Not Him Again!

Scriptures: Isaiah 11: 1-10, Romans 15: 4-13-14, Matthew 3: 1-12

I don’t know how it is for you, but, for me, the most anxious and busy time of the Christmas season is the earliest part. I am one of those people who likes to get Christmas shopping done early, we have three family birthdays right around Thanksgiving, this year we had house guests, and I had a lot of preparation to do for church! The reason I like to get an early start on the shopping and decorating is so that when Christmas actually comes I can have the presence of mind and the spirit to pay attention to the beautiful inspiration of the season. So, typically for me the first couple of weeks are have kind of frantic but not in a bad way. And, as in other years, by the 2nd Sunday of Advent, I do have a lot of things done; I’m feeling pretty ready and in good spirits for the season.

And then he shows up. The Grinch, the scrooge, the uninvited guest who pops in every year reminding me of just how unready I am for Christmas. I am talking, of course, about John the Baptist. In the lectionary you cannot get to Christmas without going through John the Baptist. Last week, on the 1st Sunday in Advent we were assigned the Apocalypse, and this Sunday is always John the Baptist. Only in church do you have to go through the Apocalypse and repentance on the way to Christmas! I marvel every year that after two weeks of that, people come back the 3rd week of Advent! Oh, a preacher could ignore him; could take the Isaiah text to preach on. But I think he would still be there and, like a 1st Century Jewish Jacob Marley, he would haunt us. This specter in a scratchy camel cloak with locust and honey stains all over it has a message for us and I don’t think we can shut him up or shut him out as much as we may want to. Because in order for Christmas to be all that it can, in order for it to be all that we need it to be, John’s message, shouted at us over centuries from the bank of the river, is the message that we need to hear. We will miss something of Christmas if we do not listen.

The message is repentance; John calls us to take a hard look at our lives and turn aside from those things which hurt and harm. Now when he said: “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” , I’m sure he was only talking to the Pharisees and Sadducee s, not us….he might very well have been addressing was their spiritual pride since these two groups had little else in common and would normally not be seen in the same place. Anyway, he told them ‘Don’t think you’re so special because you are children of Abraham; God can make children of Abraham out of rocks.’ Maybe some of his harsher words were aimed at these religious professionals, but he called everyone to repentance. And he warned that it might not be easy. Unless you find no fault with yourself and your life is without blame, real repentance will cause you some pain.

In a book called “Amazing Grace, a Vocabulary of Faith” by Kathleen Norris, she tells of the time when she was holding a writing class in North Dakota for school children. In the class was a little boy who, in response to an assignment, turned in a poem called “The Monster Who Was Sorry”. He began the poem by admitting that he hates it when his father yells at him; in the poem his response is to throw his sister down the stairs, wreck his room, and finally, to wreck the whole town. The poem concludes: “then I sit in my messy house and say to myself, ‘I shouldn’t have done all that.’ Morris’ comment on the poem: “ ‘My messy house’ says it all. With more honesty than most adults could have mustered, the boy made a metaphor for himself that admitted the depth of his rage and also gave him a way out.” (p.70) The way out, of course, is repentance, turning around, turning aside, and changing the heart.

The Baptist wants us to take a look at our own messy houses and recognize the ways in which we have been the creators of some of the mess. We have all written stories for ourselves of rage, bitterness, apathy, and self involvement. But with grace we can, and John knows we can, bear the sting of saying to ourselves: “I shouldn’t have done all that.”

Judging ourselves is hard enough. But the judgment John is talking about might go beyond that. I’m not personally too keen on that unquenchable fire of his….but, you know what? The size of the crowds and his following makes me think that maybe John’s message was not so harsh. In my experience people would not be likely to line up on the banks of the river to be told that they are bound for hell. And if you read the Bible with an eye for it you will notice that fire has a lot of purposes, none of which has to do with punishment. Moses heard the voice of God coming from a bush that was on fire. The people of Israel were guided through the wilderness after they escaped from Egypt by a pillar of fire. Remember that when Moses was up on the mountain talking to God about the rules, which we know as the 10 Commandments, the people saw fire on the top of the mountain. The Holy Spirit is portrayed as a tongue of fire. The stars are on fire; recall the Star of Bethlehem, and the Advent candle flames grow in number as we get nearer to the Birth.

It appears that the fire of God is not a fire which that burns, and hurts, and kills. Godly fire is the kind which speaks to us, guides us, instructs us, and saves us. This fire of John’s is not a fire of destruction, it is a fire of transformation. It’s a fire which burns away the the parts of ourselves that we know, in our honest moments, we need to leave behind. Chaff, as I’m sure most of you know, is the dry scaly casing of a grain. It isn’t the good part; it isn’t the wheat or a anything that gives nourishment. It’s the part of the grain which has to go for the life giving part to be freed.

We are judged, John says, but we are judged by the same Lord who offers us peace, pardon. And transformation every day of our lives. John is not issuing a command or making a threat. John is offering an invitation. We can refuse, we can run away, we can politely decline to look at those parts of ourselves we do not like. Or we can say, “Here I am; tell me the whole truth about myself, refine me, transform me, baptize me with the holy spirit and with the fire of something new.”

Think of a time when you wanted to confess to another person, one that you really trusted, something about which you felt really bad . Why? Why did you want to confess? The chances are, I think, that it was not because you wanted them to tell you that it was not so bad. The chances are that you wanted them to hear, and to understand, just how bad it really was and to say that they loved you anyway. I’m betting that the chances are about 100% that we all want to know that those who we love will forgive and restore us in spite of the wrong that we do and right we leave undone. What John is announcing is that we can trust God to do that too.

If we can face the prospect of looking at the less respectable parts of ourselves and even bringing them before God; if we can do that, it isn’t because we are confident that our misdeeds will be found to be not so bad after all. We are confident because, even though God knows the depth of our guilt, God loves us anyway. And we can be even more confident in the fiery power of God to create sons and daughters of Abraham out of stones, or out of any one of us, if we will permit it.

Remember that for creation and restoration, God does not need a lot in the way of raw materials. God does not need us to have certificates of merit, an unsullied reputation, or a clear conscience. All God needs for creation, restoration, and rebirth of a son or daughter is a handful of dust that is willing.

The word comes from John; all we need to prepare a way for the coming Christ is to allow ourselves to be known by God. All we need to do to make the paths straight for God is to accept the presence of the holy fire light to illuminate our thoughts about our relationships, about our hearts for the world, to make us see the work that we do, or the work that we refuse to do! We need to consider honestly whether or not we are bearing enough good fruit and get rid of those parts of ourselves that are not producing anything much that is good.

It won’t do, it seems, to just sit in your “messy house”. It won’t even be enough to say “I shouldn’t have done all that.” John the Baptist tells us that we need to clean that house up because it is there, in your very being, in your heart, that the Christ Child will make a home and abide. Real repentence is born of honesty which can sting like a wasp but which will also open the door and allow you to welcome he Prince of Peace.

Would you pray with me please?

Dear God, help us this holy season to not only accept, but to long for, repentance. Make this, for us, a season of hope that we can be made whole and holy by the fire of the Holy Spirit. We trust you to know us and love us, forgive us and turn us around, Even so, come Lord Jesus.

 

First Congregational United Church of Christ

December 5, 2010

2nd Sunday in Advent