Treasure, not Trash

3 Advent, Year C

December 15, 2013

Isaiah 35: 1-10

 

Recently I took my kids to the Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore.  I’m probably not alone in my experience that museums are not always the best setting for young kids.  Often there is some resistance to going at all, and once there, attention spans can run pretty short.  Discussions about artistic intent and meaning tend to a hard sell.  Most often, museums produce anxiety, with my constant refrains of “NO TOUCHING!” “NO RUNNING!” “NOT SO CLOSE!” and their constant refrains of “Can we go now?” “Can I have a snack?” “I’m tired!”

So the Visionary Art Museum was a complete surprise.  As soon as the kids saw the building they were hooked.  This strangely shaped place, covered with mirrored chunks of glass was like something from another world.  We walked on sidewalks decorated with murals and under a balcony transformed into a giant bird’s nest.  Inside we met Fifi, the 15 foot pink poodle made for a kinetic sculpture race.  We saw an old wood paneled station wagon glowing with its covering of blue glass bottles.  And of course, who could forget the giant bra ball.  It was incredibly cool to get so close to these fantastical structures and see that they were made largely from junk.  Trash bags, broken glass, shredded tires, and old clothes took on new life. 

I was loving what I was seeing, and so were the kids, but it might not have gotten much deeper than a very cool and artistically inspiring and surprisingly successful museum trip if it hadn’t been for one piece of art that caught my attention.  In the permanent collection, there was a red, plush throne glittering with bottle caps.  I got closer and saw that it was titled “Always Remember You Are the Child of King”.  We were whooshing through so I didn’t get the chance to read beyond the title.  So I don’t know whether the artist was intending to refer to a tribal sort of king or Martin Luther King or God.  But my mind went straight to the idea of that throne being a reminder of our identity as children of God.  That it was made out of what some might consider trash seemed like the perfect connection.  Just as all of the trash we had been seeing had been transformed and made full of meaning and purpose and beauty in in the hands of a loving and creative artist, each of us -- no matter how we look or feel about ourselves, no matter where we live or how much money we make, no matter our job or our worldly success – each of us are unique, worthy, beloved and capable of transformation in the hands of our loving Creator.

I was so struck by the throne that I went home and started researching the artist and the piece.  I never did figure out which “King” the throne was referencing; though I learned that the piece was included in a museum retrospective on race and culture, so it may have referred to Martin Luther King.  But I learned about Gregory Warmack, the artist.  He was a completely self-taught artist who was making jewelry and selling it on the street until he was shot during a mugging and almost died.  When he came out of his coma, he had a spiritual reawakening.  He began to make bigger, more intentional art and he renamed himself Mr. Imagination.  When he picked up objects he could see them in a way ordinary people couldn’t, or wouldn’t.  Someone else’s trash become a transcendent object, full of spiritual possibility.  And he believed the same transcendence was possible for people.  He wasn’t just a guy picking up trash.  He was a caretaker of the earth.  The people around him weren’t just muddling through their lives, they were artists of life: “We can all do something creative,” he reassured them.  Mr. Imagination believed both objects and people were in process, and that in the process was joy and life, and he was certain that the process would lead to something new and interesting.  

Mr. Imagination was not just an artist and a fascinating person, but a visionary in the way he viewed and transformed the world around him and in the way he invited people around him to do the same.

I think that is the outlook we are all called to have in our readings today.

The prophet Isaiah paints a picture of incredible change and promise.  The desert will be completely transformed – full of streams and flowers – and a holy highway will run through it that will lead God’s people safely back again to their Creator.  The people will be transformed as well: the eyes of the blind will be opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped, the lame will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.  “Everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”

But this message went out to an unlikely audience.  This was Isaiah’s prophecy to the people in exile in Babylon.  Their cities had been incinerated, their temple destroyed.  Their king was blinded and their sons killed in battle.  For decades, the people to whom Isaiah spoke had been living in captivity and poverty.  And it was to these people, living in fear and hopelessness for 70 years, that the prophet gave these impossible promises of transformation and hope.  It is to these people that Isaiah promised a future.

This piece of Isaiah was written in 2700 years ago, but the promises are just as stirring and attractive today.  The world is still full of violence and dire poverty.  And while you and I may not be in exile per se, we are just as hungry for transformation.  We each have our own experiences of desert and wilderness, whether that is a lost job, or loneliness, or depression, or a broken body, or a lost loved one, or a torn-apart family, or love gone dry, or disappointment, or a broken heart.  Life can feel like a desert, a wilderness – hopeless and unproductive. 

    The truth is that we live in the in-between time, and that becomes especially obvious during the Advent season.  During these weeks we look back and hear the old promises.  We are told that these promises are fulfilled in Jesus, Emanuel, God with us.  And then we look around and see how far away those promises still seem.  They are somewhere off in the happily-ever-after future.  And so we can’t help but wonder, what’s up, God?  Why are we still sighing, still aching, still longing?

    I’m pretty sure John the Baptist was wondering the same thing.  We see him in our Gospel this morning and it looks like this man who has been confidently pointing to Jesus for his whole crazy, itinerant preacher career is starting to doubt his own message.  He sits in prison, weary and filthy and about to lose his head on a platter to Herod’s wife.  And he wonders why the promises haven’t been fulfilled yet.  John had been hoping for a Messiah that would knock the political world on its head, restore the righteous and overturn the wicked.  “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” John asks.  In other words, “What’s up, Jesus?”  And Jesus sends John’s disciples back with a message for John about what Jesus is up to that points directly back to these promises from Isaiah: “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”  Jesus is who John expected and prepared the way for, but not in the way John expected.  Jesus did not come to smite and condemn, but to restore.  Jesus invites John to catch a glimpse of the Kingdom of God drawing near even in the midst of the unfinished and disappointing world around him. 

That is where that visionary piece comes in, for the exiles in Babylon and for John wasting away in prison and for us in whatever desert we are facing.  Isaiah invites us to look around us and see not the arid and barren sand but a world that can be restored and renewed in some way that we might never have considered.  To feel not the scorching heat but the love and purpose of God for us and for each person on earth.  To dwell less on how things are than what they might one day be.

Being a visionary means looking out at the world and knowing that our God is so big and so full of love that no wilderness is too wild, no desert too dry, no life too damaged, no circumstance too hopeless for God to be smack dab in the middle of it.  But it can’t stop there.  Part of what we do during Advent is watch and wait and prepare for the promises to be fulfilled.  But being a visionary means that we also go out into the world and become part of the fulfillment of the promise, doing our part to incarnate God in our words and hands and feet and hearts.  Doing our part to show the world Emmanuel, God with us, and bring about the world’s transformation.

So be a visionary!  Find a new way to look at a dry place in your life or in your piece of the world.  Imagine what could be and start living towards that promise!