A sermon preached at
Westmoreland Congregational United Church of Christ
Bethesda, Maryland
by the Rev. Rich Smith

December 4, 2005
2 Peter 3:8-15a, Mark 1:1-8

On Being Creatively Maladjusted

I know you find this hard to believe, but I’ve always been a little bit odd. Maybe that’s why I feel right at home among all of you, in a church that has some 600-odd members.
I began to realize this might be the case when I started to catagorize myself as a tee-totaling, non-smoking, decaffeinated vegetarian. I’ve given up the vegetarian part and re-joined the world of carnivores, although I am now doing a low carb diet, so I’m a pretty difficult house or dinner guest. It does make one odd, especially when someone wants to share hospitality, and I seem downright fussy, turning down everything but bottled water!

I have discovered that being odd does have some advantages, beyond the obvious health-related ones, like when we’re shopping for a car. We noticed that the car salesmen always try to get me to look under the hood, and engage Pam in a discussion of color. So now, whenever we have to go car shopping, which thankfully isn’t very often, we try to throw them off base by me being extremely interested in the available colors, and Pam asking to look under the hood, even though she doesn’t know an engine block from a battery. It keeps them off balance, and maybe saves us a few dollars.... and we do enjoy upsetting people’s expectations.

Maybe a better word to use for this quality is not “odd” as “counter cultural.” Maybe it’s because I grew up in the 60's and was greatly influenced by the rise of the counter-culture, but I have always been somewhat sympathetic to those who march to their own drummer and approach things in an offbeat way. Okay, I don’t have any piercings or tattoos, and this is my natural hair color – I do have my limits – but I don’t always feel part of the mainstream culture. I don’t especially like shopping malls; I refuse to patronize McDonald’s, Wall Mart or Nike. I don’t follow football or watch American Idol, so maybe I’m culturally out of touch. And that’s just the small things!

My oddness nothing in comparison with some biblical characters. Take that fellow known as John the Baptist. The abbreviated account in Mark’s gospel leaves out some of the more upsetting aspects of his message, but it still describes him as a kind of off-beat character – clothed in camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, subsisting on a diet of locusts and wild honey – You think I’m hard tp feed! – a description that identifies him as one of God’s prophets, in the mold of Ezekiel or Elijah. And we all know how counter cultural the prophets were! They were never exactly welcome, especially near the seats of power, with their habit of pointing out social inequities, and how things had gotten off track from God’s grand design. John’s message – Repent! – is not what you’d put on your Christmas cards, but it’s one that the church needs to proclaim and we need to hear and heed every year before we can rightly celebrate the birth of Jesus.

Advent is, in fact, when the church is at its most countercultural. Before we get to the angels and shepherds and wise men, we get John. Before we get Mary singing a lullaby to her newborn child, we get Mary singing a subversive song about how through that child God will scatter the proud, bring down the powerful and lift up the lowly, fill the hungry with good things and send the rich away empty handed. Before we get tinsel and glitter and Santa Claus, and plans and parties, we are challenged to think about what the coming of Christ really means, repent (which means face in a new direction, get a new attitude) and simplify our lives.... Before we can hear the good news, we have to hear the unvarnished truth. Before we can sing the Christmas carols, we ponder the prophets, and take time for quiet reflection.

Of course, that’s not how our culture expects us to behave. We’re supposed to buy, and spend, and go overboard on the most lavish of gifts for folks who already have everything, and maybe what they could really use would be a new storage unit for what they already have. We’re supposed to go right to Christmas, the minute Halloween is over, for Advent can be such an impediment. And when we resist that, we’re odd, we’re counter-cultural. In fact you might even call us “maladjusted.”

But maybe being maladjusted is a good thing. Listen to these words from Martin Luther King, his book Courage to Love: “Everybody passionately seeks to be well-adjusted. ... But there are some things in our world to which ... (those) of goodwill must be maladjusted. I confess that I never intend to become adjusted to the evils of segregation and the crippling effects of discrimination, to the moral degeneracy of religious bigotry and the corroding effects of narrow sectarianism, to economic conditions that deprive (people) of work and food, and to the insanities of militarism and the self- defeating effects of physical violence.” He wrote this over forty years go, and yet it’s still current!

“Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.... We must make a choice. Will we continue to march to the drumbeat of conformity and respectability, or will we, listening to the beat of a more distant drum, move to its echoing sounds? Will we march only to the music of time, or will we, risking criticism and abuse, march to the soul-saving music of eternity?”

