Exile! We're in exile—banished from accents of our origin and pathways to our destiny, from the atmosphere of true values, the milieu of God. We're embroiled in warfare we didn't chose and can't find escape. We're in exile, can't fulfill our calling. But a new leader has arisen on the world stage. Hope is dawning.
So sang an unknown prophet twenty-eight centuries ago in the streets of Babylon, and wrote this poem:
Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
Speak comfortingly to Jerusalem,
And cry to her that her warfare is accomplished,
Her iniquity is pardoned,
That she has received at the Lord's hands, double for all her sins.
A voice cries;
In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.
Make straight in the desert, a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
Every mountain and hill made low.
The crooked shall be made straight,
And the rough places, a plain.
The Glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
And all flesh shall see it together
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.
The occasion for this magnificent poem is the ascent of Cyrus to the throne of Persia, now Iran, in 640 BCE, and the great hope that triggered around the world. The people of God had been forcibly marched across the round belly of the Middle East to Babylon, now Baghdad, and had languished there a generation. Cyrus's rise promised the defeat of Babylon and release of its exiles. The poem uses extravagant imagery of a glorious return to Jerusalem, across a metaphorical highway made of flattened hills and elevated valleys, led by the Glory of Yahweh, as in the exodus from Egypt, all humanity watching in awe.
Note that the Prophet's hope was not in Cyrus himself, who isn't mentioned. Cyrus would be called, "The Great" by contemporaries and by history—great warrior; great politician—not by the Prophet. Hebrew Prophets had no confidence in political leaders, nor, I'll confess, after their witness, do I. The hope was that the people, the dead weight of exile lifted from them, would recover their destiny.
All four Gospels set Jesus' ministry, in the imagery of this poem, as a return from exile—Handel does in Messiah. The Gospels begin with Jesus' baptism—announcement that the people, in exile, are, in the waters of baptism, liberated. Today we celebrate Baptism of the Lord, Jesus' baptism, revisit our own baptism and renew our baptismal vows.
Get this: David Prince has invited a Baptist to preach to Presbyterians about baptism. What was he thinking? Baptists don't celebrate "Baptism of the Lord." First time I ever did was last year. Tom Driver preached. We renewed our baptismal vows, Cheryl Pyrch splashing water on us. In a Baptist church you'd have to re-dunk everybody in a baptismal pool. Glorious mess! Never happen!
I'm reminded of John Calvin—that's your guy—his famous admonition, that you followers do religion "decently and in order." What he meant was don't be like the Anabaptists who do it indecently and in disorder. Anabaptists are our guys—and women. One of the indecent and disorderly things Anabaptists did in the Sixteenth Century was to ordain women.
As for baptism, everybody in those days was baptized at birth. Baptism was for church and state, like marriage ceremonies now—the occasion for an infant's registration as a citizen. Rebaptism (Ana-baptism) implied resigning from the state, a capital offense. Ana-baptism was Anabaptists were martyred by the likes of Calvin, precisely because of their re-baptism: less a religious, more a moral act; not a sacrament for salvation, but an dramatic, open, risk-taking commitment to the Sermon on the Mount: specifically a declaration of independence from ultimate loyalty to government and country. Also from the economy. They practiced subsistence living and refused to pay taxes. Also from any reliance on military power. In the spirit of indecency and disorder I invite you to be-not dunked-but re-baptised, at the end of our Presbyterian service. You're in exile. Rebaptism is liberation from exile.
Thursday is Martin Luther King's birthday, the following Tuesday, inauguration of a new president. Like the prophet, we taste on our lips a worldwide aspiration of hope.
But we're still in exile: exile in Gaza, Baghdad and Afghanistan from peace; in Guantanamo, Abu Graib and the School of the Americas from our best ideals; exile from our national identity in the name of homeland security; exile from a heritage of prosperity by economic shenanigans . Exile is the right word. And hope, unrestrained, in some ways unprecedented hope is our spirit at this historic moment. And as with the rise of a pagan warrior-king in ancient Persia, as with the Baptism of a Hebrew carpenter on the fringe of the Roman Empire, God is in it.
In the Psalms of the exile is the recurring phrase, "How long, O Lord, how long?" The cry of the exile, one, I you've repeatedly cried out over the past decade. How long till this political nightmare ends? How long till Americans and Iraqis stop dying, our national resource and theirs draining away? The US has with violence been supporting Latin American dictators every US administration, liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, since Theodore Roosevelt. How long, O Lord? Christians have imposed with violence on the Middle East since the Crusades. A thousand years! How long till the tumbling down, spiraling degeneration of history bottoms out and turns upward toward the Reign of God? How long before the slaughter of those who love the least of these is turned into banquet? How long till thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as in heaven?
'How long?' is the question most asked in the Bible. When sermon preparation hits dead ends, I count things in the concordance. 'How long?' is the question fifty-seven times, asked in every section of the Bible. It's a rhetorical question. But it gets answered. Two answers. One in Isaiah; one in Revelation.
The first Christian martyrs ask it in the Book of Revelation-a poignant scene. The martyrs are in heaven, huddled under the altar table before God, crying "How Long?."
