Good morning. The first few months of 2007 were not easy months for me. On January 31, after several illnesses, my dad passed away, and one month later, on March 1, I came home to find my father-in-law, who lived with my ex-wife and I, dead on the floor. These two men were my most significant male elders. I dearly loved both of them, and losing them both within a month was very difficult.
I was training for a marathon that spring, and a few days after my father-in-law's death, I went on a planned three and a half hour training run at Crown Hill Park in Wheat Ridge. About 20 minutes into my first lap I looked down and saw a small, pink, stuffed animal sheep. It looked like it had been part of a roadside memorial, and the little sheep looked lonely and sad. As I was feeling lonely and sad I thought about picking it up and taking it home, but instead I kept on running. A few minutes later I regretted not having picked up the little pink sheep, and decided to pick it up on the next lap. About 30 minutes later I looped by the spot, but the little sheep was gone. I kicked myself for not picking it up when I had the chance. As I kept looping back to that place every thirty minutes, I became more and more sad that I hadn't picked up my little pink friend. My sadness and loneliness about losing the most important males in my life were mirrored in my lost chance to take home a sad and lonely little friend.
After three hours of running I was ready to begin my last lap. I was on the complete opposite side of the park from where my pink friend had been, at least three-quarters of a mile away. I started to run, and in the distance I noticed something pink on the trail. I thought to myself, no. I jogged to the spot, and there sitting right in the middle of the trail, looking right at me, was the little pink sheep. I couldn't believe it. I still can't believe it. I picked up my little pink friend, and held him close, and cried for my dad, and my father-in-law, and for myself. It was the best cry I ever had.
I have no explanation other than God for how this sheep got there. All I know is that God was saying, at just the right moment, I am with you in your pain. As strange as it might seem, I believe this experience was, for me, a John The Baptist experience, and this morning I want to use my little pink sheep as a picture of Advent, John the Baptist, and God's relentless love.
John the Baptist must have had an incredible personality. Jesus said that John was the greatest of the Old Testament prophets, and his influence on the people around him was profound. In Acts chapter 19, 25 or so years after Jesus, Paul The Apostle came across some believers who were still following John the Baptist. In 350 AD, some Christians came across a group of Jews, and they, too, were still following John the Baptist. And in John chapter one, you get the feeling that John is going out of his way to show his readers that Jesus was greater than John. John the Baptist was such a powerful personality that he threatened to eclipse even Jesus.
And, John was a wild man. The gospels tell us that John lived in the desert, wore a camel hair tunic, had a belt of leather, and ate nothing but locusts and honey. He was a wild man in the wilderness, crying make straight the way of the Lord. This powerful, wild spirit of John the Baptist is the same spirit that I encountered when I found my sheep on the trail. My experience was a wild experience. It was wild in the sense that it was outside the box, extra-ordinary, and unpredictable. In a billion billion years, I would never have come up with the idea of comforting my grief with a pink sheep. Never. When God acts when I least expect it, in ways I could never imagine, and when I need it the most, that is the wild spirit of John the Baptist.
The Jews in John's day were not in a good place. They were stuck. They were led by religious leaders who couldn't think outside the box, and they were living in a predictable world dominated by a brutal Roman Empire. They were frozen. Then, when the Jews needed it the most, in a way they could never imagine, a wild man appears in the desert giving them hope.
Sometimes we need a wild bolt from the blue to realize that God is near. There are times in our lives when we are sad, or without hope. There are times when we are stuck in the familiar predictability of work, or family, or even church. There are times when we just can't seem to think outside the box, or get outside the boxes we live in. It is then that the wild spirit of John the Baptist breaks into our world, in ways we can't imagine. God is unpredictable, and he loves to help us in extra-ordinary ways. Like Mr. Beaver said about Aslan, the Christ figure, in the Chronicles of Narnia, he's not a tame Lion.
When I began the third hour of my training run, I was physically and emotionally at a low point. I was exhausted from running, and I was dearly missing my dad and father-in-law. I didn't know what my life would look like without these men in my life. At my lowest point, I found the pink sheep. When God meets us at our lowest point, this is also the spirit of John the Baptist.
When John appeared in the desert, our readings from Malachi and Isaiah instantly came to the minds of Jews and later Christians. They saw John as calling for a straight path, a path where valleys would be raised up, and a path where rough places would be made straight. For Jews of the first century, John's message gave great hope, because many were living in valleys of despair, and the path forward seemed crooked, and unsure. The Roman occupation was crushing, and nobody knew what to do about it. The Pharisees and Sadducees were not providing good religious leadership, and the Zealots, who advocated for an armed insurrection against Rome, were radical and dangerous. The Jews were in a deep trouble, in a deep valley, and their journey forward was foggy and treacherous. Into this foggy valley, John the Baptist provided hope, proclaiming that the Lamb of God was near.
