Malachi 3:1-4; Luke 1:68-79; Luke 3:1-6

In elementary school, we regularly had to do an exercise in which we were shown four pictures and we had to find the one that didn’t belong — the one that wasn’t like the others. I’m sure most of you are familiar with what I’m talking about.

This past week, the news was filled with its own version of a visual non-sequitur. A publicity-seeking couple named Tareq and Michaele Salahi somehow managed to get past security a week and a half ago to crash a state dinner at the White House, even though most of us assume that White House is one of the most heavily-guarded buildings on earth.

Immediately after the dinner, the couple began bragging about their exploits on Facebook. Then pictures began showing up all over the news that featured the couple posing with various political and news luminaries, including the President of the United States. It was an adult version of “one of these does not belong.”

The church has its own version of that old schoolwork assignment. Every year in the middle of Advent, we interrupt the story of the angelic visits and the miraculous pregnancies to flash forward some 30 years to look in on a camel-hair-covered kook, who lives in the desert, eats bugs and screams at people to change their ways.

It’s easy to see that John the Baptist doesn’t fit in with our saccharine-saturated Christmas narrative. We’re looking for heart-warming tales of freshly-scrubbed shepherds and brilliant, if somewhat naive, foreign kings who crowd around a sanitized manger to pay their respects to the newly-born Jesus, while a carefree Mary and Joseph look on placidly and with great pride.

Never mind that none of that fits what actually happened at the birth of Jesus, it’s still what we’ve come to expect from our Christmas festivities. So it always adds a discordant note when John the Baptist strolls onto the scene shouting things like, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” and “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

Those are hardly the kind of words we would want to assign to one of our cherubic children for inclusion in the annual Christmas pageant. And yet, here they are, staring us in the face during yet another Advent season. So what’s the point? Why does the church insist on dragging in John the Baptist to ruin our holiday fun every year?

The answer is simple. It isn’t just that every party needs a pooper. Instead, the church wants all of us to go deeper with our spiritual Christmas preparations — to refuse to settle for the sweet and superficial, but rather to do some very real soul-searching, so that we can use the celebration of the birth of the Son of God as an opportunity to make some very real changes in our lives.

After all, unlike our cleaned-up version of the Nativity, Jesus was born into a very real world of smells and germs, poverty and discrimination, dangers and fears. That stable was both the living room and rest room for a group of animals, so it probably served as a veritable Petri dish for disease.

The shepherds who were invited by the angels to visit that stable were considered among the outcastes of society — people whose job requirements kept them from following the prescribed rituals, so they were decidedly not welcome at the Temple.

Those star gazers were not kings at all, although many of them served as royal advisors. They were learned men who followed what we would consider a mixture of science and superstition. In fact, I know of several denominations that would almost certainly throw them out if they dared to turn up in their churches.

As for Mary and Joseph, they had endured months of whispers when Mary turned up pregnant well before marriage. And her only excuse was a story that would make anyone question her sanity. Then the Holy Family had to become refugees not long after the birth when it became clear that Herod wanted to kill their baby.

Our second gospel lesson makes the same point about the reality of events some 30 years later, when John the Baptist began his ministry. Luke gives us name after name of the leading lights of that time. The Roman emperor, the governor in the southern part of Israel and the kings in the north, along with the High Priest of record, as well as his father-in-law, who was pulling the strings behind the scenes.

To be honest, it is exactly the sort of thing we tend to skip over in reading the Bible, because at least some of those name don’t mean anything to us any more. It’s like picking up a People magazine from ten years ago and glancing over the breathlessly excited biographies of people whose names and influence faded away long ago.

And yet, there’s more to Luke’s list than that. Anne Le Bas puts it this way, “What is Luke doing? Partly he is telling us when these things happened but that’s not all. […] His list of rulers and their territories tells us that this was a part of the world where the every square inch had its ruler. The land had all been divided up, everyone knew who was in charge of their patch. There isn’t any ‘no-man’s’ land here. Spiritual power is all sorted out too. Annas and Caiaphas, the high priests, are firmly in charge in the Temple in Jerusalem. The Messiah whom John foretells isn’t coming into a power vacuum, but into a situation where everything seems to be nailed down already.

