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Across the sea, along the shore,
In numbers more and ever more,
From lonely hut and busy town,
The valley through, the mountain down,
What was it ye went out to see,
Ye silly folk of Galilee?
The reed that in the wind doth shake?
The weed that washes in the lake?
The reeds that waver, the weeds that float?
A young man preaching in a boat.

Arthur Hugh Clough has it right. It was no flimsy reed, no wavering swamp grass or cattails blowing in the wind those crowds went out to see. Those humble folk of old Judea, those seeking multitudes of ancient Galilee were not drawn into the wilderness to hear a political chameleon who changed speeches with the mood of the day.

John, thundering at the riverside, Jesus preaching from the mount, teaching from the boat, and the people heard them gladly. They preached and taught as men with authority. Unlike would-be leaders of our day, they did not take opinion polls to find out what people believed and then proclaim that's what they believed also. They did not get their convictions from the offices of Harris or Gallup or the New York Times. Jesus and John were authentic because their convictions arose out of a life of intense prayer, reflection, study, and experience with people and power.

What was it ye went out to see,
Ye silly folk of Galilee?

The reeds that waver, the weeds that float?
A young man preaching in a boat.

John and Jesus -- authentic men, true men, who, unlike so many leaders interested in feathering their own nest, spoke their message without regard for the consequences. That's why John was in prison. Herod, although he admired John, could take no more of the truth. So he locked him up, and later, chopped off his head. Herod knew better than to attempt to bribe John or to place him in exile. No wavering reed in the wind, he knew John could be silenced only by death.

So it would be also with Jesus. Silenced only by death. And why? Because Jesus and John were calling men and women, boys and girls, into the Kingdom, not of men, but of God. Jesus' method was so different from John's, that John in his prison cell wondered if in fact he was the Messiah. Have no doubt, said Jesus to John; the blind see, the lame walk, and the poor have good news preached to them. The Kingdom is arriving for all who will receive it. And so it was by two different methods, "dancing and fasting," the Kingdom arrived.

I.

John tried fasting. His way to the Kingdom was through asceticism and prayer and the solitary life. He gave up the customary pleasures and comforts to concentrate on what he understood to be the life of the Spirit. John forsook the pleasures of marriage and family, and the ordinary pursuits of business and social life. Through rigorous discipline and social withdrawal, he attempted to avoid the pitfalls of compromise.

While John earned the admiration of many, he received the accusation of others. A man like that must be mad, they said. He's out of his mind, perhaps even possessed by a demon. He fasts so often he has lost his perspective. The solitary life isn't good for a man. His prayers have become too intense and he has grown too critical of the world.

And so it went. The various social groups accused him of being a little odd and much too fanatical about the Kingdom of God. Nevertheless, some were enticed to withdraw from the dinner party, cocktail lounge circuit. John's wilderness life had a certain allurement -- away from the crowds, close to nature, sensitive to the winds of the hills, the fragrances of the flowers. Who of us has not thought of sailing off with Robert Louis Stevenson to a South Pacific island or stealing away like Anne Morrow Lindbergh to discover the "gift from the sea." Maybe in solitude and fasting and prayer we could find the Kingdom. Perhaps our vision of God could be clarified, our understanding of Christ enhanced.

Is fasting the way for you? Have you ever come back from the indulgence of the Mardi Gras prepared to give up something for Lent? I heard about some high school girls who were giving up candy. One man said he was giving up alcohol for Lent. Oh, I chided him, you plan on sobering up for these forty days? No, he said, I need to lose some weight!

Fasting is a good way to focus on the Kingdom. Those who have tried it have found that it heightens awareness and increases sensitivity. Concentration often is enhanced. Insight is deepened. Self-deception burns away and the stark truths about the world become more plainly visible. It can be a frightening, life-shaking experience of reorientation.

