Sunday, Dec. 17, 11:00 - 3rd Sunday of Advent
It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for: the moment of the Big Reveal. The suspense, the drama—it’s impending as we all anxiously await the choice for 2006 Word of the Year. Are you ready? “Truthiness.” Spell check hasn’t added it yet, but dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster has declared
truthiness as the word of the year. What does it mean? It is defined as “truth that comes from the gut, not books.”
[1] Incidentally, the 2005 word of the year was Podcast. Well done, Apple
.[2] We’ve spoken much of words this Advent. The Last Word, the Straight Word, and next week will be the Magnificent Word. We’ve been trying to remind ourselves and anticipate that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.Today, perhaps much to our dismay on this Sunday of Joy, John the Baptist presents us a pretty hard word.
Certainly it might be said that John the Baptist has some truthiness about him. Most prophets do. They speak truth that comes from their hearts, their souls, their guts. Prophets don’t find words in books; they find words written on their hearts by God, and they proclaim them. Now we all know there are the quirky street-corner prophets who seem to utter only noise, and then there are the prophets who utter the words our hearts can’t help but hear. This morning we heard from two prophets: Zephaniah and John the Baptist. Both speak words our hearts need to hear, but which of these two would you rather listen to on this Advent Sunday of Joy? Well, let’s look at the contestants.
In this corner we have Zephaniah. The words of Zephaniah to us? Your enemies are no more. The Lord your God is in your midst; do not fear. God will renew you, God will restore you, God loves you. Ahhh. That’s nice. We can hear those words of promise while still sipping eggnog in front of a fireplace watching chestnuts roast. (Does anyone ever really do that, anyway?) We can still go shopping and partying, and our hearts are warmed by Zephaniah’s good and joyful news of comfort and hope.
In this corner, we have John the Baptist. Now, we all know that John the Baptist not only had some truthiness about him, but we also know that John had some earthiness about him. He’s the wild proclaimer who lived in the wilderness, snacked on locusts, sported fashionable camel skins, and never saw a barber. He was loud, bold, gutsy, and likely smelly. Can you imagine him showing up at your Christmas party?
[3] Everyone is merry and bright, and then in walks John the Baptist:
“Happy Advent, you brood of vipers! You’re all just a bunch of snakes. If you think your family tree and family faith will save you, you’re kidding yourself. This is about you and you alone, and you’ve got some work to do. Share. Give. Be fair. Don’t lie, cheat, or steal, and be satisfied or else it’s the fire for you.” John’s words of comfort: the winnowing fork is coming for you—doesn’t sound like much fun to me, but which is worse, the winnowing fork or unquenchable fire? I mean, what a killjoy, and this was the good news John proclaimed!?
Zephaniah has us warm and cozy in front of the fireplace, and John the Baptist holds us uncomfortably over the fire … and it’s Christmas. Zephaniah’s words of promise are spiritual chicken noodle soup, and John the Baptist’s words of promise hit us in the gut. Well, bah humbug, John the Baptist. It’s Joy Sunday in Advent! We’re supposed to be moving towards the manger, not the apocalypse. We’re imagining a baby born to us on Christmas! We’re wondering about the star in the sky looking down where he lies!
Now, is John killing our joy, our wonder, or leading us down the exact paths we need to wander before Christmas? Because I’m wondering if we really are wondering about where we stand with God this Advent. After all, Christ
is coming, but are you ready? Have you studied for the big test? Have you trained for the big marathon? Have you practiced for the big game? God prepared the world, but have you prepared your heart for the big event of Christmas? Because Advent is also about us … about what we’re doing … about the things we have done and the things we have left undone … Advent discipline leads to Christmas joy.
[4] We have some hard work to do before Christmas. That’s our good news.
If we can look beyond John’s lack of tact, or pay attention because of it, we find ourselves asking, just as the crowd did, “What should we do, John the Baptist?” And he’s pretty specific. Go to your closets; clean them out. Do you have more coats than you need? More shoes than you can wear? More blankets in your closet than can fit on the beds in your house? They’re some folks on park benches down the road you could share with. The folks you work with at the office: do they even know you’re a Christian? Do they see you as a fair and generous person? Have you given a fair tithe to the church? And even if you’ve bought presents for the orphans in Kenya or answered the bell ringing and thrown money in the red pot for the poor, which we thank you for doing, do you care about the poor? Do you pray for them?
John is pretty clear that part of our task is to look beyond ourselves and to make sure that if we proclaim Christ with our mouths, if we are baptized believers, our lives had better reflect that. Grace is real, but there is also something at stake for God in what we do and don’t do. It’s a hard word, but perhaps it is the wake-up call we need in the chaos of the “Christmas is coming” hustle and bustle.
