How to Get to Christmas, Colorado
One day a girl named Mary went to Sunday School. The teacher that day, Mrs. Jones, told the children how everyone not of their denomination, especially the Lutherans and the Presbyterians and the Methodists, were not going to heaven. When Mary went home that day, her mother asked her, "What did you learn in Sunday School today?" Mary answered, "I leamed what I am thankful for." "Oh," said her mother, "and what are you thankful for?" Mary answered, "I'm thankful Mrs. Jones is not God."
I thought of this joke this past week as I read again the biblical story of John the Baptizer: aren't we glad John is not Jesus? Would we really be here this morning to worship God's Son if his name was...John? John is not what we expect out of our Savior. Anyone who calls another group of human beings "you brood of vipers" is going to be more than a little out there for our mainline American taste. Indeed, John is pretty much everything we don't want: unreasonably harsh, unequivocally judgmental, unnecessarily abrasive. Most of us, I think, would love to get to Christmas without John. But unfortunately, we must travel through John to get to Jesus. It's the same thing in all four gospels: first John and then Jesus.
For all four gospels, John frames our expectation of Jesus. We do not have an unlimited view of Jesus, an unbiased perspective from which to base our opinion. John is like my boss when I was working at a church during my seminary days. I came to him with what I thought was a great idea for the youth group. Actually it was a crazy-bad idea (one I can't even remember what it was now...and wouldn't admit to it if I could remember), but instead of shooting down the idea Alan said to me, “Well, Brad, it's your decision. I do feel as if I should warn you however that if you do that this is how the parents are going to feel about it, and this is what the Session is going to think, and this is what the senior minister is going to say. But, hey, it's your program, you do whatever you want." I thought to myself, "Well, gee, Alan, if you put it that way, my idea doesn't sound so good anymore." My boss' frame changed the way I looked at things. In the gospels, that's what John is intended to do for us: change the way we look at Jesus.
A colleague received two Christmas cards one year that show us the difference having a frame makes. One card had a traditional manger scene front, including the depiction of Jesus as a plump, cherubic infant. Inside that card were the words, "May the Christ child come into your heart at Christmas." Now I think most of us would agree that this is a great Christmas card: timeless, traditional, spiritual, a message we all want – and need – to embrace, especially at this time of year. The second card was from a children's aid organization. On the front of that card was a picture of a starving child in Africa with the dull eyes and bloated stomach of malnutrition. Inside were the words, "For Christ's sake, Save the Children." Now I ask us, “Which is the better, the truer, Christmas card?" Most of us want to say the first one, of course. But John's frame won't let us jump too quickly to that conclusion. And like it our not, to get to Jesus, we must travel through John.
John's message to us is simple: "Repent." Although John's message seems too strident for Christmas, too confrontational for this season of love and good cheer, his message is the message God intended for us to hear. John proclaims the good news of repentance and what repentance brings. His is a message which frames the meaning of Christmas, for the truth is that we all need to clean up our acts. Scripture tells us that "we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." It tells us we are sinners in need of forgiveness. We don't like that word, "sinner." We don't like that label. But that's what the Bible calls us. That's what John calls us. And that's why John makes us so uneasy.
Fred Craddock, a New Testament professor, writes of John:
John puts you in the presence of God. And that's what everybody wants, and that's what everybody doesn't want. Because the light at the altar is different from every other light in the world. In the dim lamps of this world, we can compare ourselves with each other, and all of us come off looking good. We convince ourselves that God grades on the curve, and what's the difference? We're all okay. And then you come into the presence of God, and you're at the altar, and it's all different... There's no way to modulate the human voice to make a whine acceptable. All our whining is over. All our excuse making is over. We can't blame our paltry efforts any more on the bad schools or the feckless churches or the bloated government. All that's over at the altar of God! It just stops. Like waking from a dream of palaces and patios to find the roof leaks and the rent's due. God comes and the truth is out...and it cannot be denied any longer by any one. That's just the fact of it. In my mind, I may say that I serve God. But there's another force in my life, and I say, “I'm going to do that,” but I don't do it. I say, “I'll never do that,” but I do it. Crucified between the sky of what I intend and the earth of what I perform: that's where the truth is found, and John's preaching won't let us forget it.
The gospels all begin with John because God knows we need a clean slate. That's why Jesus came. That's why God sent him, so that we could be forgiven. God sent his only Son to take away our sins and restore to us his new life so that we may live as he would have us live. What this season of Advent is all about is preparing ourselves for God's gifts of forgiveness and new life. We celebrate the birth of Jesus because we know what it means to have new life through his birth, death and resurrection. Notice I said his birth, death and resurrection and not just his birth; the cradle always stands in the shadow of the cross.
His Cradle and His Cross, together, tell His story.
One of humble beginnings, the other of His glory.
The Cradle has a shadow o'er the babe within,
A Cross foretelling of His death, to save us from our sin.
The Cradle in humble beauty tells us of our worth.
The Cross in all its Glory offers us New Birth.
The Cradle is just the footstool; the Cross is really the throne.
And we wouldn't have needed either, if we could do it on our own.
But we can't do it on our own, can we? We can't save ourselves. We can't shine a light comparable to God's glory. That's why John is so important. We can't get to Christmas without John because we can't truly have Christmas without repentance. Think about it like this: our lives are sort of like a bag. We go through life accumulating stuff. Some of it is good stuff, like memories of the good times, love for our parents and spouses and children. Those kinds of things. But there are other things in there as well. Things like envy and anger, lying and lust, petty greed and private guilt over all those things we know we should not have done but we did, and all those things we should have done but we didn't. A bag loaded like this gets pretty heavy. Not only that, but when it's full, nothing else can be put into it. And the sorry thing about sin and guilt is that they fill up the bag pretty quickly. Oh there always seems to be room for more sin but very little room for anything else. And so we have to empty the bag. Empty it of our sin and guilt. Empty it of our sorrow and shame. Empty it at the foot of the cross, for it's only then, when our bag is empty, that we can fill it with the gifts of God: his love, his mercy, his Son.
It kind of feels to me (as I write this) that I ought to be closing out this sermon. Can you feel it? The rhetorical flow is crying out for a conclusion! "Brad," it's saying, "close with a call for God's people to open their hearts to these, God's gifts. Open their hearts to God's love, open their hearts to God's mercy, open their hearts to God's Son at this blessed time of Christmas. Say, 'Amen,' and sit down, Brad. Your work is done." Can you feel this conclusion coming? I sure can...but….
But John keeps getting in the way. No matter how much I want to give us our simple Jesus with this nice, neat, perfectly gift wrapped Christmas conclusion, John continues to call. Not only does he tell us to repent, but he says "produce fruit in keeping with that repentance." To the one with two coats, we are to share with the one who has none, not sell it a garage sale but give it to the COOP. For the one who is paid a fair wage, we are to work hard for that wage rather than cheat our employer by trying to get by with minimal effort. For the one who has power and authority over others, we are to use that power only as a servant who serves the Master. In other words: not only are we invited to let the Christ child come into our heart at Christmas, but we are called, for Christ's sake, to save the children.
John, oh, John. What would we do without John? It's tempting to say we'd get along just fine without him thank you very much. But then again, without John, we might just get lost on our way to the place known as Christmas in Colorado.
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