The Star of Peace and John the Baptizer
by Fred Kane
Luke 3:1-6
Are you getting ready for Christmas? There are only 14 more shopping days,
you know. When we think of, "Getting ready for Christmas," we often have
trees and cookies or gifts and lights in mind. Luke's Gospel asks us, "Are
you getting ready for Christmas?" But then tells a story. It's the story of
a man named John, called the Baptizer, who sits out there in the bleak and
merciless Palestinian desert proclaiming the anticipated coming of the
Messiah and calling men and women to prepare through a revolutionary change
in behavior.
When the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem they took a portion of the
population of Jerusalem back with them to Babylon as sort of an insurance
against an uprising. It was cheaper to move potential trouble makers back to
Babylon than to garrison an army in a far away hostile land. That's how the
Jew got to Babylon. They were, "ransom captive Israel" in Babylon.
The prophets saw the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile in Babylon as
the moral consequence of the choices that the nation had made. They made
wrong choices, trusting in material things, in arms and in idols and in
money, rather than trusting God. Then there comes news that the exile is
ended and the captives are free. That means that they can turn away from
that past. They can go home now. God is offering them a new future. They can
live a new life now. So, "Comfort my people." Tell them that the war is
over, they have paid for their sins, and they can go home now.
The pathway to that future is painted in a beautiful image of a highway
being constructed in the desert from Babylon to Jerusalem. On that highway
God will come and take God's people home. So, in the wilderness "prepare the
way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God." There
are even engineering instructions included in the passage, "Every valley
shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill be made low; and the glory of
the Lord shall be revealed."
So God comes to set people free, to redeem them from bondage, and to lead
them to a new life. You can see why Christians said that Isaiah was talking
about Christmas. We see that Christmas is the beginning of that freedom,
that redemption, that new life. The first Christians said that the voice
crying in the wilderness to, "Prepare the way of the Lord," is John the
Baptizer. His voice cries in the wilderness to make ready for the coming of
God into our life to give us a new future.
John is the one asking, "Are you getting ready for Christmas?"
Hallmark, Toys 'R' Us, Safeway and Sprint may be asking you if you are
getting ready for Christmas, but the Christmas that they have in mind has no
connection with the Christmas John the Baptizer points us toward.
John is the voice crying in the wilderness, "Prepare ye the way of the
Lord." John is the voice preparing us for the Messiah. Except John's message
is not "comfort my people." John does not speak "tenderly" to Jerusalem.
John is at the River Jordan, on the edge of the wilderness, shouting
(hollering is probably the better word), "Repent; for the Kingdom of God is
coming." His voice bounces off the desert walls: "Repent!" His voice is
heard clear up in the Temple precincts in Jerusalem: "Repent!" His voice
like a mighty wind sweeps up into Galilee, to Herod's palace and bounces off
the walls there: "Repent!" His voice echoes in the consciences of all the
people of the land: "Repent!"
The crowds flock around John and hear him demand conduct unlike anything
they have practiced before. They hear John's demand to repent, to reshape
their lives, to turn around and march to a different drummer and they stand
there shocked, stunned by what lies before them and ask, "In light of this
new world crashing in upon us, in preparation for this Messianic age, for
God's sake, what shall we do?"
And John tells them and he tells us. He is tough. John does not tell them to
go to church more often, to read the Bible, to tithe, to say their prayers.
"You think you can claim to be children of Abraham, to lean on your
religious credentials? Forget it. God can raise children right up out of
these desert stones with no effort. All your church attendance, your vested
choirs, your gilded sanctuaries, your tithes and offerings, your prayers,
hymns and sermons mean nothing. Your ritual without repentance is a joke. If
you want to prepare yourself for the new age become alert to the terrible
gap between rich and poor, the disenfranchised, disinherited, the so-called
boats left out of the rising tides now slowly sinking beneath the surface:
shed your indifference to the ones suffering from injustice, discrimination
and poverty. Whoever has two coats must share with him who has none, and
whoever has food must do like wise."
You see, there is no Christmas charity here! John isn't talking about alms
for the poor, but about charting a recasting of the system where terrible
disparities exist and opening channels of equity for everyone without regard
to race or sex, national origin, social class or religion.
