Third Advent
Luke 3:7-18; Philippians 4:4-7; Zephaniah 3:14-20
I have had a beard for more than half of my life and for at least half of the other half I couldn't have grown one even if I wanted to. I grew a beard my senior year in college for a play I was in, a Greek tragedy. At the time beards were not very common, at least not in Minnesota where I went to seminary after graduating from college. The summer after we were married, while we were still both graduate students, Chris and I did a lot of supply preaching around southern Minnesota, filling in on Sundays for vacationing pastors of rural churches. Some of the young people were not too sure what to make of the guest preacher with the beard although they were probably even more confused by the woman who took the pulpit since at that time there were less then 100 women pastors in the entire Lutheran church in America. I remember hearing of one little girl who was quick to make her own order out of the unfamiliar when I preached with my beard on one Sunday and then Pastor Chris preached the next. She was heard to explain to her mother that the woman in the pulpit must be Mary because Jesus had been there the previous week. A beard can cause people to make assumptions that may not be true. This past Friday I encountered another false assumption that Chris had been predicting was coming my way as my beard has begun to grey. Maybe it was also the fact that I was wearing a red sweater, at any rate, I was in the toy aisle of a local store a bit distracted by my shopping list when I heard a very young gasp of surprise. I looked up to see a very young little girl who had just rounded the corner of the aisle standing there with her eyes as wide as could be, one hand to her mouth and the other pointing in my direction. I immediately turned and looked behind me to see what had startled her, there was nothing there. I looked back at her as her pointing hand fell to her side and a most amazing smile filled her face, then she turned, glanced back over her shoulder at me one more time and disappeared around the corner of the aisle. The Christmas music was playing over the store loudspeaker system, so I couldn't hear exactly what was being said in the next aisle but I did hear an excited young voice talking followed by some rather loud shushing sounds. I finished making my toy selection and started up the aisle just as the same little girl appeared around the corner of the aisle pulling on the coat of a young woman carrying a baby. When she saw me the little girl turned to her mother and said, "See, I told you he shops here. Santa Claus, right?" The mother quickly said, "Shhhh, that's enough." She looked at me, rolled her eyes and gave me an apologetic smile. I smiled back and pulled in my stomach.
One of the basic characteristics of the Advent season, or as it is known to most of the general population, the "shopping days before Christmas", is a sense of anticipation. There is the anticipation of gatherings, of gifts, of greetings from unexpected people. At least, in that sense, the season of Advent even in secular terms, is about waiting and preparing. We expect that there will be corners we turn to find the unexpected, that is one definition of Advent. Of course the figure that drives most of our anticipation is that of a bearded man dressed against the weather in fur and leather bearing gifts of anything you can imagine. His image and name mark the season for many with focus and direction.
But there is another figure who defines this season for those of us who worship each Sunday in Advent. He was the center of our lesson last week and again today. He also is bearded and peculiarly dressed. Were he to inspire our Christmas greeting cards, however, they would read something like: "Greetings from our house to yours. Our thoughts of you at this time of year are best expressed in the words of John the Baptist, 'You brood of vipers' The axe is laid to the root of the trees and every tree that does not bear good fruit will be thrown into the fire. Merry Christmas."
John is not a popular figure sculpted in Christmas ceramics or stuck on Hallmark cards. Yet all four Gospels have him here, at the beginning of the Christmas story, as if to say you cannot meet Jesus until you meet John. You cannot meet Emmanuel, God with us, until John tells you why we so desperately need God. The Advent lessons with John the Baptist just don't seem to fit with our modern images of Christmas preparation. He certainly would not be the party guy for a holiday gathering. His message was certainly not what we would call a Christmas message. We want to believe that "Christmas brings out the best in us". We want to believe what some have called the Charles Dickens or "Christmas Carol" gospel. We like to think of ourselves as not unlike Dickens' main character, Ebenezer Scrooge. That down deep within us we are people who have had cheerful childhoods which only need to be recaptured at Christmas time. Like Scrooge, we want to believe, we are, despite our gruff, materialistic, calloused, exteriors, really down deep, charming and sensitive people awaiting to be rediscovered at Christmas. We strive to provide ideal happy moments for our children so they will have similar cheerful childhoods to look back on. We plan and calculate the meaning of Christmas that we want each Christmas to have and if the plans are thwarted we declare the Christmas spoiled or lost and turn to happier memories, that we will try to recover "next year". We let the ghosts of Christmases remembered guide us in seeking the happiness we expect to find. In other words, we rejoice in our goodness. We celebrate our ability to find joy and happiness in the giving and sharing and caring gestures that define this season.