Many people in John's day found it to be too much. With the intensity of fasting and prayer they became both aware and afraid of the forces within themselves. Others were too threatened by the thought of being alone with themselves, afraid of being alone with God, fearful of pulling aside the social fabrications to look at the truth of their souls. And so the stereo always is on, or the television, or the transistor radio, or the computer.

A religion of such personal intensity was more than they could bear. It was too shattering to see the untruthfulness of people, too devastating to see how little people really cared for one another, and how little difference it made whether they lived or died. Like a jet plane approaching the intensity of the sound barrier, they pulled back from the turbulence they were seeing, without pressing on through to the peace and calm and heavenly perspective on the other side of the barrier. For on the other side of the barrier we receive strength to see how selfish and unloving and uncaring we have been. We understand how unworthy of trust we have been, how deceptive and self-deceiving, how ready to manipulate and use others to our advantage and their disadvantage.

I saw a cartoon of a man returning home from work, greeting his wife, saying, "I feel as though I really got ahead today. I was exploited by four people, but I exploited nine."

Beyond the sound barrier we can see and reaffirm the world, but this time with a heart that has been shaken clean in the turbulence of self-examination, and with a mind that has been clarified with the intensity of honest introspection. We have entered the Kingdom of truth and light. Will you come to the Kingdom by way of fasting?

II.

Dancing advocates found a good leader in Jesus. Unlike John, Jesus was no social recluse. The contrary. Jesus enjoyed good times and often attended wedding feasts and dinner parties. He apparently loved the communal life as he and his disciples traveled and lived together, frequently being accompanied by assorted hangers-on. So much did he enjoy and participate in social occasions that his opponents tried to label him as a glutton and drunkard. The label was untrue, of course, but he was seen often enough at parties to make people wonder.

If John was austere and solitary, Jesus was amiable and sociable. If John called people into the Kingdom by way of asceticism and severe discipline, Jesus beckoned by way of the feast and the gladness of the dinner party. If, as a loner, John's vision of the Kingdom was enhanced, Jesus, as a social person, knew the insight and sense of identity which came from a community and the give and take of stories and conversation.

What do you plan to give up for Lent? Some would say, I'm giving up being alone. I'm putting aside thinking of myself all the time. Instead of complaining about my aches and pains, I'm going to listen to someone else tell about his or hers, and help them gain a sense of release. What do you plan to give up for Lent? Others would say, I'm going to come out of the desert places of selfishness to share with someone else -- to give some food or money or kindly words of encouragement. I'm going to put aside for the moment preoccupation with my career to help someone else with his or hers. The Kingdom of God is not just solitariness, but a community of trust and mutual burden bearing.

But if John was criticized for being too monkish, Jesus was criticized for being too sociable. If John was disliked because he always turned down party invitations, Jesus was scorned because he rarely missed a party. The critics refused to see the Kingdom through John's eyes, but they also refused to see in it the methodology of Jesus.

For many people, a religious man having a good time was a contradiction. A somber countenance gave a much more pious impression. Wise religious leaders have learned not to laugh too heartily or to enjoy life too much. It gives the impression they are not enough concerned with the Kingdom.

Ironically, the hedonists, the pleasure-seekers, really want a religious leader who is not too happy or congenial. They may say they like a good-time Charlie and a leader who is like one of the boys, but in their heart of hearts they really do not. They much prefer a somewhat somber leader to serve as a model for their alter ego and guilty conscience.

Hedonists could not conceive a religious leader having a good time like themselves, for they knew that in their pleasure, they were not religious. In their good times they were seeking not the Kingdom of God, but the Kingdom of pleasure, that blissful realm where all the impulses and instincts had full expression.

The difference between themselves and Jesus was what their good times meant. For Jesus, feasts and parties were symbols and signs of the coming Kingdom of God of which he was an agent. For the hedonists, the good times were an effort to cover up the dread, the feeling that life and the Kingdom had passed them by. They had come to a deep, silent despair about life, and were overlaying the despair with parties and dancing. Thus, in all their search for the true community, the Kingdom of God, they never really found it because they never opened up to true sharing and listening and loving and caring. For all their sociability, they were more lonely than John. What will you have -- dancing or fasting?

