Tiger Woods was on his way to winning the 2000 British Open at St. Andrews in grand fashion. He never once hit into a bunker or three-putted in 72 holes. Considering the massive and sometimes hidden bunkers of the Old Course, not to mention the massive and undulating greens, that was a feat in itself. Well, our own Matt Mosley and I were following Dallas’ Justin Leonard on Saturday as the crowds began to build. The richest Americans and Japanese were viewing things from their balconies and hotel windows along the road of the 18^th fairway. Matt and I hoofed it with the hoi polloi. We jockeyed for position along the ropes to see each shot. Justin played with Shigeki Murayama that day, so lots of the poorer rich Japanese were right there with us. I felt especially sorry for them. After each shot, I would take off and find a place to stand — sometimes three or four deep, in order to watch. Matt would usually be right on my left shoulder. At about the fifteenth hole, I had squeezed myself into place, grateful that both of us were over six feet tall. I leaned back and whispered to Matt, Sure glad I’m not short, aren’t you? No reply. I looked back, and there was no sign of Matt. Just a pair of dark-brown eyes sunk into an Asian face looking up at me chest high. Would he pick a fight or let it go? He let it go. I bowed gently to apologize. Which probably made it worse. Stupid American.

And all flesh shall see the salvation of our God! That is the promise of the coming God made known first through the prophet Isaiah and repeated by the prophet John in our gospel text. But how can that happen when the sightline of so many is blocked by so privileged few?

Advent invites the people of God to be on mission, preparing themselves first, and the whole world next, for the coming of God. The Advent prophet is the ever-irritable and irritating killjoy, John the Baptist. He shows up this time every year at our Sunday morning Christmas parties on the second and third weeks of Advent, wearing his red camel-hair shirt, snacking on dead locusts and crying out in his shrill voice, Prepare the way of the Lord! And the strangest thing about the guy is that he thinks he’s doing us a favor. He thinks he heralds good news! How can that be?

Well, let’s look at how Luke starts out our text. It’s kind of odd, really. In the third year of the reign of President George W. Bush, when Rick Perry was governor of Texas and Tom Phillips ruled the state Supreme Court, when Laura Miller was mayor of Dallas and Gary Griffith councilman of Dallas’ Wilshire district, during the papacy of John Paul II and the pastorate of George Mason, the word of the Lord came to John, a Baptist beekeeper from Brownwood. Now, that’s about what it must have sounded like, only then the names in power were politicos like Tiberius, Pontius Pilate, Herod, Philip, Lysanias, and divines like Annas and Caiaphas. Luke is locating God’s in-breaking word in actual human history. The call to repent is not a courteous whisper from the angelic heavens; it’s a disturbing shout from the voice of an annoying human. Real people are supposed to take note — people with power and people without it, people with health insurance and those without it, people with more money than they know what to do with and those without a pot to make tea in. The gospel is for everybody, but it comes unexpectedly first to a nobody who lives in the shadow of all the world’s somebodies.

The thing that must have rankled all the somebodies of the day is that God chose John to deliver it instead of them. It’s as if Luke is setting us up, listing all the usual suspects who might have the word that will change the world, and then he slips us the news that God came to John first, and without their permission! I can only imagine that God knew how skilled people in power can be at managing news. Politicians and preachers alike like to spin things to favor their place. We have public voices, and although we are here to serve the common good, the sinister temptation we live with is to like to hear ourselves talk rather than give you the word you need to hear.

A reviewer of the new movie, Luther, about the courageous 16^th-century German church reformer, Martin Luther, was saying that he thinks the reason people will like it is because we’re all aching for a leader who won’t lie … we’re in dire need of people like that these days. [Eric Till, cited in Christian Century (Oct. 18, 2003): 18.] Now, that may be true, but something in me recoils at that language. Something in me wants to defend the president and the governor and the mayor and our good councilman and, well, myself, don’t you know?! I want to tell you what good guys we really are. I want to explain why it is more complicated than you think, why there are two sides to every issue and that seeing both sides of things is good form.

But it reminds me of the woman who walked into a church office with a look of irritation in her eyes. “May I help you?” asked the receptionist. I hope so, answered the woman. I am looking for a one-armed preacher. “A one-armed preacher?” replied the bumfuzzled receptionist. “Why one-armed?” I am looking for a one-armed preacher who doesn’t always say: ‘On the other hand!’ [Daniel T. Hans, “Looking for a One-armed Preacher: Paradoxes of Paul #2,” Sermon at Gettysburg Presbyterian Church (Feb. 24, 2002), cited in Homiletics (December 2003): 55.]