The truth is that good people do not need John the Baptist. Basically good people don't need God to come to Bethlehem. Basically good people believe that if they are appealed to positively enough, they are capable of saving themselves. Capable of finding for themselves the true meaning of life and the just and proper way to live. We want to believe that we are good people loved by God because we do so many good things and try so hard to do the right things. Christmas brings out the best in us and so we want to believe that we can make God love us and reward us for our faithfulness or good deeds or our right thinking and our concern for others. But then comes John the Baptist, the voice of reality.
John challenges us with a call to repentance, a call to turn around. I suspect we all can name someone who needs to turn their life around, but John speaks directly to each of us. "Do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor.'" John sees no special privilege or status just because our family has always belonged to the church, or just because we tithe or we teach Sunday school. No matter how "good" we try to be, none of us are indispensable to God. John looks around and declares that God can raise up people out of the stones if he wants to. John would look at our Christmas celebrations and declare that anyone can sing a Christmas song. We all have moments of kindness and generosity. The real issue according to the Baptist is the ways we try to hide our sin. Church committees are filled with people with great ideas and expectations for others . Churches are filled with members who know what the church should do for them. Society finds people again and again who are great critics of others while hiding their own lack of commitment. We pass laws for others . We sue our neighbor to shift the responsibility for our actions or inaction to someone else. It takes no great moral character or spiritual gift to sing "Silent Night, Holy Night". The real question is what happens the next day. What do we do? Action is at the core of John's message. Repentance is not just good intentions. To admit our mistakes and turn in a new direction. To confess our wrongs and as forgiven people of God act with grace, love and hope.
Today used to be known as Gaudete Sunday. It celebrated the first words of our second lesson for today, "rejoice", "gaudete" in Latin. The third Sunday of Advent is Joy Sunday. We light a different colored candle on the Advent wreath. Joy is what Christmas is all about. Not happiness but joy. Advent is the quest for joy. It may sound strange, but John the Baptist pointed the way. Pointed to the extremes of life, of truth and deception. John pointed the way to true joy through God's grace to honestly see ourselves. Grace to know we cannot save ourselves. Grace to want God's presence. A God who does not wait for us to repent or be good enough but comes to a world lost in itself. Advent is about the God who comes even when we are still separated from others by race, sex, religion or our own anger or hurts. John announces God's coming to those who are not sure what they are waiting for, those who have not yet turned the corner: Like the children named on our Angel tree; the homeless fed and sheltered at PADS; the hungry reached through our offerings; the shut-in receiving communion from the pastor; the sick and troubled named on our prayer list.
Advent is waiting for the presence. Listen closely, waiting for the presence. Most people think we are talking about gifts, but the truth is found not in presents, spelled with a "t" but presence spelled with a "c". God with us. God coming to us just around the corner. So the crowds went out to see John. They lined up, not with their requests for gifts and presents but to ask their questions, which always came down to the basic, "What then should we do?" John's answer was nothing all that surprising. Just the honest truth. John told the crowds to share their resources, feed the hungry. He told the government employees to act fairly and do justice. He told the soldiers to protect and guard against violence and destruction. John declared that the decisive moment was soon to be at hand when that which is good and valued will be separated from all that is without value, like wheat from the chaff, he said. There are some who hear these words with fear and trembling. There have been those who preached a warning each Advent with threats of judgment and punishment for failure to be perfect. There are those who want to focus on the "naughty and the nice."
But the good news this morning is that there are surprises around every corner. The expectation was for a fire that would destroy but instead the Spirit came not as a consuming fire but as a refining flame that burned to clean and purify. We sin. I sin. Try as we might to be the best we can, to do the best we can, we fail, we make mistakes, worse yet, we sin. We do those things that separate us from others and our God. John calls upon us to face the truth about ourselves and our God. There are those who are going to look at us and not see much to be excited about, but John says God sees the seeds of the kingdom growing within us. Just as the wheat, separated from the chaff, carries the promise of growth, strength and food for the morrow, so each of us baptized by water and the Spirit carry within us the gifts that God has bestowed. The grace to be and do so much more.
It was only for a moment, but there was that instant when a little girl saw in me the vision of God's own son. There was a time when I represented the hope and promise of her wildest dreams being fulfilled. It was nothing I did. It was a moment of grace that caused young eyes to see beyond the reality of the moment. That is what the Spirit can do. Lift our eyes beyond this moment. Enable us in this Advent season to once again see how the promise fulfilled can change our lives. Change the way we see the world. Change the way we live.
What began as a warning to a "brood of vipers" became exhortations that "proclaimed good news to the people." Turn around, John said. Christmas is coming, again.
Amen