Some say you can attract more flies with honey than with vinegar. They are right. John believed you also attracted more corruption, shame, and hypocrisy with honey. He knew words of vinegar were needed to cut the overlaid deceit and self-deception. John was not interested in attracting flies. He was interested in leading people to the cleansing and liberating experience of repentance.

Nonetheless, people thought he was out of his mind, taking his religion far too seriously. They proposed he relax, settle down, enjoy some of the finer things of life. Life and society are not as bad as they seem, John. Enjoy, indulge yourself a bit. You have been too long in the wilderness fasting and praying. You have lost balanced perspective, they said.

Jesus, on the other hand, came not so much with vinegar, but with honey. And he attracted all sorts of flies, even prostitutes, publicans, and sinners. The vinegar of judgment and retribution had been replaced with the sweetness of love and forgiveness. The common people heard him gladly and flocked to his side -- until they learned how encompassing true love really is; until they discovered the cost of forgiveness. Then, as with John, many backed away.

They had expected religion to be an accoutrement, a nice 14-carat gold plating on the fundamental structure of their lives. They assumed Jesus was endorsing all their manners and ethics when he entered into wedding feasts and dinner parties with great zest and enjoyment. They presumed he, like they, had compromised his ideals and had built up a solid core of calculating cynicism with which to approach life. And when Jesus' real commitment became known, they tried to assassinate his character by dismissing him as a glutton and winebibber.

God once again is calling us to his Kingdom. For some he calls through mourning and fasting and solitude. Others he calls through fun and feasts and community. But if we do not want to listen to the truth, we will, like spoiled children, find all sorts of ways to avoid John and Jesus. We will criticize the method to avoid the meaning. We will berate the messenger to avoid the message.

Or with gladness and singleness of heart, we will be open and receptive to the peace and beauty and power of his word for our lives. By any means, dancing or fasting, God wills to come to us. But it is up to us to receive him into our lives.

What was it ye went out to see,
Ye silly folk of Galilee?

The reeds that waver, the weeds that float?
A young man preaching in a boat.


Prayer

In the first, fine, careless capture of the morning of the first day of the rest of our lives, we perceive your presence and power, Lord God. You've got the whole world in your hands, butterflies and babies, girls and daffodils, unfolding with beauty and grace in this delicate space, earth, our revolving home.

In our hands, we've got our old days, agonies and memories, guilt and regret, despair and distress. The life begun in beauty has its marks of ugliness, the days of blissful innocence have succumbed into long years of experience doing what we know we shouldn't, not doing what we know we should.

We've come to you, Spirit of us all -- with our weariness and reluctance to get out of bed, our hassle at home, and lack of time for the second cup -- with all that we've come, O Present One, partly out of duty, but more deeply, because we know our real need of your sustenance. Life, with all its tragedies and perplexities, baffles us beyond our ability to cope, and we become aware of demonic powers so vast, so encompassing, we sense ourselves caught up and entangled in their grip.

We come, O loving Father, for the liberation and freedom which you give in your love and grace. Break these shackles which too long have bound us -- these inward fears which grip our very souls, these desperate feelings of emptiness, our distressing sense of powerlessness. Accustomed to commanding our ship, we feel now we are being carried along in massive tides which laugh at our powers and scorn our futile efforts at self-control.

O God, who reverses the flow of evil, and who overcomes the tides of bondage and sorrow which engulf the human soul, bring now the dawn of a new day of liberation, a true one, the overcoming of the foes which beset us. Let this be a new day for us. Let this be the first day of the rest of our lives. Breathe into us your peace and presence which enables us to cope and to rise above our crippling ways of thinking, degrading ways of behaving, our negative approach to problem solving, our lack of faith in the power of your good to overcome the evil in our lives. O God, let this be the day when we enter your Kingdom anew. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.