Nothing Holy is Tame

In the advent readings leading up to Christmas we find ourselves deep in the heart of Mary’s pondering and Joseph’s confusion, two people saying yes to something they cannot understand, something bigger than themselves. And in these readings we are given the parallel track of Elizabeth and Zechariah with more pondering, more worry. It is the understandable skepticism of something holy unfolding, something seemingly impossible, and yet it will be done.

We are told that Mary decides to get out of town for a few months, and like many a young teenage girl who finds herself unexpectedly pregnant, she makes a beeline to her older cousin, Elizabeth. Lo and behold, Mary discovers that Elizabeth is also with child under circumstances that seem almost as impossible as Mary’s pregnancy. We are further told that as the two women embrace, the child in Elizabeth’s body leaps for joy over the proximity of his cousin. Two women cheek to cheek, belly to belly, and here is where the dance begins. One of the greatest love stories of the Gospel - Yeshua and John circling round each other.

There’s a revolution brewing in the bellies of these women, and Mary, sweet Mary, sounding like the future John, calls down thunder in her bold proclamation. There will be political consequences, but the lens is mystical. Here we are operating outside of the context of normal historical/political/cultural boundaries. This is the manifestation of a God unbound, for nothing holy is tame.

The advent readings flash forward in time over and over again, John and Yeshua pushing all boundaries and exceeding all limits of what could be tolerated. Our desert prophet, pillar of fire John, baptizing in water to prepare everyone for the fire. The call and response between Yeshua and John is the throughline of the Gospel, and it rolls us like a drumbeat. It is a dance, it is a dance, it is a dance! It is a dance that leads us straight to the wilderness, to the wilds of John’s heart, and to the mind of Yeshua once broken open and set free becomes the universal Christ - “I and the father are one.” That talk will get you killed! It always does. But this is the truth that must be said. It is the truth al-Hallaj will proclaim hundreds of years after Yeshua’s pronouncement, and he too will be crucified.

This Gospel stuff is not safe, it’s not meant to be respectable, I tell you it’s not tame. But in the words of Yeshua, “what did you go out to the desert to see?” What else could God breaking into the world have looked like? In Yeshua God creates for us a new memory, a new path, a new way. John sees that path from out in the desert, Yeshua walks that path straight to John. They say a dove descended upon Yeshua at his baptism by John, but I think it was a crow. It’s a crow that holds the secrets and whispers the dangerous truth, “I and the father are one.” John baptized, the crow whispered in Yeshua’s ear, and Yeshua says yes to that path that John shouts into existence for him, “Make straight the path!” These cousins already know it’s a path to jail, a path to the tomb, one can hardly expect the authorities to let them live once they begin all that desert shouting about “I and the father are one!”

This is deep God waters stuff I tell you but be not afraid. I am a shepherd, not just in metaphor, but in fact. And like the shepherds before me, I have been terrified by angels, and still I have chosen to follow the star, because I and the Father are one. Nothing holy is tame.

Originally published in the Bennington Banner