The Third Sunday of Advent Year B

Third Sunday of Advent-Year B December 13, 2020 Last week, I read an opinion article that was titled, “What if instead of calling people out, we called them in?”. This article talks about a college class that is being taught at Smith College by a woman named Professor Loretta J. Ross. It highlights the cultural phenomenon of “calling out”: “the act of publicly shaming another person for behavior deemed unacceptable”. This behavior is frequently seen on social media, and Professor Ross says that the call out culture is toxic because it alienates people and makes them fearful of speaking up. She also thinks that call-out culture has taken conversations that could have once been learning opportunities and turned them into mud wrestling on message boards, YouTube comments, and Twitter… In her class, Professor Ross tells her students, “I think [calling out] is also related to something I just discovered called doom scrolling…I think we actually sabotage our own happiness with this unrestrained anger. And I have to honestly ask: Why are you making choices to make the world crueler than it needs to be…?” “The antidote to that outrage cycle, Professor Ross believes, is “calling in.” Calling in is like calling out, but done privately and with respect. ‘It’s a call out done with love,” she said. That may mean simply sending someone a private message, or even ringing them on the telephone (!) to discuss the matter, or simply taking a breath before commenting, screen-shotting or demanding one “do better” without explaining how.” i. After I read the article, I realized that it doesn’t really explain further how to do this “calling in” that Professor Ross is referring to (and perhaps that is intentional because the article does say that she has a book on this subject forthcoming). But as I’ve been pondering it over the last couple of weeks, I have realized that our scriptures for this week actually give us some indication of what not to do and what to do. In our gospel passage from John’s gospel today, we see John the Baptist coming on to the scene, but he is not our typical wild-eyed, angry John the Baptist. He is someone who is clear in his calling: one who has come “to testify to the light.” And where, in other gospels, John the Baptist is the one who is usually doing the “calling out” of the religious authorities (“You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come!”), in John’s gospel, it is the religious authorities who are actually “calling out” John the Baptist; just listen to the questions they ask him and how they ask them: “Who are you?” He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, “I am not the Messiah.” And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.” Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’” as the prophet Isaiah said. Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. They asked him, “Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?” John answered them, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.” In our Isaiah passage, we see the children of Israel returning home to the promised land after being in exile for many years. There are three voices in this passage: the voice of the prophet, the Divine voice, and the voice of Zion, who is being restored. In all three of these voices, we see a calling in of the people back to their special relationship with Yahweh, a promise of the restoration of grace and good things in the midst of hardship and suffering. And there is an added layer of significance in this Isaiah passage for today; Jesus’s first public act of ministry in Luke’s gospel, after coming off his baptism and wilderness temptations, is to go to the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth. He is handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, and he unrolls it to this portion from today and reads: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me; to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to bring release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” Then he rolls up the scroll, sits down, and says, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” It is both the ultimate calling out of those who are in power and the ultimate calling in, inviting everyone into the reign of God’s kingdom that is being brought to fulfillment in and through the person of Jesus. So, what does all that have to do with us? What if instead of calling people out, we called them in? When I am being truthful, I am much more like the religious authorities calling out John the Baptist than I am like John, unwavering in my commitment to testifying to the light. I am much more likely to “doom scroll” and to become indignant over what I see on the news or on social media than I am to invite someone into a conversation that challenges us both to go deeper, to learn more, to practice kindness and empathy. I’m much more ready to assume the worst about someone than to assume the best, and to give them the chance to live into their better selves. So my invitation to myself (and to anyone else who resonates with this) for this week is to commit to being a witness to the light; to look for ways to seek out the light of Christ who has come to draw the whole world to himself in each and every person I come into contact with—stranger and friend and family member. And to be like the John the Baptist, unwavering in my commitment to testify to the light. I. What if Instead of Calling People Out, We Called Them In? - The New York Times (nytimes.com)