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Third Sunday of Advent
December 13, 2009
Reverend Michael D. PowellLuke 3:7-14 |
It's the 3rd Sunday of Advent and in many
traditions this week is for rejoicing and focusing on Mary, the mother of our
Lord. But apparently our lectionary authors don’t recognize that tradition, so
here comes John the Baptist again, still out there
crying in the wilderness, preaching to his congregation, calling them a brood
of vipers and telling them to repent. The well off, the privileged and the
comfortable heard John tell them that their very riches were a hindrance to
their realization of God's blessings. "He who has two coats, let him share
with him who has none; and he who has food; let him do likewise," John
told them. In other words, the message of repentance emphasizes the ethical and
the economic implications of the Gospel. And the passage concludes in verse 18
by saying, "And with these and many other exhortations, he preached good
news to the people." You call that good news'! Where'd this guy study
homiletics? Hadn't he ever heard of warming up the crowd, telling a few jokes
to make folks feel comfortable before hitting them right where they live with a
message of sacrificial giving and repentance? No wonder he's preaching in the
wilderness. The bishop probably sent him there.
But, to be fair, John is a prophet, and the
role of a prophet is a unique calling. Prophets don't tell us what we want to
hear in order to be happy or self-sufficient, they tell us what we need to hear
in order to be saved and God-dependent, and very often their words feel like a
cold ego shower, especially to those of us who are comfortable in the ways of
the world.
Thomas
Wheeler, Chief Executive Officer of a big insurance company in the East, tells
a story on himself, a story of his encounter with John the Baptist. He and his
wife were out driving one day when he noticed he was low on gas, so he pulled
off at the next exit. While the attendant filled the tank, Wheeler checked
under the hood. As he closed it, he noticed his wife talking and smiling with
the attendant. As they drove on down the road, Wheeler asked his wife if she
knew the man. She did. "As a matter of fact," she said "I know
him well. We went to school together and dated seriously for about a year."
With a mixture of jealousy and smugness, Wheeler replied, "Boy, you were
lucky I came along. Just think, if you had married him, you would be the wife
of a gas station attendant instead of the wife of a corporate executive."
His wife said, "My dear, if I had married him, he'd be the CEO and you'd be
the gas station attendant." (1)
Prophets
can puncture our pride, deflate our ego, and give us a whole new perspective on
life. Perhaps that's what it takes to be "saved!" William Sloan
Coffin once talked about the paradox of how John the Baptist's prophetic message
of repentance comes during Advent, right before the celebration of Christ's
birth. "At Christmas," Coffin wrote, "God sends us a savior, but
do we want to be saved? Ask me that question and I'll tell you frankly that I'd
rather be made happy, I'd rather improve myself; in fact, I'd rather be almost
anything than saved. For it takes a lot of humility to be saved. To be saved
you have to allow someone to do for you what you can't do for yourself "(2)
So,
we have a dilemma. It's the third Sunday of Advent, a day to rejoice and remember
the love of Mary, who gave birth to our Lord in Bethlehem, but the road to
Bethlehem is blocked by this wild-eyed Johnny One-Note preaching a message of
repentance that calls for humility and seems designed to bring us to our knees.
It seems like a disconnect, doesn't it? Perhaps that's
because we don't really understand what it means to repent.
Repentance is about a change in our mind and
heart. It comes from an expanded consciousness, a new awareness. It comes when
we turn our attention in a new direction, changing the way we look at things -
our self, our life, other people, our world, our God. Repentance is a
recognition of just how God-dependent we really are, and how our blessings
place us under an ethical obligation to share from the abundance of our
blessings.
We
are blessed, you and I. But, you know, we didn't earn that blessing! It's a
gift. No matter how hard you've worked in your life, you are not a self-made
man or a self-made woman. None of us particularly deserves our comfort or our
health, any more than someone who is ill or living in poverty deserves their
condition. Repentance has to do with recognition, with the new vision that
comes when our self-consciousness is transformed into God-consciousness. The connect between rejoicing and repentance comes when we
realize that Christ is continually being born, and that his birth has
absolutely nothing to do with how we judge our own success or measure our personal
prosperity. The hope and the joy comes when we recognize that Christ is still
being born in the most unexpected of places - in the sadness or the illness,
the disappointment or the brokenness of our own personal lives. The miracle is
that Christ is still being born in the barns and the stables of those who
suffer in situations of poverty, exploitation and oppression. The healing power
of salvation comes to the poorest of the poor when they put their trust in him.
Year ago, when we lived in
Stayton, Anni and I helped organize a peace group. We learned a few Christmas carols in Spanish
and went caroling to the migrant camps around the valley. There were also migrants in the Ashland area,
and we organized a group to take blankets and clothes around to those camps. I
especially remember a cinderblock barracks where a group of male workers lived.
There was a water trailer outside for drinking water, and inside were six bunk
beds with steel springs and no mattresses. There was a concrete floor with a
drain in the middle, and one picnic table, which was bolted down. There was one
small plug-in electric heater, and blankets hung over the windows to keep the
cold out. It was a pretty desolate scene, and there wasn't much to rejoice
about. But, taped up on the cider block wall, between two of the blanket covered
windows, was a calendar. It was an all-men's dorm and you might have thought it
would be a girlie calendar or a pin up. The calendar was a picture of a
beautiful woman all right, and I recognized her immediately. The one picture
that hung in that otherwise dismal dormitory was of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the
Virgin Mary, Mother of Our Lord. And
there, in that image of Mary, is the connection between rejoicing and
repentance.
As
we drove home, back to our warm houses filled with beautiful furniture,
curtains, rugs and all the comforts we take for granted, I recognized that
something in my consciousness had made a not-so-subtle shift. It was one of
those moments of repentance as I recognized again the truth of what John the
Baptist was preaching - it was a realization, a recognition of the ethical and
economic demands of the Gospel, an attitude of gratitude for the blessings of
my own life inseparably linked with the Advent truth that Christ continues to
come into the lives of all those who turn to him in faith.
The healing, comforting, hope-filled
presence of our Lord is still coming, still being born. That's the good news of
Advent that John was sharing. It places those of us who are especially
comfortable under obligation, and it reassures the poor that God knows and God
cares. It is cause for rejoicing.
Thanks be
to God. Amen.
(1)
Don Shelby, "Through the Looking Glass,” 1st UMC, Santa Monica, CA, Nov.
12, '89, p. 5
(2) William Sloan Coffin, Jr. "Sinner
Cryin', Come Here, Lord," Riverside Church, Dec. 16th, '79, p. 2