I remember one
day in kindergarten when the teacher gave us a coloring sheet and instructed us
to color it in completely. She wanted nicely, neatly colored pictures from her
classroom full of five-year-olds. I was then, as I am now, a rule follower. I
made it my job to color in and cover over every speck of white within the lines
of the picture. Teacher could count on me to do it right. I colored just as
hard as I could – but I ran into
a problem. The harder I colored I began to inadvertently push the color right
off the page. The pressure of the crayon in my hand was making flakes of
colored wax flick right off the paper. Naturally, I panicked. I colored harder,
but that only made it worse. Finally, exhausted and out of time, I had to
surrender. I just wanted to do it right but, in my mind, I had failed.
I couldn’t see at the time that our teacher’s concern was probably about helping us
develop fine motor control. I couldn’t see that she was most concerned about those
kids who would hold a crayon in their fist and roughly scribble over the page.
The little rule-following people-pleaser that I was just wanted to do what the
teacher said I should do. I thought of that last week in our weekly Advent
coloring gathering.
I guess it seems
kind of strange to some people that a bunch of adults meet in the church every
week to color. But it’s really about
prayer, using the process of coloring these mandalas, or prayer circles, to
guide our prayer. And there is a suggested series of steps to follow. Usually,
you start in the center and work your way out to the perimeter of the circle – the edge. In the center, we focus our
attention on God, or the intention of our prayer time. But, like anything
creative, there isn’t necessarily a
right or a wrong way to do it, and I was reminded of that last week in our
gathering.
One of our pray-ers/color-ers
told me she started on the outer perimeter and worked her way in. She began
with all the thoughts and concerns that are at the periphery of life, and
slowly moved toward the center. This is the way that she needed to do it; this
is the way that seemed right to her. Even if it was uncomfortable for me – someone who has always colored in the
lines and followed the directions – it was the way that seemed right to
her.
And the
scriptures for this week seem to agree. Even in this season of sparkle and
festivity and perfection, the scriptures for this day are sending us out into
the wilderness, the rough places at the edge of the world. Even though we just
want to get to the baby in the manger, the place we feel we ought to be, Mark
and Isaiah are sending us out into the wilderness.
The voice of the
prophet Isaiah calls out: “In
the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.” Out in the wilderness we must go to make
these preparations, into the wild and untamed places, the forgotten and
neglected regions.
And the evangelist Mark echoes these
words to us, saying, “There is a voice crying out in the wilderness – this is
John the Baptist. And he is crying out for us to prepare the way of the Lord.”
The people of Judea who hear John’s voice come out to see him, far away from
the power centers of religion and society, out here on the fringes where the
niceties, the rules of etiquette are pushed aside. Out here in the wilderness,
where John wears camel’s hair and eats locusts, the people are brought face to
face with all the things they might rather not see.
Yet something
draws them out here to this stark and honest place; perhaps it is the lure of a
fresh start, the hope of forgiveness. It may not be pretty out here but at
least it’s real. So they
step away from the normal channels, the pharisaic law and temple sacrifices, to
take a walk on the wild side. This is, according to Mark, the beginning of the
good news.
This is how Mark
wants to start out the story, right here. From Mark, we don’t get angels bearing tidings of great
joy; we don’t get irenic Madonnas;
we don’t get the soft
light of the manger. From Mark, we get a journey into the wilderness. This
might not be the place you want to go right now, but we are here: on the edge.
And it’s actually a good place for us to spend
some time during this busy season. Out here on the edge of things we might be
able to see more clearly what God is up to. We might be able to see more fully
what the world needs God to be up to.
Out here in the
spiritual wilderness, we need to know who Isaiah was talking to. The people of Israel
were a people in exile. They were out on the edge. They had been sent into
exile by the Babylonian army, but actually, they put themselves there. They got
there by failing to hear and heed the warnings of the prophets of God. They got
there by their careless disobedience – in the ways they handled privilege,
power, wealth, favor. They got there by choosing to turn the law of God into
something small, something that would be used to define who was in and who was
out. They got there by their failure to practice loving-kindness, as their God showed
loving-kindness toward them. They got there on their own; they alienated
themselves from their God. This is what the Old Testament wants us to know.
And once they
were there, they realized how much they had lost, how much they had given up. The
found themselves out on the margins, and I wonder if they realized: exiled,
marginalized, they were in essentially the very place they had long relegated
the poor, the needy, the unclean to. God sent them out to the margins, maybe so
they could see what it feels like.
This is the
story of Israel. But we must know that the story of Israel is our story too.
We have actually
seen a fair amount of conversation, and quite a lot of crying out, in the
margins this year. We have seen unfolding a still-growing list of powerful
people who have been charged with harassing, exploiting, or even assaulting
people who have little or no power. There is a reason why it is happening all
at once. When one voice from the edge speaks up, another might feel the courage
to speak up also. And when enough voices speak up, then people finally listen. When
people finally start listening then, you can be sure, more voices will have the
courage to speak up.
This year we
have seen new conversations take place in which people with power are listening
to people without power, and even beginning to see the world from that
perspective. It doesn’t always happen that way – the voices from the edge are
not always listened to and believed. Some call them liars, opportunists. No
doubt there are a few of those among them, as there are in every stratum of
every group. But, more and more, people are seeing that those who have historically
been marginalized see and live life from a different point of view.
It is a good
thing when the ones with power begin to listen to the ones who are powerless.
It is important for the ones with power, the ones who are at the center of
things, to move out to the margins and find out what life is like there.
John the Baptist
lived on the margins, by choice, and he drew many more people out there. Jesus
began his ministry out at the margins, on the edge of society, and he never got
too far away from the people who lived there. He listened to those voices from
the edge. In fact, Jesus was a voice from the edge. He spoke for the poor, the
needy, the unclean, the least, the last, the marginalized.
When I color in
my mandalas, I try to do it the right way, following the rules. I start in the
center, because that’s where God is – at the center of everything. But God is
just as much at the edges. Perhaps I need to spend more time at the edges this
advent – watching,
praying, listening.
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