Hitchhikers

Message: “Hitchhikers"

THE POINT: We comfort fellow hitchhikers along the journey

• So many different images this week, and one that you can get stuck on is “Holy Way”. Another journey image! And these two passages are trading images with each other, all good and rich - lots of joy and singing, people healed, restored, dryness is dry no more. And wherever this place is, there’s a highway. That’s the destination.
• And here, in the midst of it, we have this story of John in prison.
  • The reversal here is striking - last week he’s in the wilderness and baptizing, and this week he’s in jail. And jail strikes me as a place where you become a bit more circumspect. After all, he’s given himself for this cause, and now, in prison, he doesn’t have the same ability to serve. He might second guess what the value of what he’s doing is.
  • Jesus responds, but not a simple “yes/no,” but instead with a description of what is happening - the dry land now glad, the desert rejoicing.
• Then, Jesus speaks to a crowd.
  • Did you decide to go out on a sightseeing tour? No, you didn’t.
  • What did you find? Something soft? Malakos - something weak, soft, coddled. No! (They don’t hang around these parts - they’re far happier to be in the safety and luxury in the royal palaces).
  • Who you found was someone grizzled and hard. A prophet - THE prophet who was announcing the Holy Way. The place Jesus just told John’s disciples about. Oh, and by the way - this amazing person John the Baptist is low man on the totem poll.
• Cognitive Dissonance
  • So here we are - wilderness blooming, John in Jail. All this healing, but no easy comfort. You went in the wilderness and you met a guy in camel hair who isn’t all that high up as you might want to believe.
  • We’re journeying, but we’re not there yet. We have quilts for comfort in pews that might not be your first choice for comfortable seats.
  • Let me tell you a story:
    • Someone gets ahold someone here at the church. She’s a single mom and wants to have a chance to be out on her own, as she’s been back and forth with family members, her mom and others. Some of the church folks get together and help find appliances which are needed so she can get approved at her inspection for her new home. Someone took her shopping to make sure she had what she needed to care for her children along the way.
    • This week, some folks at the church got word that the Family Promise house was lacking a dinner. Some folks got together at the last minute and make sure those folks were fed.
    • These are stories from just the week, and they’re the type that go unspoken and uncelebrated.
  • The quilts we hold and are comforted by don’t tell the story of their creation, only of their comfort.
    • Someone ran the thread, or knit the knots.
    • But we see other things. We witness the softness, the images on them.
    • But someone had to do the work here. Groups of people band together to do this work.
• The gift of our advent journey are the opportunities we have to invite others to the way.
  • It means none of us are drivers on the highway, but we’re all hitchhikers, hopeful for a ride to a renewed land.
  • It means at times we wander in the wilderness to meet others. We build relationships. We meet people around tables, around the corner, and we live life with them (Family Promise - celebrating a 15th birthday)
  • And then we help to guide them to the way. Maybe it’s here!
  • And if we stay too long in the wilderness ourselves, we may wonder if it’s all still really true. So we have others relay the stories again. We try to come back to the Way again so we can go out.
  • But that comfort, that care, is not done without its share of work. But when the patchwork comes together, it can be as rich and as warm as all the brilliant beautiful quilts we have around us.