Lord of the Streets
December 10, 2023
2 Advent, Year B
Isaiah 40:1-11
Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13
Mark 1:1-8
In one of my favorite TV shows, called Angel, the main character, Angel, is fighting for redemption from his terrible past, and he’s doing so by battle all kinds of forces of darkness in the world. He fights demons, monsters, even regular street toughs. Anyone who preys on and harms others, he’s battling to stop them.
As he goes, the true forces of darkness, the demonic forces try over and over to stop him, and as they keep failing, they decide instead to break his spirit. They meet with him and tell him there’re going to take him to their home, where he can fight them on their own turf and probably die.
So he is taken to their home by a kind of demon guide, and when he opens the door, Angel is led back to regular old Earth, onto the streets of the city where he lived. His guide explains that the forces of darkness made the Earth their home long ago, and they aren’t battling to win. They just persist. Angel had been striving for some ultimate victory, some final battle to rid the Earth of the forces of darkness once and for all, and he is told that he will never be able to do so because for the forces of darkness, there is no goal, no victory. For the forces of darkness, there the pain and suffering they cause, and the next person, and the next person, and the next person to inflict with that pain and suffering.
Well, at this point, Angel pretty well gives up. His spirit is indeed broken, he turns on his friends, and decides there is no point to anything he does. Later, in the midst of his despair, he begins to realize that while he may not be able to win against the forces of darkness, that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t try. He tells his friends, “All I wanna do is help. I wanna help because I don't think people should suffer, as they do. If there is no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do.”
Angel realized he wasn’t able to heal the whole world, but he could continue to work to repair the world. The idea of repairing the world is a Jewish concept, and in The Ethics of Our Fathers, Rabbi Tarfon wrote, “You are not obligated to complete the work of repairing the world, but neither are you free to abandon it.” That is the way of life John the Baptist proclaimed in his baptism of repentance.
John was calling the people to repent, to turn around and begin again the work of repairing the world. “Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.” Repair the hurt and brokenness you see in the world. Turn from despair, and hold onto hope. Turn from being overcome by the suffering of the world, and join in the work of repair.
Find hope as well, John proclaimed, when you are overcome by the enormity of the suffering of the world. Find hope because the work is not ours to do alone, nor ours to finish. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” There will be a final victory over all evil. Eventually, all suffering and evil will be destroyed, but that ultimate victory isn’t our work to do. That isn’t our victory to win. That’s Jesus’ victory to win. So as you work to repair the world, do not be overcome by the enormity of the suffering in the world. Remember, “You are not obligated to complete the work of repairing the world, but neither are you free to abandon it.” Not even when you mess up.
We are going to mess up and mess up big time as we work to repair the world. In the words of Leonard Cohen. “Love is not a victory march. It’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah.” We also mess up and repent as we go. We continue to follow John’s call to repentance, to turning around and beginning ever again the work of repairing the world, including repairing the world from the damage we cause.
Last week, I caused damage right out in front of Lord of the Streets. There have been a lot of people driving around supposedly signing people up for health insurance, taking social security numbers, and in reality, they’re just scamming folks, getting their information and selling it, or signing people up for insurance that won’t actually work for them.
I was tired of seeing this happen, so when a pink van pulled up outside of Lord of the Streets, I had had enough. I began shouting at them to move on, to get the hell out of there. I was disrupting all they were trying to do. As they tried to explain that they were a legitimate business, I would hear none of it and shouted all the more for them to go. Eventually they did.
It turns out, they actually are legitimate, and I was terrible to them. Whether the insurance they’re signing people up for is good or not, I have no idea, and that’s not even the point. I was out of control, shouting, angry, adding suffering to the suffering of the world. Sure, my intentions were good, but I also really wanted a victory. I was overcome by the suffering of the world, and I wanted to win. I wanted to defeat the powers of darkness, so in that moment, I became darkness. “Love is not a victory march; it’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah.”
So now, it’s time for repentance: doing what I can to heal the damage I caused. I called the company and let them know what I’d done, and I asked if they could pass on to their employees who were there that I was wrong and that I was sorry. Now I’m here in public declaring that the pink van insurance people may or may not be really helping folks, but they are a legitimate business, not scammers.
Following John’s call to make straight in the desert a highway for our God, we do our best in a broken world, often failing, often having no idea what the right thing to do is. So, we repent as we go, and we do so with God’s help. We are not alone in working to repair the world. We are not alone in the darkness of the world, for “The light [of God] shines in the darkness, and the darkness [does] not overcome it.” (John 1:5)
For us as followers of Jesus, there is an ultimate victory of Jesus over all evil in the world. It’s just not our victory to win. So, rather than be overcome by the enormity of the work, realize that every bit of good we do matters. Every bit of healing and repair we bring matters. Even though we don’t bring the ultimate victory, we get to help, simply because we can, because people shouldn’t suffer, as they do. Repairing the world is a cold and broken hallelujah. It’s work we cannot complete, but it is work that, with God’s help, is our privilege to get to do.