We have all visited this foggy valley. We all know the discouragement of being in a valley we can't seem to get out of, and of having no idea how to get out even if we could. Maybe our family is having problems, and nothing ever seems to change, and we have no clue about how to help. Maybe our job is a dead-end valley, where we really don't feel we can leave, but we don't see any way to make the situation better. Maybe we are plagued by a habit, or an addiction, that we just can't shake, and nothing we have tried sets us free. Or maybe we are alienated from a friend, and the pain of that alienation wounds us every day, but there seems to be no path to reconciliation. These valleys of pain and confusion are awful. Sometimes we just give up.
But it is into these valleys of pain and confusion that the voice of John the Baptist calls to us. His voice reminds us that God will raise us up out of our valleys, and He will straighten our paths. Somehow, someway, God will lead us through our pain and confusion. This is the Christmas hope that will bring us home. This is the voice of John the Baptist.
My finding the pink sheep on the trail was first and foremost God comforting me, and telling me He was near in my time of grief. But as I look back at that event, finding the pink sheep was also a signal that my old order of life was coming to an end. My old order was a good order, having as two of my elders two very good men. But as the circle of life turns, the old order passes, and when it does, a new order begins. I am still, eight years later, trying to figure out and fully inhabit what it means to be me in this new order.
John the Baptist was the herald of a new order. Not only did John seek to make the valleys level, and the journey straight, he also passionately sought to bring the high places down, and to make every mountain and hill come down low. The Pharisees believed themselves, and their interpretation of the law, to be the high water mark of Judaism. But they weren't humble, and they were often hypocrites. John furiously took them on. He called them a brood of vipers. And when the Pharisees pridefully asserted that, well, Abraham is our father, John responded, yeah, well, God can make children of Abraham out of rocks and stones. The Pharisees thought they were high and mighty, but John cut them off at the knees. John said, There will be a new order, and if you don't repent, you won't be part of it.
And John took on the Romans too. When John rebuked Herod about his sexual sin, John was not just calling Herod out, he was calling out the entire Roman culture of sexual casualness, decadence and vice. John was taking on the entire Roman order of life, and He proclaimed that a new order was coming, with a new leader who would be the messiah.
When we encounter the wild spirit of John the Baptist, he will also take on our high places, and he will begin initiating a new order. We all have high places in our life, areas that need work. We all have areas of pride from which we look down on others. We are all aware of actions or attitudes in our life that are hypocritical. I'm sure we all have places where we cling to the old order of things, ways of life that don't work anymore, but we're afraid to let them go and move into a new way of living. The wild spirit of John the Baptist doesn't always appear as as a cute stuffed animal. John's spirit can sometimes be a purifying fire, and that spirit is always pushing us to change course where needed, and repent when necessary. The goal, as Paul tells us, is that our love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight, to help us determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ we may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.
The story of John the Baptist is a moving and inspirational story that we read every Christmas. John said prepare the way of the Lord, and in Advent we prepare our hearts for the coming of Christ. My little pink sheep is a wonderful Advent picture of how God meets us in our low places, and changes our path for the future. But, as I finish this morning, I need to conclude with a warning. John the Baptist was a force of nature, a wild and passionate spirit who challenged the world in which he lived. This made him a dangerous man, and dangerous men sometimes come to a bad end. We must be careful with the spirit of John the Baptist, because there is a little bit of Herod in all of us. The spirit of John the Baptist is relentless, and sometimes, like King Herod, we are tempted to lock this spirit up, and sometimes even cut its head off.
The spirit of John the Baptist never quits, and he can wear us out. There have been times in my life when God was clearly knocking on the door of my heart, in the spirit of John the Baptist, and I didn't want to respond. I was tempted to lock the voice of God up and not deal with it. One or two times when I was young I was tempted to cut God's voice off completely. Fortunately I didn't. At times God has hit me over the head to get my attention, at times he has forcibly pushed me in the right direction, and a few times he has dragged me against my will. I'm glad He did. And I'm glad I never allowed the Herod in my heart to lock this voice up or silence it completely. The spirit of John the Baptist is like a strong wind that never stops, and the best strategy is always to put up our sails and let the wind take us where it wants. Resistance is futile.
I am very thankful for the gift of my little pink sheep. I will never forget how he came into my life, and I will never forget why he came into my life. This advent, may we all thank God for the many ways he has come into our lives. May our hearts be open to the wild spirit of John the Baptist, and as we await the coming of Christ, may God make straight our paths, meet us in our valleys, and gently help us down from our high places. Amen.
