I got a Christmas card the other day. The picture on the cover, in shades of grey and violet was of a dead tree, lying on its side, the ax still sunk deep into the heart of its trunk. In the background was a desolate, dry landscape punctuated only by the occasional fire. Sheepishly opening the card the words jumped off the page, "You brood of vipers. Flee now from the wrath to come." Now someone is bound to ask me following the service today, "was that true, you know that stuff about the card?" And I will answer as I sometimes do, "Well I used a little poetic license." No it's not true but this is...
At the beginning of this week I opened a card. The background was totally black and the foreground was a cross with an emaciated, tortured Jesus hung on it. It was not the card I expected to see. It was from World Relief, a refugee organization. I scratched a note on the envelop about the questionable taste of such a Christmas card and passed it along to Doug. But I remembered it and it bothered me.
And this is true...
Last year we got the Advent calendars to distribute to the kids.
And because I am like this, I opened up all the windows and read
all the notes on the back. Most of the windows directed us to
think of some area of hurt in the world. The message for Dec.
24th was to remember a young couple in Peru who had just lost
a baby, succumbing to hunger. It didn't seem like a very Christmassy
message to me. We chose not to pass out the Advent calendars last
year but I wonder if that was a good decision. I struggle. Perhaps
these are our modern day John the Baptist messengers. Perhaps
these are the voices that call us to account. Today is "joy"
Sunday but we're stuck with John the Baptist. Somehow it seems
we're not going to get to Jesus without going through John the
Baptist. And for all that his words say, the lesson still ends
"So, with many exhortations, he proclaimed the good news
to the people." Good news? There is no figure quite like
John on the gospel landscape. John is different...a "throw-back"
to another time. John was the last of his kind, the end of the
line of ancient Hebrew prophets. Like Jeremiah, John has fire
in his bones. Like Isaiah, John would warm himself at the fire
that consumes the people's idols. Like a comet, John blazes out
of the wilderness with words that set the world on fire...to prepare
the way of the Lord.
John compels us to follow him into a stark and strange landscape, a place of abandonment, of emptiness waiting to be filled, nakedness, waiting to be clothed...by the One who is to come. The figure of John the Baptist is so strongly drawn, so fierce and fiery that it is perhaps not surprising that the people wondered if John might be the Christ. But John was not a Savior. John's task was to call us to acknowledge a longing so deep that only God can fill it. Emptiness cannot deliver, but it can open us up to receive the One who can! John's preaching strips the people down as furniture is stripped of its old finish. His message creates a moment of truth and dissolves any illusion of innocence before God-any illusion of our own goodness whatsoever. Before the promised Messiah can be received as good news, the crowds must first perceive their need for the Messiah. Only by relinquishing any illusion that we are worthy does the gospel become good news.
Our modern day John the Baptist voices, like the World Relief Card and the Advent Calendar call us to account, remind us that the world is not as it should be. Our greed, our prejudices, our angers still hold sway in our lives and we need to change our ways. We need to acknowledge that we do not save ourselves but we trust in the savior who does. Once we've encountered the Baptist's voice a superficial, sentimental joyousness will not do. Silver bells and chestnuts roasting on an open fire may give a warm feeling but they just don't manage to address the real emptiness's and longings of our lives. But there is one who can and does. In the last scene of the movie "The Chosen" there is a story from the Talmud about a king who has a son who has gone astray from his father. The king sends word to his son, "Return to your Father." "I cannot," answers the son. Then the king sends a messenger to say, "Return as far as you can, and I will come to meet you the rest of the way." This is "the good news of God's love. We have come as far as we can and it's not enough. God has come the rest of the way in the babe born in Bethlehem's manger.
We hear the message of that love again today in the reading from Zephaniah. "The Lord, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival." The passion of such love is frightening. God tells us, "I have graven you on the palms of my hands!" (Is 49:16). "The mountains may depart, the hills be removed; but my steadfast love shall not depart from you" (Is 54:10). "When you call, I will answer; when you cry, I will say, 'Here I am'" (Is 58:9). God's love affair with humanity is "a romance that was doomed from the beginning and destined to last forever." We flee from such love. We hide.We quarrel over it, but we do not accept it. We are embarrassed by our woundedness, our sinfulness. Yet we cannot receive God's promises, if we stand outside the door God holds open for us. The love we yearn for is given, unearned and undeserved. The Kingdom God prepares for us lies waiting until our need is great enough to receive it as a gift.
We've always been reluctant to believe God's persistent love for us because we are prone to forget that unworthy as we may be, "beauty is in the eyes of the Beholder." God, who believes in us, looks at us and loves what he sees. We are precious in God's sight. We are the object of God's desire. But we are only ready to accept that love when we are ready to admit our need. The author, Tom Long imagines two nuclear scientists leaving Los Alamos Nuclear testing site in the 1940's full of heady enthusiasm for their massive discoveries in nuclear physics. They happen to walk past a little church. The door is open and from the inside of the church they hear a voice saying," Come to me all you who are heavy laden and I will give you rest." They chuckle to themselves. How quaint. What in the world does such archaic language, such an outdated message have to do with the demands and discoveries of the modern world? A decade or so later, the two scientists happen to walk by the same church. Now, their great nuclear discoveries seem somewhat different with the world living under the threat of the devastating mushroom cloud. They hear the same words from the church, "Come to me all you who are heavy laden and I will give you rest." Now to at least one of the scientists, these words, which were previously scorned, are the words of life. What has changed? Not the message. The readiness of the hearers has changed and now they have heard.
Perhaps the tough words of John the Baptist,
calling us to forsake a dying world, to change, to come toward
the light are words that we are at last, having tried so many
other messiahs and found them wanting, ready to hear. Perhaps
we are ready to turn toward God so that God can meet us the rest
of the way.
Amen.