Trinity Church in the City of Boston

The Rev. Morgan S. Allen

December 11, 2022

III Advent, Matthew 11:2-11

 

 

Come Holy Spirit, and enkindle in the hearts of your faithful, the fire of your Love.  Amen.

 

 

Even when the content proves difficult to hear, the messages of Jesus and John usually follow a simple form: not that, but this.  In a related structure, today’s sermon will alternate between a relevant illustration and an exegesis of this week’s assigned Gospel, without directive stitching between the two – ginning a little mystery about where we are going and making room for your ideas and connections.  As the sermon reaches its conclusions, we will consider our options for what meaning we have made; offer a not-that-but-this claim worth carrying out the door; and then discover what happens when we sew together the seemingly clashing threads.

 

Here is the relevant illustration:

 

One fall evening three decades ago,[i] MTV traded Jon Bon Jovi’s Aqua-Net and neon spandex for the unwashed tangle and angsty flannel of a three-piece band from Aberdeen, Washington [that sentence likely includes the Trinity Church pulpit debut of several vocabulary words].  That swap arrived with a speed and cultural force recalling The Beatles’ “Love Me Do,” the opening report of the British Invasion some thirty years before.  The David Geffen Company released Nirvana’s second album, Nevermind, on September 24, 1991, just one week after Guns N’ Roses’ long-awaited Use Your Illusion albums finally hit store shelves.[ii]  Though Use Your Illusion[s] I and II sold as many as 500,000 copies[iii] in their first two hours on the market (as one clear locator of this moment in time, those sales included more cassettes than any other format), by Christmas, Nevermind’s opening track – the anthemic “Smells Like Teen Spirit” – had overwhelmed GNR and all comers, forever[iv] altering the trajectory of Top-40 radio.

 

That winter, the suburban kids of my Louisiana hometown started dressing like Shreveport had been annexed as a village of the Pacific Northwest.  Like many, I found myself caught at a perilous intersection with fast-moving social traffic heading in opposing directions.  To clarify one’s identity, a savvy teen had to choose their allegiance, associating either with the emerging Grunge culture and its cousins in socially conscious rap,[v] or staying loyal to the less demanding establishment acts.  An entire moral economy built up around these affinities,[vi] and as a deeply committed devotee of both punk(ish) noise[vii] and the fretboard flair of glam, I longed for a via media, a Metal way [See what I did there?  Instead of “middle,” I said “Metal,” which is a genre of loud music …].

 

 

Nirvana also faced a crossroads, one from their side of the stage.  By January of 1992, Nevermind was selling 300,000 copies every week, and the band’s membership had become globally recognized superstars.  As the threesome began to consider a follow-up album, they realized they could either emphasize their peculiarities and further their anti-commercial inclinations, or they could smooth their rougher edges and turn their popularity into cash.  While becoming one of the cookie-cutter bands they had displaced on the FM dial would inevitably prove more profitable, “selling out” would, of course, cost them their rock-n-roll soul.

 

Into that confessional booth, record producer and authenticity evangelist[viii] Steve Albini sat down at his Illinois studio’s typewriter, and hammered out a letter, pitching his services to Nirvana.

 

 

Here is the exegesis:

 

After last week’s scene[ix] of John preaching repentance at the Jordan riverside, Jesus approaches the wild man for baptism.[x]  The concluding verses of Chapter 3 reveal that “John would have prevented him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’  But Jesus [answered], ‘Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”[xi]  John “consents,” and he baptizes Jesus.[xii]

Following his baptism, remember that Jesus “was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.”[xiii]  Despite the assaults, Jesus overcomes Satan’s lures, and the angels wait on him as he fulfills his fast [xiv]– a fast lasting long enough that the surrounding sociopolitical climate had intensified while he was away.[xv]  When Jesus emerges from the woods, he learns that John has been arrested.  Matthew 4:12 reports, “When Jesus heard [this, the Lord] withdrew to Galilee.”  Despite this withdrawal, Jesus is not running away; he does not retreat from the challenging message that, presumably, got John into trouble in the first place.  Instead, Matthew 4:17 confirms, “From that time Jesus began to proclaim [John’s message:] ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’”

 

In today’s appointment, John – still in prison – hears “what the Messiah [is] doing.”  Other than a passing, Chapter 9 reference to John’s followers,[xvi] this is the first time we have encountered John since that earlier word of his arrest.

 

These parallel “hearings” – Jesus’ hearing of John’s imprisonment back in Chapter 4, and John’s hearing of Jesus’ ministry in Chapter 11 – amplify the distances between the two men.  Unlike the tale of Zechariah and Elizabeth that begins the Gospel of Luke,[xvii] Matthew opens with a genealogy of Jesus.[xviii]  Realize, then, Matthew’s narrative offers no testimony to the baby leaping in Elizabeth’s womb or her pregnant cousin Mary’s “Magnificat.”[xix]  While in Luke family binds Jesus and John, in Matthew, prophesy binds the two.

 

 

 

… and back to the illustration:

 

Four years before Nevermind crashed the Billboard charts, Steve Albini recorded the sophomore effort of Boston’s “Alternative” pioneers, The Pixies [what a great band!].[xx]  With that album – 1988’s, Surfer Rosa – Albini forged an enduring identity as a producer.  Almost thirty years ago to this day,[xxi] he typed his letter to Nirvana:[xxii]

 

[Dear] Kurt, Dave, and Chris:

 

… Most contemporary engineers and producers see a record as a ‘project,’ and the band as only one element of the project.  Further, they consider the recordings to be a [curated] layering of specific sounds, each of which is under complete control [of the producer] from the moment the note is conceived through the final mix … My approach is exactly the opposite.