“Where in this tightly drawn map is there going to be room for a road — a straight road, into the heart of Jerusalem? Where in this map of power is there going to be room for another ruler? For God. For the Messiah. John’s words are a direct threat to the powers that have carved up this land between them. ‘God is coming, build him a highway!’ But there’s nowhere to build it except in the lands that they think they rule. God’s rule will mean the end of their own. You can just imagine Tiberius, Pilate, Herod and all the rest standing spluttering with fury ‘you can’t build that road here….this is our land…we’re in control…!’

“[…] Think about that occupied land, all carved up and held in the grip of forces too mighty to confront. Ever felt that your life was like that? The forces that control you might be external. Shortage of money, family responsibilities, a job you are stuck with, disability, busyness, other people’s expectations. Or they might be internal, but no less real; low self-esteem, regrets, unresolved anger, habits of thought and action which sap your energy and resolve.

“External or internal, these forces make us feel we can’t change. We’d love to declare independence, reinvent ourselves, find freedom, but it seems impossible. Our lives are all sewn up, like that occupied territory of the Middle East. And yet, promises John, God can come to us there if we will let him. There may be crosses involved, suffering and hard work, just as there were when he first came. But John proclaims a God who is more powerful than the forces that imprison us. Nothing is impossible for him. […] God will always find space in us if we let him. But that is the problem — will we let him? It is easy to identify ourselves with the oppressed land, the victim, but the truth is that often we are Tiberius, Pilate, Herod. […] Like them, we hear John’s prophecy of God’s arrival as a threat of invasion rather than a promise of rescue.”

I don’t know about you, but she got me there. How many times have I tried to become a better person, a better Christian or a better pastor, but floundered in that attempt to improve when it all became simply too hard?

But the truth is that God is the God of Creation — the One who comes to make all things new. If I — or if you — will simply get ourselves out of the way, God will come into our lives to give us something far better than the comfortable compromises we have settled for so far.

And that’s really what John the Baptist was talking about. The heart of his message can be boiled down to a single word: “Repent!” Obviously, that word has had centuries of religious encrustations added to it, but if you strip away all the barnacles and boloney, you’ll find that the word literally means to change your mind and to begin traveling in a different direction.

Wouldn’t that be a wonderful present to give to Christ and to ourselves this Christmas season — a heart that has been refreshed and enlivened with God’s own sense of hope and justice and peace? David Cobb has a similar take on that idea. He writes:

“For a short time this morning, before heading out to the stores and shops, before getting online to beat the shipping deadlines, I want you to let go of the lesser wants and concerns of the hour. Ask yourself what you want most this Christmas. Peace. Quiet. Time to think. Healing for a loved one. Comfort during grief. Perhaps the thrilling adrenaline rush of warm welcomes, sparkle, parties, lights, mistletoe and conversation.

“And now go even deeper into your soul, where dusty memories and dreams are stored in packing boxes sealed with yellowing tape. Open the crumbling paper lid of the carton where uncertainties and doubts lie dormant and words begin to fail. The significant questions, the ones you don’t ask everyday. Who am I, really? How do I face the loneliness around me? Can anyone love me? Am I being a good husband or wife, father or mother, son or daughter, or friend?

“[…As you face those doubts, you may notice that Malachi promises us that God’s coming will be like a refiner’s fire.]

“What does [that] fire strip away from us in the end? Everything ... except our golden soul gliding over the strings. We are left playing nothing but the pure, unadulterated, resonant song of life. Death itself is overcome. When everything else is stripped away, when you have been through the refiner’s fire, what song will your soul sing? When mortality slips away, will there be revealed at last a soul of pure, undiluted, completely elemental, golden and grateful joy?

“I want that for Christmas. […] I want everything else to be stripped away in refiner’s fire and the rush of baptismal water. I want my very soul to join the throng [of angels] and sing, melodic, clear, unencumbered and true: “Joy to the world, the savior reigns!”

That’s how David Cobb plans to prepare for Christmas. How about you and me? Amen.

(Comments to Jim at jmccrea@galenalink.com.)