“The Boy Who Wanted to go Back”

Mark 1:1-8

Billy wasn’t like other boys. He knew that, when he and his cousins would get together for family gatherings. While his dad, and his brothers and sisters would sit and talk about the “good old days,” his cocusins would sit uncomfortably, rolling their eyes or bumping one another, until the adults would suggest, “Why don’t you go play outside?” But Billy would stay right there, listening to their stories about “how it used to be,” and wishing it could be like that still. “It’s not like when I was a kid,” his father would say, and then he and the others would reminisce about what it was like to go out in the morning, when the air was crisp and fresh, to get a bucket of water or go to the bathroom. They’d laugh about tipping over outhouses, and trying to ride the plough horses. Back then there were fields to run in, and you could play hookey from school to go fishing. Of course, if it was January or February, there was always snow on the ground, “deep snow,” his dad would add, “up to your waist.” “Back when I was a boy,” his dad said, “people knew what they believed, and they knew how to treat one another.” And they all added, each their own brush strokes, painting a picture the family sitting around the table, eating meals together – something Billy rarely got to do – as they talked about good and wholesome things.

In school, Billy loved history class. He loved reading about how things were. It seemed so much better than “now.” “Now” was such a hard place in which to live. There was too much homework. Too much school, period. Too many things to try to understand. Everything was so complicated. Terrible things happening in places whose names you couldn’t even pronounce. Terrible things happening, “almost in your backyard,” as his dad would say. It was those “terrible things” that seemed to fill their family’s conversations around the dinner table, when his family did get a chance to eat together.

Billy often dreamt that he was a pioneer on the prairie, or a cowboy, fighting Indians. More often, he dreamt he was living back when his dad was a boy, imagining what that might be like. Sometimes he daydreamed about these things in a way that almost made them seem real to him. He would think he was at the fishing hole with his toes dangling in an icy pond, or camping on the prairie, with the sun warm on his face and the smell of rich, soft earth beneath him. He would feel how good it was, and a smile would come to his face. Then the teacher would call his name, or someone would bump him, and he would be back in the unpleasant “now” again. He would sigh a very deep sigh. And wish with all his might that he could go back.

One day, Billy woke to the sound of sleet beating on the window, and the sight of a dismal December sky, gray and cold as old snow. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes to discover that everything was, indeed, different. His room was cold and dark. He reached for the light switch, but there was only the stub of a candle on his bed-side stand. The wind whistled through the thin, uninsulated walls of his bedroom, causing the window drapes to dance. He looked out a frosted window onto an unpaved street, where people huddled against the cold, seeking shelter against the wind, and from sleet falling like icy daggers from the cheerless skies. A man hunched in a doorway without mittens or a jacket. A coal vendor arguing loudly with a woman who seemed on the verge of tears, while his old gray mare shivered, bracing itself against the wind.

He stepped back to look at his own room. The furniture was sparse – hardly a book, let alone a toy, was to be seen. The walls were unpainted and gray as the sky. He moved toward the chair to put on his clothes, gathered in a frozen pile on the seat. He shivered from the cold; his back ached from the uncomfortably thin mattress. Putting on his clothes was like slipping on ice, while his shoes – only one pair were apparent in the room – were stiff and hurt his feet. He thought about the rest of his day – hauling in a load of coal for the furnace, trudging through the frozen muck to a one-room schoolhouse, with only a small coal heater to put some warmth in the room, trying to write with fingers that were icy-cold, under the tutelage of a teacher who had to somehow teach fifteen children of differing ages at the same time.

“Billy.” The suddenness of his mother’s voice shattered his dream. “Billy, wake up! You’ll be late for school.”

Billy lay in his bed just one moment longer. Long enough to think about this dream, which seemed so real. Long enough to think about the past, and wonder why it holds such a strong appeal for us. Perhaps it is simply because it is past – done – and that makes it less frightening than an unwritten and unsettled future, so full of possibilities. All-in-all, the “good old days” were not so much different than now: there is good and there is evil; there are acts of nobility and acts of great avarice; for the human heart, from one age to another, has not changed a great deal.

As John the Baptizer stood on the banks of the Jordan River, he called people back to their past – to remember their crossing of the Jordan River so many years ago, holding a promise, into a land of hope. John called them to repentance – not to reenter that past, but to start again from there, that they might enter into the present in a new way. Even as he called them back, he noted that God’s Messiah was already among them, “one who will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” It was a play on words – a ritual bath remembering their past, for an immersion into the breaking-in kingdom of God.

Perhaps the best place for the past is where it has taken up residence – in the past, and therefore in the presence of God, who holds all things in his hands. The best place for us is in the present – this moment that God has given into our care – this unsettled, unwritten, frightening moment, so full of possibility. It is into this day that God has called us – into this moment where God’s reign is, in fact, present. It is this day that God has given us in which we may live, enjoy, celebrate, refrain from evil and do some good.

At least, in that sudden moment of realization, when everything for one moment becomes crystal clear, between dull sleep and the bright morning of self-awareness, that is what Billy finally concluded. Then he got up, and got on his nice, warm clothes, slipped on his tennis shoes, went down to breakfast, got on the bus, and went off to school.