
Unfortunately, not much imagination was necessary, since school shootings have become tragically common – the most recent at Oxford High School in Michigan, where a 15 year-old boy shot 11 people, killing four of his fellow students – reportedly using a gun that was an early Christmas present from his parents.
I wish that I could be shocked by this tragedy, but we’ve all seen it too often for that. Sadness and anger and fear, yes. But not shock.
And, of course, we don’t have to look as far as Michigan to find heartbreaking examples of senseless violence.
A few weeks ago, Baltimore City passed the grim milestone of 300 homicides this year. The victims include Evelyn Player, a 69 year-old woman who was stabbed in her East Baltimore church.
And across our country, political disagreements have become so emotional and so bitter that some people are threatening violence – and sometimes even acting on their threats.
I have no great insights about all of this, let alone solutions.
But, it’s important for us to face up to the fact that we live in a violent and bloodstained time and place, among many people who are angry, resentful, so very frightened.
And, just maybe, there are some of us who are still hopeful, too, despite it all.
In today’s gospel lesson, the Evangelist Luke sets the stage for John the Baptist and for Jesus himself, by listing the names of various political and religious leaders.
At least some of their names are still familiar to us after two thousand years.
For me, Luke’s attention to historical context underlines that the story he is about to tell does not take place in heaven or in some made-up place here on earth.
No, John the Baptist and Jesus and all the people we meet in the New Testament lived in a particular time and place.
And, it was a time and place – first century Judea under Roman occupation – that was violent and bloodstained, filled with people who were angry, resentful, so very frightened.
And maybe there were some who were still hopeful, too, despite it all.
Tiberius was a brutal emperor, and Pontius Pilate was a ruthless governor. The family of Herod the Great was depraved. The Jewish high priests had to walk a fine line between keeping the Roman occupiers happy while also meeting their responsibilities to their own people, and to God.
And it was vitally important to keep the Romans happy – by paying taxes and offering no resistance – because at the first sign of pushback the Romans would crush their occupied peoples. Crucifixion was a common event, meant to show any would-be troublemaker that this is what happens to anyone who challenges Rome.
Just like our land today, first century Judea was a long, long way from the beautiful garden that God has always intended for us.
Yet, despite the mess we make of things, God does not give up on us.
Just the opposite.
For reasons known only to God, God keeps on loving this broken and bloody world and God keeps on loving all of us messed up people.
God loves us enough to send John the Baptist, the prophet who prepares the way for Jesus.
John was the fruit of a miraculous conception, born to Elizabeth who was surely too old for pregnancy.
John’s father was the priest Zechariah who at first didn’t believe this new life could be possible but who will later burst into song at his son’s birth, overjoyed that his miracle child will prepare the way for the long-awaited Messiah – Jesus - who will “guide our feet into the way of peace.”
Into the way of peace.
It’s worth remembering that both John and Jesus will be victims of violence - state-sponsored violence, actually.
The shadow of the cross looms over the manger.
Yet, even after the worst things happen, even after the two miracle children John and Jesus are killed, even after a faithful woman is killed in the church she loved, even after kids in school are gunned down by a classmate, even after we all mess up in ways big and small, even after all that and more, God still does not give up on us and our broken and bloody world.
Advent and Christmas and especially Easter – the whole Christian story, really – teaches us that God loves this broken world - and God loves us, even when we make poor decisions, even when we fail, even when we hate one another, even when we hurt one another, even when we find it too hard to forgive, even when we lose hope.
God loves this real world and God loves us messed-up people – and through blessed John the Baptist and through Jesus most of all, God shows us the way to the beautiful garden, back to how life was always meant to be.
Just like for the people of first century Judea, there’s only question for us: are we willing to change direction, allowing Jesus to guide our feet into the way of peace?
Amen.
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