by Robert Morrison
- Tommy Johnson was late that day. Everyone else was already there and waiting for him, waiting for him not only to be there, but to have everything ready. Because Tommy Johnson had to start everything off. Without him, nothing else could go on; it wouldn’t make sense. WITH him, however, with his particular contribution, the scene would be set perfectly, and everything that all the others had to offer would fall into place. Tommy Johnson HAD to be there, and he was. And the rest, as they say, is history.
“James Kim was a respected expert on cutting-edge digital devices, an owner of a trendy clothing store and a lover of the futuristic-sounding music known as electronica.
“Yet, according to friends, most of Kim's life revolved around old-fashioned values: sacrifice, friendship and family. Those who knew him say they aren't surprised that Kim, in the last act of his life, demonstrated the ultimate expression of devotion to his wife and daughters.
“The body of the 35-year-old Kim was discovered Wednesday in a rugged wilderness area in southern Oregon. He had set out across snow and ice with only tennis shoes to protect his feet. He had eaten little in the seven days since his car got stuck.
“’Anyone that knows James will tell you that he would do anything to protect his family,’ said Jason Zemlicka, a friend of 10 years and former co-worker. ‘I know him, and he must have believed he was going to get somewhere.’
“Friends and co-workers now mourn Kim but say they will celebrate his success at helping to accomplish his most important goal during that desperate week in the woods: the rescue of his wife, Kati Kim, and the couple's two daughters, Penelope, 4, and Sabine, seven months.” (1)
Two very different people. Two people who were aware of where they should be and what they should do at a particular time, even although the one wasn’t fully aware of the impact he’d have and the other was in a situation he never chose nor hoped to experience. Both responded. Both used their brains, their skills, their gifts, and then added that something extra, something hard to describe, perhaps - but it was something like dedication, total commitment. They summoned up that last ounce of energy to try to get the outcome they desired.
Not so different, I’d imagine, from John the Baptist. Look at how he’s introduced in this Gospel passage. There’s an attempt to put this in as accurate a historical setting as possible. With the precision of a mathematicians, the writer drew lines that would intersect one another so that people could not only come to an understanding of WHEN John began his great ministry, but something of an understanding of the religious, and political, and social pressures under which he worked.
No doubt, many people thought he could have done better - I mean, someone as sensitive as he was, someone who could tell the mood and the needs of those around him at a glance, surely he could have moved into some sort of governmental position and lived a pretty comfortable life?
But that was not where John felt called to be and called to do, no matter how tempting it may have seemed. Zechariah’s son, whom his father had presciently realized was destined to bring about radical change, Zechariah’s son saw in the people around him a tremendous need and hunger to find a spiritual centre to their lives. And he recognised almost instantly that the only way that this could happen would be through radical transformation, complete rededication. Nothing should get in the way of this reunion with God, not personal concerns, not family concerns, not community concerns. Money didn’t mater; neither did prestige nor recognition. There was to be a single focus to the lives of those whom John tried to reach. He was very direct and, as we see later on, he could be bitingly scathing. But he didn‘t want some sort of lip-service commitment to God. He saw the need for relationship with God as much too important and fulfilling to mess around with or to dilute.
- In a wonderful spoof circulated last week, I read something that I’m sure many Treasurers, Vestries and clergy wished they could say, even if only once in their lives! It was entitled “Non Essential Members???” and was headed “Mega-church downsizes, cuts non-essential members”
The letter was supposedly sent out from “WINSTON-SALEM — Julie and Bob Clark were stunned to receive a letter from their church in July asking them to ‘participate in the life of the church’ — or worship elsewhere.
"‘They basically called us freeloaders,’ says Julie.
"‘We were freeloaders,’ says Bob.
“In a trend that may signal rough times for wallflower Christians, bellwether mega-church Faith Community of Winston-Salem has asked ‘non-participating members’ to stop attending.
"‘No more Mr. Nice Church,’ says the executive pastor, newly hired from Cingular Wireless. ‘Bigger is not always better. Providing free services indefinitely to complacent Christians is not our mission.’
"‘Freeloading’ Christians were straining the church's nursery and facility resources and harming the church's ability to reach the lost, says the pastor.
"‘When your bottom line is saving souls, you get impatient with people who interfere with that goal,’ he says.
“Faith Community sent polite but firm letters to families who attend church services and ‘freebie events’ but never volunteer, never tithe and do not belong to a small group or other ministry. The church estimates that of its 8,000 regular attendees, only half have volunteered in the past 3 years, and a third have never given to the church.
"‘Before now, we made people feel comfortable and welcome, and tried to coax them to give a little something in return,’ says a staff ember. ‘That's changed. We're done being the community nanny.’” (2)
Compare John’s quote of Isaiah with that satirical letter. Compare John’s reminder about difficulties and dangers being eradicated with the work along Highway 101 at Nelscott right now. YOU can’t do things by half measures, said John, because GOD doesn’t. When God speaks, when God promises, when God acts, whenever and whatever God does, it is a complete giving of self. Nothing is held back. Everything is offered to us in order to bring about our deliverance from worry, from insecurity, from everything that tries to suggest that we’re less than complete. Not only that, however, the wonderful news is that God is inviting us to participate in bringing about this renewal in our own lives, and the lives of those around us, and even in the lives of those half way around the world.