Last month that creatively maladjusted soul Rosa Parks died. She’s going to be the first woman honored in Statuary Hall in the Capitol. Fifty years ago, who would have imagined, as this woman with tired feet refused to move to the back of the bus, and sparked a bus boycott and a movement and helped change the world?

We can’t all start movements, but we can find ways to repent, as John calls us to, to live an alternative life, and we can begin where we are. I keep in my files the story of one family who did just that. In an article called "In the Spirit of St. Nicholas", they described how they became increasingly uncomfortable with the Christmas season trends in which they were immersed – the consumerism and marketplace demands. So when their children were very young, they decided to stop doing Christmas presents altogether and get back to the original spirit and practice of the real Saint Nicholas, the 4th century Bishop of Myra.

Bishop Nicholas was a kind man who cared for the people not only in his congregation but in the wider community. He began to link up those with an excess of material goods with those who had too little, but in a way that the giver never knew who received the gift, and the recipient never knew who gave it. This made it possible for people to escape the conditions usually attached to gifts, such as guilt or obligations.

The bishop's reputation lived on long after him. Through the centuries his story became confused with legend and mythology, so that by the 1800's, this saintly, generous Christian pastor had been transformed into a jolly, bearded man in a red suit who gave gifts to well-behaved children – rather a betrayal of his legacy.

So, this family decided to begin a new tradition. They simply did not invite Santa Claus into their home. They did all the other things -- they put up a tree, decorations, ate special foods and sang Christmas carols, and on Christmas Eve they made a point of going to church.

They also decided to recapture the spirit of Bishop Nicholas, celebrating his feast day, December 6th, which is this Tuesday. Their children created a puppet show to tell his story. And they took all the money the would have spent on Christmas presents and gave it – anonymously – to a person or ministry in special need of help: everything from a student who needed sox and underwear to organizations like Salvation Army and Habitat for Humanity and the local food bank.

It wasn't easy, of course, since it kind of made them oddballs – creatively maladjusted oddballs – in the midst of a family and society that expected them to go along with commercialism and traditions. "Think what you're doing to your children!" complained the relatives. "You're robbing them of the spirit of giving." But they replied, "We give gifts to our children on their birthdays and at other special times. We simply want to keep this special season and our celebration from too much materialism."

In school, of course, the children had to learn to deal with the fact that all during December and into early January other children would talk about "What I want for Christmas....what I'm getting for Christmas....what I got for Christmas." One daughter came home one day and reported this conversation:
"What are you getting for Christmas?"
"Nothing. Christmas is Jesus' birthday, not mine."
"Oh, I feel sorry for you. You're not getting anything for Christmas."
"Well, I feel sorry for you if that's all you think Christmas is about!"

"For us," they conclude, "Christmas is no longer a frantic, but rather a holy, peaceful, and enriching time. And we have the assurance that, rather than spending too much on those who do not need it, through our family's gifts we are helping those who do."

Well, we're trying to move in that direction. A way to start might be deciding to spend at least as much on others as you do on yourselves. Take a tage off the tree downstairs, to and provide a present for a child from the Shaw neighborhood or Columbia Road or Marie Reed Learning Center; contribute to our Christmas offering which will all go to outreach. Put a little something in the kettles outside the supermarkets, and maybe find someone to help a bit, even anonymously!

And while we are attentive to charity at Christmas, we shouldn't stop there, but be concerned all year long for justice, and work to change conditions and policies so that charity is not as necessary. And in our own families, to realize that there are things far more important than "things".

I still miss the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. I still have a couple of old panels that go this way: A gleeful Calvin is walking through the woods saying to Hobbes: "Yep, Christmas is just around the corner, and what better way to celebrate a religious holiday that with a month of frenzied consumerism!" Hobbes responds, "I'm surprised other religions haven't picked up on that." And Calvin concludes, "Getting loads of loot is a very spiritual experience for me."

But then, in a subsequent strip, Calvin says, "I'm writing my Christmas list, Hobbes! Should I add anything for you?"
"Hmm...I can't think of anything."
"Nothing?! You don't want anything at ALL?!?"
"I've got a good home, and a best friend. What more could a tiger want?"
"It must be sad being a species with so little imagination."

Well, not at all! It takes a great deal of imagination, and perception, and faith to see what is really important, about our lives, about our world, about this season, and that isn’t sad at all. As one card I received says, "The Good news of Christmas is not who comes down the chimney, but who came down from heaven." The one heralded by that creatively maladjusted prophet coming out of the desert in his hair shirt, proclaiming what turns out to be very good news indeed, if we’re ready for it. “The one who is more powerful than I is coming....I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” And then, you, too, can be creatively maladjusted!