During El Salvador's civil war, I went to Emmanuel Baptist Church, San Salvador, across the street from the oppressive presidential palace, in the shadow of its machine guns. The pastor read the names of ten members recently killed by the death squads, a stunning moment. Early Christians knew the martyrs under the table in heaven, knew, loved and grieved them with trembling rage and wailing frustration. They died alone, in humiliation, such unbelievable waste, for nothing!
Imagine one of the martyrs under the altar singing Bob Dylan:
How many years must a mountain exist
Before it is washed to the sea?
How many years must a people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
How many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn't see?
How long, O Lord, before African-American poor are snatched from fetid floods of the ruined 'New Orleans,' and brought to the eschatological banquet? How long till the body-count of dead Iraqis is reported by American occupiers, or even tallied? How long till Tibet is free, Myanmar, Palestine, Grozny, Kosovo, Rwanda, Mogadishu, Darfur, and the wretched third world cellar beneath America? How long, Jesus, till you reveal you didn't mean us to be homophobic, or theocratic, or to deny loving gay couples the right to marry; didn't mean America to be the world's only superpower or a superpower at all. Or tell us you did meant it, so we can quit this damned church and oppose you in the streets.
"How long?" the martyrs cry, under the table, the cry of exile. And they get an answer. The answer. But let me give you the other answer first:
It's in the call of Isaiah to be a prophet; another sanctuary, another altar. "Whom shall I send:" asks the voice of God heard by Isaiah. 'Here am I, send me,' Isaiah answered. 'But what shall I say?' he asked. The answer was awful. 'Go preach angry, confrontive sermons, the kind that make people stop up their ears and cover their eyes,' God said.
Isaiah asks, 'How long—do I have to preach like that. Isaiah 6:ll. 'How long?' The answer:
Till cities lie waste without inhabitant,
And houses without people,
And the land is utterly desolate... .
For twenty one generations, this is the only answer given to the awful question, 'How long?' What kind of answer is that, 'till cities lie waste without inhabitant?' New Orleans lies waste without inhabitant. So...is it now? Can we quit preaching sermons that make people mad... now?
It turns out there's more to the answer. Its given in the Book of Revelation, given to the church—Rutgers Church—in Exile, in what we theologians call the apocalyptic situation.
Apocalyptic situation is when the promise of God's surely coming future seems a lie; when the demonic of the nations is cataclysmically exposed; i.e., now.
"How long?" Revelation says presidents and dictators will be given dominion 'for the space of one hour.' In the never-ending sweep of time, from dark eternity to bright eternity, this exile counts for only one hour. So that's it, 'How long'?, just one more hour, over at 1PM, today?
No. That's not what it means. From the inside this apocalypse seems an eternity. Our bloody fingertips and white knuckles are at the end of holding on. We're about to drop.
God comes to the martyrs under the altar table to give the answer. Here's the answer. How long?
Till the blood of the last martyr has been wasted.
God says to the martyrs, to you who've tried and failed to change things, your apparent wasting was no waste. It's been taken up in the eschatological avalanche unleashed at the onset of time. By your blood, your apparently wasted efforts, mingled with that of Jesus, the world is being saved. Its almost over. Like the Mahatma said, only so many satyagrahis the soldiers will bludgeon. Like Martin used to say, only so many black folks the Alabama police will hose—before repentance sets in, and history has enough, and the saints sing with the whole heart, "we shall overcome someday.'
'How Long?' Soon, but there haven't been enough martyrs yet. Moses, before the most powerful ruler on earth, stuttering, 'l-l-let m-m-my p-p-people g-go! wasn't enough. Jeremiah at the Jerusalem wall taunting the soldiers to lay down their arms wasn't enough. Jesus nailed to the cross, Paul in the Roman prison, Francis and Clare begging in the streets, Sister Theresa sleeping in the streets, not enough; Gandhi in jail, Fannie Mae Hammer in jail, Mandela growing old on Robbin Island, Aun Saung Su Xi a decade under house arrest in Yangoon, not enough.
Are you tired? Discouraged? None of these faithful witnesses accomplished what they intended. But imagine where we'd be had they not, in the exile, made the faithful witness.
Five hundred deaths in Gaza, the preemptive war with Iraq, the presumptive war on terrorism, the presumptuous boast of supremacy by America's government may succeed a year, a decade, a century, a millennium. Over these things we have no control. But without a shadow of doubting, they run counter to the purposes of God, and are doomed to eternal judgment.
People of Rutgers, fulfill the vows of your baptism. Answer the call to live recklessly the faithful witness to God's surely coming future. God will include your witness in the transformed world that's coming soon.
One more thing. This is a concluding confession. I counted, in my concordance, the fifty-seven incidences of 'How long?' and discovered something I decided to skip over. That always happens in sermon preparation. Just when I find a text that fits my agenda, I notice that it has something else to say. Let's say the sermon's over. In faithfulness to the text I'll add this unfortunate postscript. 'How long?' does appear fifty-seven times. What I couldn't tell you without screwing the sermon is that three fourths of them are God asking us, 'How long?' How long till you fulfill your baptismal commitment, and give yourself to making the world good?