 

I consider the band the most important [element in the whole process], as the creative entity [giving rise to its own personality and style, as well as] the social entity that exists 24 hours out of each day.  I do not consider it my place to tell you what to do or how to play.  I’m quite willing to let my opinions be heard (If I think the band is making beautiful progress or a heaving mistake, I [do] consider it part of my job to tell them), but … I like to leave room for accidents and chaos.

 

… I prefer to work on records that aspire to greater things, like originality, personality, and enthusiasm … [and i]f you will come commit yourselves to [these as the foundational tenets of the recording process, then I would love to be involved with you].

 

Making his case for the production gig, Albini (rightly) argued that the corporate-controlled music industry prefers to regurgitate the most profitable sounds.  Rather than recording a band as they actually are – especially if they look and sound novel – “front-office bulletheads” (as Albini called them)[xxiii] want to reshape every band to fit what is selling best in any given moment.[xxiv]  And, in that early winter of 1992, major labels wanted every guitar tone to mimic Kurt Cobain’s Fender Mustang[xxv] … which set Nirvana in an odd predicament: If we sound like we did on our last album, are we being our authentic best, or are we selling out?

 

 

…and back to the exegesis:

 

John sends his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”[xxvi]  At one level, of course, John asks whether Israel’s waiting has finally reached its fulfillment – if Jesus is the promised Christ about whom John prophesied at the Jordan.  But he also asks more than that.  Maybe John grew up in a Southern home, because he seems to believe that asking for exactly what he needs would be rude [that’s self-effacing humor]: John wants Jesus to lead an insurrection that breaks him out of prison![xxvii]

 

Hey, man, are you Messiah enough to bust me out of here, or are you not?

Are you the one who is to come – as in, coming to get me – or am I stuck in this joint?

 

 

For his part, Jesus understands John at both levels.  He instructs the Baptist’s followers to go and tell John what they “hear and see: 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.”[xxviii]  That is, “take no offense at me,”[xxix] but I’m not that kind of Messiah … and I’m not coming to get you.

 

Despite this, Jesus wants the crowds to be clear that his decision against mounting [an AC/DC[xxx]- or Thin-Lizzy[xxxi]-styled] Jailbreak is not a judgement of John.  Jesus declares, “Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist.”[xxxii]  See Jesus’ decision is not about who John is, but about who Jesus is.  Therefore, the same principles of humility governing Jesus’ behavior also conform Jesus’ idea of John’s status (of everyone’s status), prompting the final pronouncement, “yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than him.”[xxxiii]

 

So, having pulled these two threads to a roughly equal length, this sermon form now wants us to hem a tidy not-that-but-this conclusion.  Here are two options:

 

In one bit of homiletical embroidery, we can tighten the Nirvana illustration and point to the band’s 1994, Albini-stewarded release as a perfected example of staying true to one’s identity, of not selling out … you know, Nirvana like John the Baptist and Jesus [that’s a joke; see, it’s funny because Nirvana really wasn’t at all like either John the Baptist or Jesus].  But Nirvana’s self-righteousness felt performative even then, and while the album they recorded turned out fine, I do not believe anyone’s rock-n-roll or Christian salvation can be set upon it.[xxxiv]

 

One the other hand, we could tug the scriptural thread and tie together the prophetic gifts of John and Jesus, remembering it’s in Matthew that Herod serves John’s head on a platter.[xxxv]  In this pulpit stitchery, we propose that both prophets knew what was coming for themselves, and they accepted their fates without either reluctance or remainder, modeling the perfected fidelity we should aspire.  But the text tells a different story – John does flinch, and if Jesus does not fully recoil, he certainly grieves the inevitability of his death as it approaches.[xxxvi]

 

No, I believe our not-that-but-this claim worth carrying out the door cautions us against preferring a false God who fixes, rather than the faithful God who accompanies.  See, whatever heroism Nirvana could deliver to the culture would have been what any of us can offer – their unaffected selves – shared in settings as intimate as an earphone and contributed without contriving for any specific outcome.[xxxvii]  Likewise, while John wants a problem-solving Messiah, Jesus instead offers love and understanding.  In this reading, the prophets’ mortal reluctances enrich their connections to one another and with us who inherit their faith.

 

 

 

Finally, we sew together the sermon’s seemingly clashing threads and stretch that new fabric:

 

Returning to Albini’s letter, let us revoice it as an epistle from the Christ who has come very near [insert here a punchline about serving Albini’s ego by suggesting his is the voice of God!].  Imagine the High and Holy One hammering away on heaven’s Hermes 3000, nurturing our collective stewardship of Beloved Community and pitching the good Lord’s services:

 

            Dear Trinity Church,

 

… Most contemporary engineers and producers see Church as a ‘project,’ and each of you as only one element of it, all under complete control of the Creator from the conceptual moment through the final mix … My approach is exactly the opposite.

 

I consider you the most important element in the whole process of being Beloved Community, as the creative collective giving rise to the personality and style of Trinity Church within these walls, as well as that social entity existing beyond Copley Square.  I do not consider it my place to tell you what to do or how to play.  I’m quite willing to let my opinions be heard (If I think you are making beautiful progress or a heaving mistake, I do consider it part of my job to tell you), but … I like to leave room for accidents and even a little chaos.

 

… I prefer to work with congregations that aspire to greater things, like originality, personality, and enthusiasm … and if you will come commit yourselves to these as the foundational tenets of building Beloved Community, then I would love to be involved with you.[xxxviii]

 

That we would join in this companioning work of Beloved Community,

I pray with gladness and singleness of heart;

Amen.