Guest Preacher: Rev. Robert Kaiser
Date: December 6, 2009
Text: Luke 3: 1-16
A few weekends ago we were in NJ visiting family. While there, we went to the Garden State Plaza, the one of largest malls in the state. The place was packed with teenagers lined up to see “New Moon,” the latest “Twilight” movie and mobs of people beginning their Christmas shopping. More so than ever, I was struck by the contrast between our society’s celebration of Christmas and the drama of the Bible. A similar contrast is apparent when we compare the Biblical story with the many holiday movies on TV. Most of them are what I would call “Hallmark films” with Tim Allen-like heroes and happy endings. Everything is sugarplums and dancing fairies. There is certainly nothing wrong with feeling good at the end of a film but the mood for Advent in the New Testament is quite different. The scripture readings for the first Sunday of Advent spoke of the coming kingdom of God and the need to get ready. The story, then, moves on to a manger that nobody cared about in an obscured town called Bethlehem.
Nowhere is the difference between “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas” mentality and the Biblical story more striking than in the role of John the Baptist. John can only be described as a wild man. He lived out in the desert, existing on locust and honey and wearing animal skins. He stood in a long line of prophets who felt called by God “to tell it like it is” and challenged people to return to their true relationship with their Creator.
John’s message was simple: “REPENT! Do a 180 turn and change those thoughts and actions that are displeasing to God.” Can you imagine one of the Salvation Army bell ringers standing outside Wegman’s or Topp’s clanging his bell and telling people who were entering the store “don’t buy a lot of stuff that will add to your waist line; watch out if you are going to stock up on beer; who is that with you? It better be your wife.” It wouldn’t be very long, I suspect, before the Salvation Army found its holiday contributions were way down.
The people who came out into the wilderness to hear John asked him a very dangerous question: WHAT SHALL WE DO in responding to your message? Some of us have found out just how perilous it can be when we begin to shape our lives around what God wants us to do. Anne Dillard has written about Christians taking Christmas too casually. She describes church people in worship as children who assume that they are playing around with a chemistry set, but who are actually mixing up a batch of TNT. It is madness, she maintains, to wear pretty hats when we need crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. It sounds extreme but Ms. Dillard may have been listening to John the Baptist and her comments may be closer to the true spirit of Christmas than most realize.
We say that Christmas is a time for giving. That is absolutely correct but John provides a yearly reminder that the type of giving that God seeks in response to the birth of His Son may go far beyond what we normally assume when we rush out to the mall to do some more shopping.
Do we dare to ask as we prepare for Christmas this very Biblical question: WHAT SHALL WE DO? John called for a moral revitalization that begins within one’s self and then spreads out! Interestingly enough, it would appear on the surface that John’s message is “music to the ears” for many Americans. Aren’t we all fed up with the shooting of policemen who are trying to do their duty, of the news about sexual predators or all the shenanigans that go on in Albany and Washington? The cry seems to be “Yes, let’s have some changes.”
But do the American people including us want the change to begin where it does in the Bible and that is with our personal habits and lifestyle? John, in a subtle twist, took away part of the comfort zone when he told his listeners not to assume that just because they claimed Abraham as an ancestor that they had no need for repentance. The warning applies equally well to middle and upper class Christians in our day who often share the same type of complacency. Frequently our trend of thought assumes that change should begin with the “bad” people we see on the TV News. It’s not only John the Baptist warning people about becoming too self satisfied in their faith but Jesus picked up on the same message when he chastised the Pharisees, the most religious people of his day, for assuming they had it made.
John’s approach is challenging if change is to begin with you and me. He didn’t call for people to leave their jobs or their homes or anything radical in that sense but all are to share generously with the poor and all are to have high ethical principles. The tax collector is challenged to practice his profession with honesty and integrity and the same for the solider. For us this means that our response to Christmas is shaped initially in a very personal manner. It may look different for the student, the parent, the retiree but all are to take seriously the call to treat others with respect and to seek justice.
Do some of you remember the “Murphy Brown” TV show? I was not a fan but one time I caught an evening where Jim Diehl, the older announcer, declared that he had a deep, dark secret. Everybody was fascinated and speculation ran rampant in the newsroom. Finally he decided to go public with the information on his next broadcast. Everybody waited anxiously for his hidden side to be revealed. He told the public that his secret was that he has been married to the same person for over twenty years, never had sex with another woman, loved his parents and so on. The implication was obvious: such behavior appears quite radical given the content of most TV shows.
That TV segment of “Murphy Brown” came to mind when I was thinking about our morning text and John the Baptist. Maybe like Jim Diehl we are to proclaim what might seem like odd values but which bring out the best in others and us. That might mean that teenagers don’t just go along with what everyone else is doing at holiday parties; it might mean that people in their 20’s and 30’s don’t deal with life’s difficulties by using alcohol and drugs; it might mean that middle-aged people find ways to use time and money to help others; and in retirement we proclaim that a great gift has been given to us and we will do more than eat our way through all the restaurants in Florida. Does that sound too harsh a judgment especially coming from someone who is a guest? I suspect it might be close to John’s message if he were to return in 2009.
Do you see why I said at the beginning that the Biblical story doesn’t unfold like the latest Tim Allen Santa Claus movie that is currently available on DVD? In preparing the sermon, I actually worried that perhaps John’s message is too harsh to be accepted at this time of the year. After all, John the Baptist doesn’t appear in too many Christmas pageants, does he? However, there is an undercurrent to what he was saying that never should be forgotten. SOMEONE IS COMING. SOMEONE IS COMING WHO WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN YOUR LIFE AND IN THE WORLD. What John was asking was that we prepare the way for the coming Christ by the manner in which we live each day. The closer we get to the true meaning of Bethlehem the better we shall feel about ourselves, the more we will be able to reach out to others and the greater our concern for those who are suffering injustice. Thus there really is a happy ending to the Biblical story but it is different than the cultural trimmings of this season of the year. There is great joy, love and peace and those gifts unfold when we recognize what December 25 is really all about.
A poet has written
We are willing to celebrate Christmas
Oh, yes!
We can’t wait,
All the decorations are up in our streets and in our homes
From the beginning of Advent
But who wants to prepare for Christmas by listening to John the Baptist,
And the Christmas hopes he expresses in the name of God.
Asking us to change our style of life?
Would you have come to listen to John, that prophet by the riverside?
Would you go now, if you heard that he returned there?
Would you go?
That’s the real challenge of Christmas 2009.
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