Tax collectors meet John in the desert. He says to them, "Collect no more
than is appointed you. No more business-as-usual." The Messianic age cuts
the roots of graft, the game of cost overruns. It evaporates the payoff, the
kickback, the torn up ticket. The rotten campaign contribution seeking
influence, the soft money buying access, the deal made at the expense of
another - gone! All of that behavior is dissolved by that Messianic world
careening around the celestial bend.
Soldiers who wander out to that desert outpost ask, "What shall we do?"
John's radical answer is, "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or
false accusations, and be satisfied with your wages."
What is he saying? Sounds pretty tame, doesn't it? Tell the truth and keep
your promises. But, John is tougher than that. He is telling us that in
Christ's future, government does not cater to the interests of those with
money; it is not a prop for the social or political elite; its forces of
taxation, policing and military power are not there to defend unjust status
quos, to feed fat cats at public troughs, to justify forces sustaining
oppression, to hide those public servants who lie under oath. John condemns
patriotic allegiance distorting, competing with or distracting our primary
allegiance to Jesus Christ and the people of this world whom Christ
represents.
Do you see it now? Do you see getting ready for Christmas as Luke sees it?
Getting ready for Christmas means getting ready for the new world John sees
surrounding the Nazarene strolling toward him through the desert blaze and
it pictures a revolutionary ethic as if we lived in a world turned upside
down and backwards. So are you getting ready for that kind of Christmas?
You see, John has only one message. He stands here, knee deep in the muddy
water of this church sanctuary looking at you and me with these dark,
deep-set, penetrating eyes, and he says to you and to me, "Repent. Turn
your life around!"
You probably won't see John the Baptizer on any Christmas cards this year or
any other year. He's not the kind of guy we really want to have around at
Christmas. But he is part of the story. He is the main figure, the dominant
figure, in Advent as we prepare for Christmas.
In the lectionary of the Church, the lessons we read to prepare for
Christmas, every year John the Baptizer is here in the second week, and
sometimes in the third, too. That means, if you plan your absences right
you've got about a fifty-fifty chance of getting to Christmas without seeing
John the Baptizer. Those of you here today didn't plan it quite right.
Today, John the Baptizer points at you with this bony accusing finger,
shaking it in your face, "Repent! Turn your life around!"
The Church decided a long time ago that John the Baptizer was not only the
one who prepared Israel for the coming of the Messiah. But, John the
Baptizer should be the one who prepares you for the celebration of
Christmas. I hear people say almost every year, "That's sure a strange way
to prepare for Christmas, because Christmas is about peace and hope and joy
and love." Everybody knows that, "Love came down at Christmas, Love all
lovely, Love divine; Love was born at Christmas; Star and angels gave the
sign."
So why is John the Baptizer hollering repentance? There is a reason. The
danger in preaching unconditional love at Christmas time is that we will
think that nothing is required of us. But you still hear it. You hear it in
the churches. You hear it on the radio. You hear it in the mall. Christmas
is all about love. You will see sentimental TV specials that will always end
with some word about this being what Christmas is all about. Christmas is
about peace and hope and joy and above all, it's about love. You will send a
Christmas card with just "Love" written on it. It's like that old 60's
song, "Love is all you need."
That's all you need. It says it all. Love is what Christmas is all about. I
am sure that is why Christmas is so popular both inside and outside of the
Church. Here's the stable, the manager, a baby in the manger, given to us
unconditionally, because God loves us. It's irresistible. "God so loved the
world that God gave an only Son." That's the heart of Christmas, love. This
world is dying for the lack of love. It's why we sing, "Jesus loves me,
this I know."
But, we also need to sing, "Jesus asks something of me, this I forget." You
see, that's our problem. Christianity is about unconditional love all right,
which means I am accepted as I am. But that doesn't mean that I should stay
the way I am. Christianity is about changes in your life and in my life.
It's about a life of justice and mindful compassion.
The baby who is born in a manger, grows up, and preaches the same message
that John preached, "Repent!" Jesus comes into Galilee, preaching the
gospel saying, "The time is fulfilled, the realm of God is at hand; repent,
and believe this good news."
Do you see the sequence? First comes the gift, and then comes the response.
