Passion

What does it mean to be passionate about Christmas?

Does it mean the best collection of Christmas sweaters? Does it mean you put up your lights and decorations earlier each year? Yes ours were up before Thanksgiving this year. Yes, I am one of those people who has multiple trees and am always trying to add more. Does it mean the best Christmas parties or selecting the perfect Dirty Santa gift?

How about a man with a grizzly beard and a loud voice crying out in the wilderness? On the first Sunday of Advent we got apocalyptic visions. On the second Sunday, we get John the Baptist. Although he didn’t make the cut for a Hallmark special again this year, he greets us this morning from the remote wilderness, telling us to get ready, to make the path straight, and talking about baptism and road construction.

It occurred to me recently that Advent is a bit like road construction. Suddenly the road you felt familiar with is changing. You have to veer into another lane. They are breaking up one road. Paving another. Bridges are being raised and others torn down. And while the other lane of traffic seems to be sailing by, you are stuck. While the rest of the outside world seems to have already arrived at Christmas, you come into the church only to feel like you are sitting still and waiting.

We don’t quite know what to do with John the Baptist at Christmas. He sticks out like a sore thumb. He is like the one crazy character that shows up at family reunions and gatherings that is too loud, too blunt, dresses funny, and rambles on about conspiracy theories. John the Baptist is like being stuck in traffic and looking over to see someone standing there with a sign that says Jesus is coming. Barbara Brown Taylor says “John always seems like the Doberman Pinscher of the gospel. He’s there nipping at your heels, growling for repentance.”

But like road construction, it doesn’t seem we can arrive at Christmas without a detour through the wilderness.

Whatever your opinion of John the Baptist might be, he received a message from God. Notice all the people that the Word of God skipped over. Did God choose...

Emperor Tiberius - nope

Pontius Pilate - nope

Herod - nope

Philip - nope

Lysanias - nope

Annas and Caiaphas - nope

John...yep...wait, who?

Luke is making a point here to ground salvation history in a specific time and specific place. The Word of God in this case is moving out to the edge. The invitation doesn’t go out to the highest officials first. The call to get ready starts instead with those who are most desperate to receive the news.

John is calling for a baptism of repentance. Repentance means to turn around, to change one’s mind or to re-frame your thinking. How many of you think of baptism when you think of Christmas? While we are decking the halls and downing eggnog, John is inviting us to a different kind of preparation.

This calling for a baptism repentance was a ritual of preparation for the message and ministry of Christ. It was an act that represented cleansing and turning toward God to be ready for the Messiah. Preparation for the arrival of God begins when we turn towards God.

John is passionate about us getting ready to receive Christ. He quotes Isaiah 40:3-5 which The Message translates as:

“Thunder in the desert! “Prepare God’s arrival! Make the road smooth and straight! Every ditch will be filled in, Every bump smoothed out, The detours straightened out, All the ruts paved over. Everyone will be there to see The parade of God’s salvation.”

The parade of God’s salvation. I am all about a good parade. The Christmas parade in town was just last Thursday. The Macy’s Thanksgiving parade shortly before that, which takes an astonishing 18 months of preparation time. Literally this group spends a year and a half at a time to plan one Macy’s parade before starting all over again. That kind of preparation and planning takes passion.

Preparing for Advent involves passion for readying ourselves to receive the Christ child. Maybe this road construction of mountains and valleys moving and shifting around involves some soul construction. And this takes work. Work that if we are honest, we don’t often want to engage in because we often like our roads the way they are. I like this valley of how we worship, that mountain of my work routine, this path of the only people I talk to and this mountain of topics I make sure to avoid. The landscape is fine the way it is.

A pastor recently shared a story while I was in Jackson of when he was starting out as a youth pastor. He began to pray that God would send them people and that they would receive them. The church desperately wanted a youth group. And God sent 40- something youth. God sent all the people nobody else wanted. This pastor knew the Lord had blessed this church, but suddenly they wanted to meet with him to talk about the youth “issues.” Sometimes, we can treat the Word of God at work in our lives like an “issue” instead of an invitation. Because we aren’t too passionate about road construction when we aren’t in control.

Rachel Held Evans says “God’s on the move. Get out of the way. For no mountain or hill—no ideology or ritual or requirement or law—can obstruct Him any longer. ...Repentance means leaving the old ways of obstruction behind and joining in the great paving-of-the-path, the making-of-the-way, the demolishing of every man-made impediment between God and God’s people so the whole earth can celebrate God’ uninhibited presence within it and welcome the arrival of the Messiah.”

The lectionary reading from Malachi this morning talks about a refiner’s fire and fuller’s soap, both elements that later find their fullness in Christ as the one who cleanses us and takes away our sins.

Repentance is a gift, making way for the tender mercies of God to enter in. An early church father Tertullian said “repentance should prepare the home of the heart.” Preparation for Advent and Passion for Christmas fall short when we fail to really be present before Christ. When we try to take the shortcut to the manger without taking and inventory of whether or not we are ready to receive him, then we shortchange ourselves.

What do we need to left fall away so that we can let God enter in? What pathways do we need to clear so that Christ can enter in?

This morning we lit the candle of peace, and perhaps it seems like a futile effort given all that is happening around our world today. How do we prepare our hearts for something that seems nearly impossible?

How might we prepare for the arrival of peace even when we can’t see it? How do we enter into the work of being passionate about peace when it seems so many are passionate about war?

Maybe the work of repentance and turning toward God allows our eyes to be open to the crooked pathways and rough roads around us, so that we may enter the work of peacemaking and preparing the way.

Rachel Held Evans said “God, forgive me. Open my eyes. Tear down the mountains I’ve built of my theology and flatten the walls I’ve constructed of my prejudices.Make a straight path right through my stubborn, hardened heart.”

Jeanne Kun has beautiful meditative poem on Isaiah 40. She shares:

Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Prepare my heart, O Lord, and pave the way for your coming. Invade and flood me with your Spirit, and fill the spaces you carve out in me with your own presence.

Every valley shall be filled. Fill in those depressions dug so deeply in the heart by distrust or desperation or dreams that only disappoint.

Every mountain and hill shall be brought low. Cast down those peaks that loom over me of pride and pettiness and promises broken or unkept by me.

The crooked shall be made straight. Make whole and straight what is out of shape: the truth that’s bent by my little lies, the troubled thoughts that wind their way so tortuously through my mind, and the timidity that deforms my heart (and cheats others of my love).

The rough ways shall be made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God. Remove the stones that block my way and make level a path for my feet that I not stumble as I run to you!”

Do you hear the voice of the one crying out in the wilderness?

Do you see the signs.

Road construction is ahead. If we are to meet the One who guides our feet into the way of peace, we must turn and prepare to meet him.

The way to Bethlehem is through the desert.

As Fred Craddock once said, “Well actually you can get to Bethlehem without going through the desert, but if you do, it won’t be Christmas.”