Rejoice in Expectation! The Lord is Near!

I know what you are thinking.  You don’t want to be chastised by John the Baptist today.  You are preparing for the holidays and family coming and good cheer and Christmas.  We have witnessed unspeakable tragedy only 25 miles from here. We need time to process this all-too-close violence.  None of us wants to be called a bunch of snakes by John the Baptizer today.  We all want the sweet baby Jesus right now.  And while we don’t want John the Baptist’s ranting today, it may bring us a message of hope in this very complicated time.  But just like we must go through the cross to get to Easter, we must go through John’s preaching about repentance in Advent to get to Christmas.  So let’s dig in.

First, will you pray with me?  “Dear God of Joy and God of sorrow, help us hear John’s wilderness message of repenting and turning back to you and preparing the way.  Help us hear John’s message in Advent, making room here in our hearts [pound chest] for the arrival of Christ, coming oh, so soon.  Amen.”

Our loving God does not force us to do anything.  God offers us eternal love to nurture and save us, but we each have free will to listen and respond, or ignore and turn away.  God, the maker of the universe, grants us free will to respond to love or scoff at love.  God, in grace, holds out unconditional love to us.  And we are free to turn toward God or turn away.

So what does this have to do with this strange character, John the Baptizer?  Have you ever seen John the Baptizer in a nativity scene?  Have you ever seen John on a Christmas card, decked out in his horsehair coat, eating locusts and honey?  But, here is John, on our third Advent Sunday shouting, as John always does, “Repent!”  The Greek here means, turn back around and face God.  Acknowledge your failures and shortcomings.  Come humbly before the living God and listen to the Good News.  And what is the Good News?  God loves us.  Always has.  Always will.  We are God’s beloved.  So John’s message has two parts.  First, repent, acknowledge you need God.  And two, remember God loves you unconditionally.  But God’s love will not grow within us if we do not first come humbly before God and ask to be touched and changed by God’s love.  God wants to love us through all eternity, but we can turn our backs on God’s love.  Even though God’s love is the most powerful force in the universe, if we reject it, it flows around us and never touches us at all.  So John says, you brood of vipers—don’t come out here in the desert looking for God’s love if you have not already opened your heart to receive it.  God’s love will not go where no place has been prepared for it!  Don’t seek external baptism if you have not opened up your heart, turning toward God and changing your selfish ways.

Now, how do we know this is what John was preaching?  Well, look at the three groups of people who all ask John the same question.  “What then should we do?”  They all ask how can we show that we have prepared for God’s arrival?  Watch and learn from what John tells each group to do.

First, John tells everyone, “If you have two coats, share one.  If you have food, share it.”  The first mark of repentance and turning to God is sharing what we have.  John does not say give everything away, but asks us all to open our hearts and purses and cupboards and share.  Sharing is an active sign that we are facing God, releasing our selfishness.  Sharing is a sign that we are facing God and not our own selfish desires.  Sharing is a sign of honest repentance from selfishness.  It is so simple: share.

Second, John tells the tax collectors not to collect more than prescribed.  Tax collectors were marginal Jews who collected the taxes for the Romans, and the tax collectors were notorious for taking a little more than Rome demanded and pocketing the difference.  Tax collectors were stereotyped as greedy and dishonest and self-consumed—and they were universally hated—that is why they were looking in the desert with John for some message of hope.  John tells them to stop cheating.  Repenting means turning to God and dealing honesty with our fellow human beings, honoring one another in honestly and integrity.  Do not cheat one another, John says!

The final group that John addresses is very interesting, and very unexpected.  Roman soldiers. What?  Why are Roman soldiers out listening to John in the wilderness?  In our passage, John warned the Jewish people that they couldn’t just claim they were Jews and think that they did not have to repent and turn towards God.  Culture or heritage is not enough, John says—this will take a personal individual commitment.  And here is where John’s Advent message gets very personal to all of us.  Just because you have been a member of the church for 30 years, or have been in a good Christian family since birth or you can claim relatives who came over on the Mayflower—none of these human claims place you in any higher esteem with God.  Each of us comes before the throne of grace without any earthly trappings: no heritage or blue-blood or fine clothes or fat bank account matters before God.  As John says, God can raise up Jews or good Christ-followers out of stones, so who you are or your social status does not matter to God.   Each of us, every one of us, must repent before God and make the way for the Advent of Christ into our hearts.  John shouts, “There is nowhere for any of you to hide!”  This is personal.  This is real.  This is not somebody’s else’s Advent.  This is your Advent.  And John challenges us to repent and turn our life toward God, preparing a place in our heart for the living Christ who is coming.  Soon.

And so, as an unlikely example, John provides an answer to our last startling group: Roman soldiers.  The last people you would expect to be asking what they can do to repent and enter the Kingdom of God.  But the soldiers there that day do ask, and John says to them, “Don’t abuse your power to exploit other people, or lie.”  Oh, and John adds, “Be satisfied with what you have.”  So it is not enough to share and be honest and not be greedy, but we must also demonstrate by our very lives that we don’t abuse our power and bully people around.  Be satisfied with what we have.

Repent.  Share.  Be honest.  Don’t cheat or lie.  Don’t bully or abuse power.  An interesting set of exhortations while John is shouting, “Repent!”  And these exhortations are delivered to Jews and tax collectors and Roman soldiers.  The lowly and eccentric John just opened up the preaching of the good news of God’s unconditional love to everyone, marginal Jews and Gentiles alike.  And notice, John does not require actions at the Temple, but ethical relationships dealing honestly with one another in love.  John simply preaches turning around and facing God, repenting and confessing first that we need God, and then living lives that reject selfishness, greed and abuse of power.  Show me that you have changed, John shouts!  Live God’s love with one another!

The unspeakably tragic events in Newtown on Friday give me pause as I am speaking about living God’s love into the world.  I had a friend from California say, “God could have stopped this, No?”  How does a loving God allow Friday’s evil in the world, a slaughter of innocents?  I think we have this idea in our head that God is all forceful power, meaning God can do anything.  But I believe that God is all powerful love, not all powerful force.  And love does not coerce us.  Love gives us free will to choose for or against love and God.  We each must approach John’s Advent shout of, “Repent!  The Lord is near!”  But the Lord does not force a thing on us.  We can turn away from God, and evil is loose in the world, as we saw on Friday.

And so John preaches that we are to repent and change our mind about God, to prepare the way of the Lord in our own life and into our own hearts.  Advent is not about finding God through someone else’s confession or someone else’s repentance or some other person’s life.   This Sunday in Advent, John challenges all of us to repent and open our hearts to God.  John tells all of us, yes even you, that you can’t just rest on your laurels and think you can get by because of some label or safety net.  John challenges each of us to act personally in this Advent season.  John shouts prepare the way of God into your heart.  Jesus is coming into the world,  but the coming Christ must be invited into your life and heart.  Otherwise, Jesus comes to a world that rejects and neglects love.  If we turn away and do not repent, God still loves us, but God’s love does not touch us and change us and transform us into what God dreams us to be.

And how did the crowd around John react?  The people were filled with wild expectation because they repented and their hearts were prepared for God, they expected God to come to them.  Like children awaiting Christmas morn, wild with expectation that Jesus was coming.  The people around John prepared and were ready for the coming of Jesus into their lives.   

So let us rejoice in Expectation of the coming Christ!  The Lord is Near!  Here is the Joy and Hope and Peace beyond all understanding:  God loves us, and if our hearts are prepared, God will come to each one of us soon.  In Advent, repent people of God, and prepare the way of the Lord into your very own heart.  Amen.