The Third Sunday of Advent-The Rev Melanie Lemburg
Third Sunday of Advent-Year B
December 13, 2020
Last week, I read an opinion article
that was titled, “What if instead of calling people out, we called them
in?”. This article talks about a college
class that is being taught at Smith College by a woman named Professor Loretta
J. Ross. It highlights the cultural
phenomenon of “calling out”: “the act of publicly shaming another person for
behavior deemed unacceptable”. This
behavior is frequently seen on social media, and Professor Ross says that the
call out culture is toxic because it alienates people and makes them fearful of
speaking up.
She
also thinks that call-out culture has taken conversations that could have once
been learning opportunities and turned them into mud wrestling on message
boards, YouTube comments, and Twitter…
In her class, Professor Ross tells her
students, “I think [calling out] is also related to something I just discovered
called doom scrolling…I think we actually sabotage our own happiness with this
unrestrained anger. And I have to honestly ask: Why are you making choices to
make the world crueler than it needs to be…?”
“The
antidote to that outrage cycle, Professor Ross believes, is “calling in.”
Calling in is like calling out, but done privately and with respect. ‘It’s a
call out done with love,” she said. That may mean simply sending someone a
private message, or even ringing them on the telephone (!) to discuss the
matter, or simply taking a breath before commenting, screen-shotting or
demanding one “do better” without explaining how.”[i]
After
I read the article, I realized that it doesn’t really explain further how to do
this “calling in” that Professor Ross is referring to (and perhaps that is
intentional because the article does say that she has a book on this subject
forthcoming). But as I’ve been pondering
it over the last couple of weeks, I have realized that our scriptures for this
week actually give us some indication of what not to do and what to do.
In
our gospel passage from John’s gospel today, we see John the Baptist coming on
to the scene, but he is not our typical wild-eyed, angry John the Baptist. He is someone who is clear in his calling: one who has come “to testify to the light.” And where, in other gospels, John the Baptist
is the one who is usually doing the “calling out” of the religious authorities
(“You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come!”), in
John’s gospel, it is the religious authorities who are actually “calling out”
John the Baptist; just listen to the questions they ask him and how they ask
them:
“Who
are you?” He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, “I am not the
Messiah.” And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I
am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.” Then they said to
him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you
say about yourself?” He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the
wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’” as the prophet Isaiah said.
Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. They asked him, “Why then are you
baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?”
John answered them, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not
know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his
sandal.”
In
our Isaiah passage, we see the children of Israel returning home to the
promised land after being in exile for many years. There are three voices in this passage: the voice of the prophet, the Divine voice,
and the voice of Zion, who is being restored.
In all three of these voices, we see a calling in of the people back to
their special relationship with Yahweh, a promise of the restoration of grace
and good things in the midst of hardship and suffering.
And
there is an added layer of significance in this Isaiah passage for today; Jesus’s
first public act of ministry in Luke’s gospel, after coming off his baptism and
wilderness temptations, is to go to the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth. He is handed the scroll of the prophet
Isaiah, and he unrolls it to this portion from today and reads: “The spirit of
the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me; to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bring release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the
blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” Then he rolls up the scroll, sits down, and
says, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
It
is both the ultimate calling out of those who are in power and the ultimate
calling in, inviting everyone into the reign of God’s kingdom that is being
brought to fulfillment in and through the person of Jesus.
So,
what does all that have to do with us?
What if instead of calling people out, we called them in? When I am being truthful, I am much more like
the religious authorities calling out John the Baptist than I am like John,
unwavering in my commitment to testifying to the light. I am much more likely to “doom scroll” and to
become indignant over what I see on the news or on social media than I am to invite
someone into a conversation that challenges us both to go deeper, to learn
more, to practice kindness and empathy. I’m much more ready to assume the worst
about someone than to assume the best, and to give them the chance to live into
their better selves.
So
my invitation to myself (and to anyone else who resonates with this) for this week is to
commit to being a witness to the light; to look for ways to seek out the light
of Christ who has come to draw the whole world to himself in each and every
person I come into contact with—stranger and friend and family member. And to be like the John the Baptist,
unwavering in my commitment to testify to the light.
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