Advent is a season of preparation, of repentance, and John knows exactly what we need to do to prepare for the birth of our Savior. Not only does he ask us to clean out our closets, but he reminds us to clean up the clutter of our lives because God is coming. Are you ready? What’s on your list of things to do before Christmas? Hang lights, wrap presents, cook food, send cards. It is a season of giving to others … but Advent is also about you, about me. About what we’ve done and left undone before God. Where we’ve failed and sinned, we need to confess and ask forgiveness.
Are we so busy thinking about everyone else that we’ve overlooked the need to prepare our hearts? It’s not just about preparing meals or your house or your gifts; it’s about preparing your life for a gift of grace we really don’t deserve. Until we do that, I’m not sure we can experience the true joy of Christmas. Until we empty ourselves before the empty manger, I’m not sure we’re ready for the light of the world to fill it. And I’ll be the first to confess. Until John’s hard words hit me in the gut, spending time in prayer before God to prepare my heart for the baby Jesus was not on my to-do list before Christmas.
You know, sometimes we all need a wake-up call, a change in perspective. I found that I did as I experienced the “joy” of traveling over the Thanksgiving holidays. You know what I’m talking about … getting there is fun. The airport beating that you endure to get there is not. You pack, you lock doors, you fight traffic to arrive at the airport parking lots, which, of course, are all full. And then you stand in lines. Long lines.
My favorite is the security line. Your carry-on bag is falling off your shoulder as you balance your coat, shoes, boarding pass, ID, and 1-quart Ziploc bag with 3-oz. containers or less as well as your laptop which you have to take out of the bag. You still get flagged for a bag check, and then they throw your underwear and personal items on the table in front of God and everybody as they search your bag and find nothing suspicious. Joy. Indeed. After I went through all this, I finally got on an airplane, which was delayed. I was tired and moody and just wanted to go to sleep.
That’s when two of the most exuberant children ever bounded up to the tired flight attendant behind me and said, “Hi, what’s your name?” She actually smiled and laughed. The rest of us who are used to the travel drill had ignored her. These kids were flying for the first time. Everything was new, exciting, and wonder-full. The windows: “Look, Mom. The windows open and shut.” The light: “Look, Dad. The light turns off and on up here! Whee, we’re moving! We’re going up, we’re going up! Wow. They bring us drinks and a snack for free! Look, you can see the sky! The cars look like ants!” I couldn’t help but smile and laugh, and I found myself raising my closed window to look, too.
Until then I had wandered through the airport drill with a zoned-out, tired complacency and irritation. I hope we don’t wander through Advent the same way. Thankfully, John is giving us a wake-up call. It is a hard truthiness and call to repentance that John proclaims to us today. But it is a word of promise, both comforting and frightening, that comes to us as a word of God. John shakes us out of our complacency and gets our hearts to wondering. Repentance is hard work. Confessing that you’ve failed to trust God and love others is hard work. Saying I’m sorry is hard work. But repentance isn’t about just being hit in the gut with fear and guilt about our impending doom if we don’t change. The good news and promise of repentance are that God is faithful and just. God forgives and restores. And there is still time to prepare.
Advent is about you, about me. Not only do we need to give, but we need to confess. We need to take stock of where we mess up and where we fall down, and we need to do something about it. We need to carve out some time to sit and wonder about our souls. Maybe if we do, the windows of joy in our complacent hearts may be opened again.Until we dig around in our hearts to find what we’re feeling, what we’re hiding from, what we’re guilty of, we can’t name it before God and ask God to hold it. I can’t know what your heart may be full of, but I know that if you begin to empty it, God can begin to fill it.
You might remember a Christmas book and movie called The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. It certainly ends up being a creative and funny interpretation of the biblical nativity story. My favorite character is Gladys Herman, who is described as being “fast, mean, and she bites.” An unlikely cast pick for the gentle angel of the Lord she ends up playing. But at the end of the movie, Gladys gets Christmas, deep in her gut, for the first time. She no longer finds it appropriate to be a gentle, quiet angel of the Lord announcing the good news. Instead, the truthiness of her approach is, “Hey! Hey! Unto you a child is born!”
Her approach was less than subtle. So was John the Baptist’s. But the good news is the same: Unto you a child of grace and peace will be born. Are you ready?
[1] Associated Press. “‘Truthiness’ is the word of the year,” accessed 9 Dec 2006, http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/TV/12/09/word.year.ap/index.html
[2] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4504256.stm
[3] Moris, John C. “Refiner’s Fire” Christian Century, December 6, 2000.
[4] Mason, George. December 12, 2006.
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