Two-armed John the Baptist qualifies nicely, nonetheless. He delivers the word of the Lord with one hand tied behind his back. He is unencumbered by politeness. His sermons are so clear you don’t have to read the written copy on Wednesday or listen to the tape delay on the radio the next Sunday to see if you can catch his meaning after all.

Look out! Repent! That’s the message from the wilderness man. If he has an Old Testament feel to him, the Baptist, well, that’s just Luke’s point. You don’t get any of that Elijah forerunner stuff in Luke. He’s not the herald of the kingdom of God that Mark and Matthew make him out to be. He’s the last throes of Israel’s spiritual best being gathered up into one man. Jesus will inaugurate the kingdom of God in a way John would find a bit too good-time Charlie for his taste. But John and Jesus both preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins. John puts the emphasis on repentance and Jesus on forgiveness, but they are both on the same side in the call for a way of life that makes the salvation of God visible and accessible to everyone.

The root meaning of repentance is, according to the late Baylor religion professor, Ray Summers, a complete change of mind and correspondingly, a complete change of conduct. It represents an entirely new outlook on life, conduct, values, and motivations. [Commentary on Luke (Word, 1972).] A new outlook! way to look out at the world, at ourselves, at what is good and true and beautiful!

The notion of repentance as merely a matter of our inner life is far from John’s meaning, or Jesus.’ When we talk about repentance, we mostly think of seeing if someone is genuinely and publicly sorry for sin. If we don’t see that the person is eternally miserable under the weight of guilt, we can’t imagine it being true repentance. But that is hardly a biblical outlook. Sorrow over sin, yes; but living out of a new outlook on life even more. The biblical test is whether forgiveness has so taken root that they look out for others and not just themselves.

When Luke tells what John’s preaching of repentance and baptizing for forgiveness is all about, he refers to Isaiah’s prophecy of the coming of God. The people of God must accept their mission as the people of God. They must look out of themselves and look out for the welfare of others. They must preach to those on top to come on down where they can get a closer view of the coming God. They must preach to those on the bottom to get up to their rightful place and see the coming of God for themselves. That’s what prepare the way of the Lord is saying.

When a king would come to a town, the whole town would go out into the surrounding area and make a road where none existed in order to show they were expecting him and were ready for him. Rich and poor would work together in order to make sure the coming king would bless the whole town. Wherever the road was steep, they would dig it down and fill the dirt into the low spots. Wherever the path was crooked, they would straighten it out. Same with rocky patches that needed smoothing.

Luke takes John for an Isaiah man. He applies Isaiah’s words to the social condition in the same way Isaiah did. If a person wants to see the coming God, then there is no privileged perch on which to sit while ignoring the bad view of the lowly. Either all get access to the coming God or none, because God is not coming for a few — God is coming for one and all. The only way you miss it is if you exclude yourself by demanding a luxury box way up high or by refusing to get out of the laundry room or the kitchen or the restroom when God comes because you think you are unworthy.

If you want to see the end time coming of God, you can look at the first coming for a picture. The rich and the poor were there together — magi and shepherds both. Christmas teaches us that you cannot maintain inflated or deflated outlooks on yourself or others. You have to work to put yourself in your place right next to others at the manger of the Lord — not above them or below.

The Jim Carrey movie, Bruce Almighty, has been out long enough now for me to tell the plot and not get grief for it. Bruce is a TV reporter who thinks God is against him because he isn’t advancing in his career the way he thinks he deserves. His beautiful girlfriend loves him but can’t break through his self-love to get him to love her back the same way. Before long, God answers his complaint and gives Bruce most of the powers of the divine to do with what he pleases. What pleases Bruce is mostly what Bruce pleases. But using his powers for himself only separates him more from the people who love and care for him. At the time of his death, God reappears and asks Bruce if he had one wish, what would it be. Instead of wanting a do-over with his life or even with his girlfriend, he says he wants her to find someone who will look at her the way God looks at her.

God gives him a chance to be that person. But the less-talked-about part of the movie is the scene at the end when God is seen. Now and then in the movie, a homeless man appears, brandishing a sign saying this or that for whoever would stop and look at him. Bruce shows he has it in him for good when he defends the man against some hoodlums. It’s the kind of behavior otherwise unlike Bruce. At the end of the movie, when Bruce has become a new man, the face of the homeless man becomes the face of God.

If we would see the salvation of God, we must learn to look out for God by looking out for one another.