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Sermon - December 17th, 2006
Repentance to Peace
Rev. Gwen Drake
Scripture: Luke 3: 1-17
I suspect that almost any first-century Palestinian would have agreed that for them it was “the worst of times.” For the Jewish people, no prophet of God had been on the scene for ages. It appeared as if the unshakable strength of Roman rule would remain unchallenged for generations to come. Luke begins his 3rd chapter in great detail about the historical setting. It was the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar. Tiberius a designated heir to the throne, reluctantly accepted, not well-loved nor respected.
Pontius Pilate rose from the obscurity of Roman “middle-management” to be governor of Judea. He had a gift for insulting and antagonizing his Jewish subjects. Periodically he would unleash his soldiers on the people simply to show his power. He was despised and feared.
King Herod was known for his cruelty and paranoia. He was unbalanced and dangerous. He was the designated “king of the Jews” by the authority of Rome.
Two more Roman rulers are mentioned by Luke, Philip and Lysanias, of whom little is known except that their presence confirms that Rome believed that the political climate of the tiny country of Judea was volatile, ready to erupt.
Then there were the religious leaders, Annas and Caiaphas, who were more interested in keeping their power rather than exerting any true religious leadership.
Yet, in the midst of these tough tyrants and a climate without even a spark of hope, God sent a messenger named John. He was dusty. He wore a camel hair coat (not cashmere). He reeked of locust and honey. He smelled of poverty and desert discipline. He refused to live in the big city, up in Jerusalem with the powerful and the educated. He preferred the dust of the desert--a more fitting climate for John’s brand of preaching.
All over the world, we Christians are celebrating Advent, the season of preparation for the birth of Christ. And all over the world, the churches who are following the lectionary scriptures are hearing about John the Baptist. The church, in its wisdom, has always demanded that if we really want to see what’s in Bethlehem’s manger, we must first confront this crazy man from the wilderness, whose sermons are as bitter and wild as the terrain.
And HOW John collides with what we have done to Christmas and ourselves. John’s gaunt figure at Advent is a striking contrast to the jolly, chubby man in the red plush suit, holding a magical bag full of goodies.
How many Christmas cards have you received depicting John the Baptist? How many Christmas cards say, “Greetings from our house to yours. Our thoughts of you at this time of the year are best expressed in the words of John the Baptist, ŒYou brood of vipers.... The ax is laid to the root of the trees, and every tree that does not bear good fruit will be thrown into the fire.’” Merry Christmas.
John is not a popular figure to work up in ceramics. You will not find him as a character in a nativity scene, or a Hallmark card, or a sugar cookie. And yet, all the gospels have him there, at the beginning, as if to say we cannot meet Jesus until we have met John, as if to say that we cannot know why there is Emmanuel, “God with us,” until John tells us why we so desperately need God.
John intrudes himself into our exuberant celebrations of ourselves at this time of the Christian year. “Christmas brings out the best in us,” we tell ourselves, reassuring ourselves that there is still within us somewhere a best to be brought out. Charles Dickens and his beloved character, Ebenezer Scrooge has probably done more to form our ideas of ourselves at Christmas than the Gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. We are, like Scrooge, down deep, people who have had cheerful childhoods which only need to be recaptured around the Christmas Tree. Like Scrooge, we are, despite our gruff, materialistic, calloused exterior, really down deep, charming and sensitive people awaiting to be rediscovered at Christmas.
So what need do we have for the harsh medicine that John the Baptist is trying to pour down our throats? The tough castor oil of repentance. What need do basically good people like us have for God to come to Bethlehem to save us, since we are, if we can be appealed to positively, quite capable of saving ourselves?
Perhaps, we could pull it off, this seasonal attempt at self-delusion, were it not for John. John who comes ranting and raving down the aisle, demanding to cleanse us of our delusions with a cold dip in the Jordan River.
John preaches a baptism of repentance. He cries out, “Change your life, you brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee the coming fire? Bear the fruit of repentance!” And I reassure myself, “Oh, he’s not talking to me, he’s attacking Herod and Pilate and Caiaphas and Caesar, not the good Jewish people of his day. He is attacking street hoodlums, murderers, thieves, drug lords, corrupt government officials, not me. And not you good, faithful people out there.”
Then John turns to those good Jewish people and to me, screaming, “And don’t you say, ŒWe have Abraham as our father.’ Don’t you say, ŒMy family has always been active and generous members of the United Methodist Church.’” John rages, “You are not indispensable to God. God can raise up a people out of the stones in the river if God wants.”
Even the chosen, the enlightened, the insiders, the pillars of the church must repent, get turned around, and washed up to be ready. Even me. Even you.
Then John tells the people what they are supposed to do to repent--don’t defraud people; soldiers, be content with your pay, and if you have two coats, give one of them away. John calls us not just to repent of our sin, but to repent of trying to hide our sin.
You see, below the surface, beneath our Christmas cheer, our joyful jingles, our Norman Rockwell images, you and I are fitting subjects for the preaching of John the Baptist. It is as if--despite our pretensions, our denials, our seasonal self-indulgences--we really do need turning around. We really do need repentance. We really do need to confess our sin.
If we are profoundly honest with ourselves just for a moment. If we just face the cold, hard truth about our lives. If we go fleeing out of the shopping mall glitz and wait in the silence of a cold, dark December church, we might cleanse ourselves of our moral delusions, we might come to think that the preaching of John the Baptist makes sense, we might realize that there is no way to get to Bethlehem without first getting by a fierce, condemning prophet who tells us that we are not right, as we are.
So here we are, celebrating our human potential, reveling in our marvelous achievements, our glorious attainments and here comes John the Baptist, calling us to account, measuring our lives, not by what nine out of ten Americans think, but by what God Almighty commands, a cold, sobering burst of Jordan water in the face of our pretensions, a call to that which this society seems so inept at producing, namely a people who can speak truth, a people who know how to find and make peace.
Will Willamon, who is now a United Methodist bishop, used to be at Duke and had a wonderful ministry there. He tells the story of meeting a medical student working on his M.D. and his PhD at the same time. Willamon was quite impressed with this student’s depth of self-awareness. So he asked the student about what helped him the most in practicing his profession in medicine without being captured or crushed by it. The student’s answer was, “I’m just so glad to be a Lutheran.”
Willamon asked, “What does that have to do with it?” And the student explained, “Well, when you are a Missouri Synod Lutheran, you know one thing well. Namely, that you are a sinner, and that all human achievement, even the best of it, is tainted with human sinfulness. So, every day, when I’m walking into Duke Medical Center and I see all that vast array of buildings, and machines, and dedicated people, and surgery, and healing, and hope, and dreams, I say to myself, ŒAs wonderful as all of this is, there’s probably a lot of sin being worked out here, too.’ I ask God to forgive me for my part in that sin, even when I’m not aware that I’m sinning. It helps me to keep it in perspective.’”
Before we rush headlong into Christmas joy, let’s take a moment or several moments to stumble over this crazy, spiteful, abrasive John the Baptist. Peace, REAL peace, gospel-evoked peace, comes only by way of the truth. Redemption comes as a gift of being given the grace to honestly see ourselves. A savior is given to us who are able honestly to admit our need for salvation. We can’t get to Jesus, without first getting by John the Baptist. We can’t get to Christmas peace, Christmas joy, Christmas love, without first hearing and facing the truth.
Amen.