So it was completely natural for the Baptist to expect that his peers, all the way down through history to us and beyond, should respond in exactly the same way and to the same extent that God does. Both God and we step out towards one another. We, at least, don’t know all that may be involved in restoring creation, but the message is that God is preparing to come among us, that God is willing to take that risk no matter how far along in the project we may appear to be.
The analogy of the road construction really DOES hold, then. If the company engaged in cutting into the hillside at Nelscott were, for instance, not to stabilise it, but simply to make a vertical incision with the assumption that everything would be fine, or if ODOT were to fill in only every second pot-hole, not only would the City Council be up in arms, so would everyone who travels down that stretch of the road. For that matter, even those who DON’T travel south through Nelscott would be rightfully indignant. Maybe that’s why this “prophet who goes before the face of the Lord” can’t afford NOT to call everyone to account.
Even so, to my eyes and mind this time around the message is tempered with more hope than I may have seen previously.
There are basically only two locations, or areas associated with the preparation and ministry of John. One is the desert, where he spent so much time listening, and watching, and thinking about what God might want to say and do through him. The desert is a place of solitude, of reflection, not necessarily totally barren, but not lush either. By its very nature, water is scarce there, and has to be guarded closely and used sparingly.
Then here is the second location of John, that of the Jordan Valley, where the river never seemed to dry up, where, in the Baptist’s day at any rate, one didn’t have to worry about pollutants. In fact, the reverse was true - the River was the place where baptism occurred, where the lavishness of God’s mercy was celebrated through ritual and physical cleansing. It was a place where one encountered life, therefore it was a place of hope.
What should you and I make, then, of the report this week that even on that fiery planet Mars, scientists are now moving towards the stage of cautious optimism that water in one form or another may still be present there. And that where water exists there we may find life. Is this coincidence, or one of those little serendipitous events, that on the week when we turn our thoughts towards God in our midst, and of the Prophet John inviting people to accept renewal through Baptism, IS it not a wonderful reminder of the lavishness and joy of God that even in the most unexpected places lies the hope of renewal? And if on Mars, then why not here, why not now? Why NOT a renewal of our relationship with God and with one another? What will it take for us to be convinced of the rightness of God? What will it take for us to help others se this too? Who will be John the Baptist this morning, this week, this month?
And what of the mysterious Tommy Johnson to whom I referred at the beginning?
Well, Johnson was a musician in Los Angeles and, as many studio musicians did, he was a band instructor at a junior high school, and a wonderful tuba player.
“When Johnson got the call to come to the studio (that day), it was raining, his substitute teacher was late, and so the orchestra (with whom he was to play) was (already) seated and composer (and conductor John) Williams was at the podium when Johnson arrived.
"‘Basically, they were just sort of waiting for me to get my tuba out,’ Johnson recalled in an interview with TubaNews.com. ‘The whole time John Williams was looking at me with anticipation.’ Johnson was out of breath. He was upset. He opened - for the first time - the musical score and saw this crazy long tuba solo.
“Williams raised his baton and Johnson nailed it. ‘In those days, I had a lip that just responded immediately,’ he remembered. ‘I never had to warm up. I never believed in warming up.’” (3)
Johnson was there to take part in recording the soundtrack of a movie, but he “didn't learn until later that the tuba part (those scary, insistent, vitally important notes played by himself alone in such an exposed way) was the "shark” in the movie “Jaws”.
What Tommy Johnson had to do - and did so perfectly - was o do a “John the Baptist”. He had to sound out an alarm, and do it so convincingly that the audience would respond.
Tommy Johnson died in October, but not before he’d sent his message out through countless movies and so, in his honour a concert was arranged the other day. “At the concert's conclusion, (…) 99 tuba players crammed onto the stage. )The conductor) joked, "Thank God there are no sousaphones." It was a tuba joke (sousaphones take up a lot of space). They played the finale of Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony. What is the sound of a hundred tubas in full-throated song? It had the ring of the Voice of God. Very big. Very blaaat. (You could feel the fillings in your teeth rattle from the primal bass.) It was completely tubaistical. And maybe that’s what John sounded like up and down the Jordan Valley, as he called the people to repent, joyfully, and to accept God’s invitation to commitment.
Who knows how we hear John in this noisy age? But it could be worse than through the voice of a tuba, or a shark, or a huge wave off the Nelscott Reef. For different people the voice may sound differently. But to all it says, “You shall see God’s deliverance.”
The news is ALWAYS good. It's just not always easy.
God give us ears to hear - and hearts and mind to respond.
- “James Kim - family man, gadget fan” . By Greg Sandoval. Staff Writer, CNET News.com Published: December 6, 2006, 6:04 PM PST http://news.com.com/2009-12-6141617.html
- “Non-essential members?????? “ All content © 2006 LarkNews.com. All rights reserved. Via Elizabeth Kaeton EMKaeton@aol.com
- “A 99-Tuba Salute: Big Brass Gather to Remember the Man With Chops and 'Jaws'“ By William Booth Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, December 5, 2006; C01 LOS ANGELES http://letters.washingtonpost.com/WBRH026DF21B95900F47F3365096F0
(Comments to Bob at lincolncityepiscopal@charterinternet.com.)
The Episcopal Parish of St James
Lincoln City, Oregon 97367