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Have you ever seen a wild man? One day this week I was driving to an appointment. Stopping at a traffic light, I looked across the street. On the corner was a young man, curly-headed, holding two drum sticks. But he wasn’t just holding them. He was using them, playing what we might call an “air drum.” Bright and smiling, his face said it all. He was in musical heaven, practicing drum gymnastics. He tossed the sticks and twirled them from one finger to the next, loving every second. Then the light changed, he came back to earth, crossed the street, and I drove on. He reminded me of my young man, my son John, a drummer since he was fourteen. John is finishing up a tour with his latest band called The Appleseed Cast. He turned twenty-seven this week, between Minnesota and Wisconsin. When John plays drums, you can see the fire and hear the passion, passion that drives him and flows through him – like the passion I saw for one moment that morning in another young, wild, drumming man. My wife, a birthright Baptist, sometimes says that we in the Episcopal Church need to remember that this man in our gospel story today; the man whose brief yet driving beat of a story has been played out for us on five different Sundays in the last three months; the man who was Jesus’ older cousin and the son of a priest – this was John the Baptist, for goodness sake, not John the Episcopalian. John the Baptist is mentioned only by name in Mark’s version of the baptism of Jesus (1:9-15). But we know from other gospel accounts that John is a wild man. And today’s gospel is about Jesus also becoming more wild, fresh from the moment when God’s Spirit tore the heavens open and drove him into the wilderness. What struck me while re-reading the familiar story of the baptism of Jesus was how wild things were in Mark’s telling. “(Jesus) was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts….” Yes, angels did wait on him, but we don’t hear that they or Jesus got rid of those beasts. It’s that “with” – “he was with the wild beasts” – that struck me this week, like a drummer’s beat. When Luke and Matthew tell the story, they say nothing of beasts. The other gospel writers describe at great length the temptations of Jesus, a worthy subject indeed. But we find Jesus hanging out with wild beasts only in Mark’s wilderness. I wonder: why was Jesus safe in that wilderness? Because he was God’s beloved Son? Because he was unafraid? Because he had angelic friends? Perhaps Marilyn Adams, regius professor of divinity at Oxford, is wrong. She says that “Mark is using this stark story to preview the rest of the Gospel, in which Jesus is the wild beast…” (Feasting on the Word, p. 44, preacher’s emphasis). That may be going too far. Jesus did not live in the wilderness, but he spent forty days there, a significant amount of time. And I suspect that, if Jesus co-existed with those wild beasts, it is because Jesus had learned something about what it meant to be wilder from his cousin John. Most other biblical scholars would agree with Professor Adams when she says that Jesus “refuses to be domesticated into the household of conventional religion. (His was a) disruptive taboo-violating ministry: of touching lepers and bleeding women, of healing on the Sabbath, of eating with tax collectors and sinners” (ibid.). We might say that Jesus and John were real men. The others – the scribes and the Pharisees, even the disciples – acted more like boys, afraid to go into the wilderness, where the wild things are. I have come to believe that vocation, God’s call to ministry, is about two things, held in tension. When God calls us to ministry, when we hear the call of Jesus to follow him, it is both exciting and terrifying, both amazing and dangerous. It is like going into the wilderness and hanging out with creatures there in the wild. When we answer God’s call, we see that we, like John, like Jesus, are called, in our own unique ways, to be wilder women and men. Although it was not very much fun at times for his mother and me, I know now that my John was and is simply trying to be faithful to his sense of call Dubbed “the classroom lawyer” because he won every argument, even with his teachers, in high school, he is unafraid to question authority when authority needs questioning. He is also tattooed, pierced and vegetarian and wears clothing that was previously owned. John holds down several part-time jobs in order to follow his musical heart. “Pop, I kind of like being poor,” he told me once. “I know who my friends are.” When asked by his hometown newspaper what he’d like to see more of in the world, his first response was “more homeless shelters.” John wonders if he might go to seminary some day, but he’s clear that if he did, he would want to serve the 21 st century church, not at an altar in a beautiful building like this one, but somewhere “out there,” in the wide, wild world. When it comes to John the Baptist, perhaps the lectionary folks, those who choose our lessons, knew just what we needed. We need to hear something about John, over and over again in the seasons of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany and Lent. We Episcopalians need – THIS Episcopalian needs more of John the Baptist. We need to know more and to hear more and – dare I say it? – to be more like John the Baptist. Because if we want to understand who Jesus is, we need to understand who John the Baptist was. If we want to be more like Jesus, we need to be more like John. Before he gets to Jesus, this wild man John is baptizing people in the river Jordan. Here’s how one spiritual writer, Richard Rohr, sets the stage. John, the son of a priestly family, “becomes the ultimate embarrassment to his father…by setting up his own ‘nature-based’ ritual for the ‘forgiveness of sin’! It is very clear how sins are forgiven, through the brokerage house of temple tithes, animal sacrifices and purity laws, all administered by the priests, scribes and Levites…. He is a son of a priest who does not dress (or look) like a priest!” (From Wild Man to Wise Man: Reflections on Male Spirituality, p. 48). John is free to be the man he needs to be. In fact, the name “John” means “gracious” and “free.” On the day Jesus is baptized, John proclaims that “God’s forgiveness of sin is (just) as available – (just) as gracious and free – as water in the river Jordan!” (ibid., p. 50). Richard Rohr is a Franciscan priest who believes that Christian men need a wilderness experience. For decades he has learned and taught about what it means for men to go into the wild, like John and Jesus did. He offers men new rites of initiation, helping them become wise mentors and leaders for future generations of boys and men. In other words, Rohr believes he has discovered some basic truths about what it means to be a wild, Christian man in the 21 st century. He also says that “Men must seek honest mutuality in their relationships with women in thought, word and deed,” knowing that women have much to teach us men about the experience of going into the wilderness and being wilder (Adam’s Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation). In our own baptismal liturgy, we say that we die and are buried with Christ, in order to be resurrected with him. What does that mean? How were we Christians born to be wild? How are we to surrender our tamed, domesticated ways in order to receive God’s wild, amazing grace of forgiveness and freedom? How do these questions of wilderness apply to you and to me as individual men and women? And how do these questions about being wild apply to us as a church, a faith community already forgiven and free? Passion, driven by a drumbeat. That’s what folks experienced here last Sunday morning at 10:30, when they moved with the choir to the beat of a popular South African tune called “Siyahamba.” Whether they are African or Native American or anywhere else in the world, drums can put us in touch with the wilderness, helping us women and men become more wild. My son, John the Episcopalian, will be bringing his drums and his band to the metro DC area soon. When he comes, you can be certain that I’ll go see and hear him play. He’s one of the passionate wild men in my life. In this season of Lent, during these forty days, we are called to join Jesus on his journey toward Jerusalem. We are called to go into the wilderness part of that journey with him, into the passion of our savior Jesus Christ, in order to experience Easter resurrection with him. We all need to be more like the Johns of the world, if we want to be more like Jesus. So…have you ever seen a wild man? The Rev. Thomas A. Momberg |
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