First there's a baby in a manger, then there is Jesus, the man, teaching in
Galilee. First there is the gift of love, then there's the question, "What
are you going to do now that you have received this love?"
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great German theologian, who joined the resistance
against Hitler, established an underground seminary during those days. Out
of that experience he wrote a book called The Cost of Discipleship. It's a
commentary on the Sermon on the Mount. In it he makes the distinction
between "cheap grace" and "costly grace."
Cheap grace is going to church to hear the comfortable words, the good news
about God's unconditional love. Then snuggling in it doing your churchly
good deeds as if it were a down comforter, leaving church with a warm,
peaceful feeling, but not letting the one who brought that love into the
world, who died for you because of that love, challenge the way you are now
living.
In the Bible repentance is not just remorse for the past, feeling sorry that
you did something. In the Bible repentance is making a decision about the
future, how you are going to live. It's the realization that God is giving
you a new opportunity for life, and seizing that opportunity.
The righteous were always telling Jesus to go tell the sinners to repent.
Instead, he told the sinners, you are forgiven. He told the righteous to
repent, especially those in power, the priests, scribes, Pharisees, and the
Sadducees. They were good people, moral people by any standard. They kept
waiting for Jesus to go tell other people to repent, to stop their sinning.
Jesus kept telling the strong and the righteous in this world to start doing
something good. He told them to repent of their pride, their smugness, their
hypocrisy and self-righteousness, their narrow prejudice and enormous greed.
Jesus did not tell the weak to repent. He healed them and forgave them. He
told the strong to repent.
I believe that God gives every generation and every person an opportunity to
choose life, to choose a new future. That is what this gospel is telling us.
"The time is fulfilled, the Kingdom is at hand." The time comes to us
fulfilled in every generation. The opportunity is here for us to do
something individually with our lives, and corporately as a nation.
God is offering us new life, offering us opportunity for greatness. Never
has there been such an opportunity, because never has there been such power
and wealth, and never have so many people possessed it. What are we going to
do with it?
I believe that is the moral question of our time. What are we going to do
with all that we have? Are we going to use it to address the enormous needs
of our communities or are we going to consume it on things that we probably
don't need? What God gives every generation is the possibility to do
something great with what God has given that people.
- A reporter was covering the tragic conflict in the middle of Sarajevo and he
saw a little girl shot by a sniper. The reporter threw down his pad and
pencil and stopped being a reporter for a few minutes. He rushed to the man
who was holding the child, and helped them both into his car. As the
reporter stepped on the accelerator, racing to the hospital, the man holding
the bleeding child said, "Hurry, my friend, my child is still alive."
A moment or two later, "Hurry, my friend, my child is still breathing."
A moment later, "Hurry, my friend, my child is still warm."
Finally, "Hurry. Oh, my God, my child is getting cold."
When they reached the hospital, the little girl had died. As the two men
were in the lavatory, washing the blood off their hands and their clothes,
the man turned to the reporter and said, "This is a terrible task for me. I
must go and tell her father that his child is dead. . . He will be
heartbroken."
The reporter was amazed. He looked at the grieving man and said, "I thought
she was your child."
The man looked back and said, "No, but aren't they all our children?"
Aren't they, indeed? Aren't they all God's children, wherever they may be at
this Christmastime in Sarajevo, Monrovia, Pyongyang, or Baghdad; Paducah,
Kentucky; Mudende, Rwanda; Boston, Massachusetts; or Corvallis, Oregon?
So, are you getting ready for Christmas? The star of peace is rising in the
Christmas sky with the possibility of a new future coming to each one of us
and to every nation. We must choose now, we must repent. It begins for any
nation, in any community, with one person, then another, and then another,
saying, "I'm going to accept the future that God is giving to us, rather
than simply repeating the past."
Every year in Advent, John and Jesus are here saying, "Repent; for the time
is fulfilled, and the Realm of God is at hand." God is offering you a new
future. Choose it. Turn away from the past. Accept what God is offering you.
So, are you getting ready for Christmas? To be sure, order your poinsettias,
string the lights on the tree, bake your cookies, send your cards - and yes,
wait on tip-toe. But, better yet, throw your life - your whole being - into
serving that new world hurtling toward us, changing everything, turning us
around, bearing us into a radical future ruled finally, from a rude
Bethlehem manger.