Reno UMC Sermon: 12-06-09

December 6, 2009
Rev. Judith Bither

Present

In the fifteenth year of the Emperor Tiberius . . . (Luke 3:1) Reading a commentary on these first verses of Luke’s third chapter, I stopped and asked myself what the Emperor Tiberius had to do with anything. What did it matter that Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea and that Herod was ruler of Galilee? It seemed to be nothing more than filler, details that communicated a historic context for the events about to be related. These verses were there to tell generations of the faithful that John appeared and preached and baptized in a particular time, in a specific location.

I realized that it was the particularity and the specificity that I tended to ignore all those years. Let me put that in the present: I tend to forget that God operates in the particular and the specific, in the time and place, in the "right here, right now" of the universe where we find ourselves.

Think of it this way: "In the second year after Vladimir Putin left office; when George Bush was no longer president of the United States and Tony Blair had retired as prime minister of Great Britain," the word of God came to Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest in Burma . . . to Rigoberta Menchu Tum in Guatemala, giving voice to the hundreds of thousands of Mayan children, women, and men silenced in the genocides of the 1980s . . . to Wangari Mathai in Kenya, empowering women farmers to care for the environment. Each of these women eventually was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for work with the poor and powerless.

Today, the 6^th of December 2009, the word of God came to . . . us as we speak and listen, as we sing and pray, as we announce the upcoming FMW cookie-exchange and Mary's recovery from surgery, as we share coffee and refreshments and news after worship. In other words, they are there to tell us that God is working when God always works: in the present; in our present. And our work is to be present . . . to be present to God and to our work with God.

By setting us in time and place, the evangelist is alerting us that "preparing" is not about remembering how some other people prepared once upon a time—

by going out to the banks of the Jordan to be baptized by John.

It is not about planning for some future event.

"Preparing" is how we are living right here, right now in the realm of God or outside it.

The verb is in the present tense, "prepare." The message is about the present. Of course Advent is the season of preparation for a future event, but it’s something that’s in the very near present. At home we are cleaning, getting out the Christmas decorations, setting up a tree, baking and perhaps hosting and attending parties. But into our Advent “busy-ness” each year John demands that we get ready for Jesus. Before we can bask in Christmas joy and the birth of a special baby, John forces us to examine our world and ourselves. In the style of the Old Testament prophets before him, John reminds us, is a time to prepare to welcome Jesus… and not simply our invited Christmas houseguests.

Think about the ways you prepare your home when you are expecting guests: A colleague tells the story how her mother would get down on her hands and knees and make sure each single fringe was straight on the edge of the Oriental carpet. No amount of teasing would dissuade her; she attended to every detail.

The advent of guests prompts the host not only to straighten up, but also to fix things around the house—a running toilet, a burned out light bulb, the loose towel rack.

Preparing for houseguests often causes us to look at our homes, to examine our surrounding with a whole new perspective. Suddenly the countertops are too messy, the broken chair inadequate, the napkins too wrinkled. Preparing for guests demands self-examination as much as it involves a “to do” list.

John the Baptist does not seem like a character that would have likely understood all that is involved in welcoming company to his home. After all, he spent most of his time in the wilderness eating locusts and wild honey—hardly the place for a “Bread and Breakfast”. But if John wasn’t thoughtfully straightening out rug fringes, he did understand how a people ought to welcome their God. His bold preaching in the wilderness called people to preparation. His challenging words called people to self-examination… along with a “to do” list, if they were going to be ready for the one coming after him.

So on this day in the year 2009, we are challenged to a different kind of preparation, one that calls us to sincerely reexamine our lives, our values, and our priorities. If we expect to greet the Prince of Peace this Christmas Eve, then we must do the kind of detailed spiritual preparation process that we do when we prepare our homes for company. Many of our neighbors are busily drinking eggnog, singing along with carols on the elevator, decorating their Christmas trees and putting blow-up Santa’s on the front lawns. But in worship, the people of God hear the challenge of John the Baptist, calling for a different kind of preparation.

Every year during Advent we read one of the accounts of John the Baptist in the gospels. Last Sunday we began Year C in the lectionary and the gospel readings are from Luke’s account. Each Advent John confronts us, commands our attention, and demands our response…even when we might want to rush ahead to Christmas. John’s challenge is to repent and prepare. True repentance (metanoia in the Greek) means literally to change one’s mind, turn around, re-orient oneself. John calls all people to turn to God and away from sin, to seek God’s forgiveness, and to prepare the way of the Lord. In just a few verses he will be very specific about how to do that, but this week we live with the poetic words of the prophet Isaiah, who calls us to prepare for the Lord by making crooked paths straight, lifting up valleys and making rough places smooth. The punch and promise of the poetry is saved for last: all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

Prepare the way of the Lord! If that is the central message of our passage, there is meaning in God’s choice of John, the wilderness-dweller, as messenger. In Luke, the Word of God comes neither to the Emperor or governors, nor not even to the high priests. It comes to simple John, son of Zechariah and Elizabeth…just an ordinary guy. And yet God chose John, not in Rome, not in Jerusalem, but in the wilderness. Not in the seat of political or religious power, but the wilderness, the often scary and confusing place where God had spoken to God’s people in the past and through which God had led God’s people to a new and promised life in the Exodus. God’s choice of John and where he spoke to John are indications of what God expects from us. Our repentance, our turning around, will likely involve us looking at the structures and the systems and the people of the world around us in new and different ways.

If we are going to find God this Advent season we have to get away from the crowds, get away from our old lives, and go someplace off in the wilderness where life and death is at stake. It won’t be easy. Such a path calls for repentance, turning away from an old life, and embracing a new one. So why do we hear the story of John every Advent? Because we to need to begin in the wilderness before we can find our way home.

Let us continue to walk together toward Bethlehem!

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