The World Is About to Turn

Matthew 3:1-12   In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

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A week ago Saturday I had Kim and Joe in the garage going through boxes of Christmas decorations.  They went through everything.  Then I dropped broad hints that maybe they should get out the ladder and look in the attic over the garage, in case we had stashed some things up there.  We couldn’t remember for sure.  I didn’t need these decorations yet.  We’re not ready to put up the tree yet.  I was just looking for our Advent wreath.

We never did find it, which was very irritating because I know it will turn up next June. But I gave up looking and drove over to Hobby Lobby, where I walked up and down the aisles looking for something I could make into an Advent wreath.  I found some materials and I am happy with my new wreath.  But it was time and money I wasn’t expecting to spend.

And that is the way this season always turns out to be, isn’t it?  This is only the beginning.  There will be hours and hours spent making ready for Christmas with all the things you are supposed to do.  There will be money spent in amounts I don’t like to think about – all to prepare for the season.  There are so many demands on us at this time of the year.  And because of that I feel uncomfortable asking you to do anything more.

But I need to tell you something.  Getting ready for Christmas is not actually what we seem to think it is.  We need to say this today, because we have John the Baptist, that wild and scary prophet, with us today.

I have some decidedly mixed feelings about John.  He is an unwelcome intruder on our holiday festivities.  We get everything all cleaned up, sparkly and pretty, and in comes John with mud on his feet and burrs in his hair.  We didn’t invite him to our party, but here he is anyway.  Every year, John is that one guy you sort of dread having to deal with. He won’t just let people enjoy themselves.

Like those Pharisees and Sadducees, who just wanted a piece of the good times that everyone else seemed to be having.  They see all the people running out of their homes and rushing down to the water’s edge to receive John’s baptism.  They were throwing themselves at him, unburdening their hearts, laughing and crying and hugging each other.  It looked like a good time, I’m sure.  But when these Pharisees and Sadducees slipped into line, and tried to blend in with the crowd, John called them out.  He wasn’t having any of it.  YOU BROOD OF VIPERS!

He could have been gentler about it.  Maybe in other circumstances he would have been gentler, but this was a moment when bluntness was called for.  No fleeing from the wrath to come, not here, not today.  You can’t come out here looking for an easy way to feel better about yourselves, to mask over the problems that lie underneath.  There is trouble in your souls, there is trouble in your community because of the unaddressed trouble in your souls.  That’s John.  Good-time John.

He comes every year because we need him, whether we like to think so or not.  John is all about preparing the way for the Lord, making his paths straight, making the world ready for him and all that his presence will bring.  John wants to help us get ready for Christmas.  This guy; the one with the muddy feet and wild hair.  He wants to help.

I know what you’re thinking: “I don’t need John’s help.”  But here’s the thing: you do need his help. 

It isn’t going to be enough to put up lights and decorations, pretty as they are.  They are beautiful. But the Lord doesn’t care about our lights and decorations.  We do that for ourselves, alone, and they are useful only so far as they help us draw nearer to Christ, only so far as they make a way for our spirits to connect with God’s Spirit. 

This is why I needed my Advent wreath, although I know I could have just made a wreath with paper and crayons and whatever candles I had on hand.  But I wanted it to be beautiful – and not just to serve as a decorative object.  I need it to serve as a focal point for me every evening during this season, to slow myself down, center myself, and invite the Holy Spirit in. 

Because if I don’t slow down, if I don’t find my center and meet God there, I will fail to see what my heart and soul truly need.  I will fail to notice the scars of sin in my life, and I will fail to identify the stumbling blocks I have put up that keep me from a real relationship with Jesus.  If I don’t slow down I will miss Christmas altogether.  I will miss Christ.

Every year he comes – Immanuel – and offers himself to a world that is hungry for goodness, a people who are crazy enough to hope for impossible things: peace, well-being, the reign of love.  Every year he comes and invites us to open our hearts and let him in and be the force for change.

The scriptures hold a vision for us of the reign Christ ushers into the world, and the change he will bring.  The prophets of Israel spoke of this vision, this hope, as when we hear, the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. 

This world is hungry for the change he will usher in, we long for it.  And this longing has been with us almost from the beginning of time. 

From the story of the first humans who longed for something they couldn’t quite define and reached for the wrong thing … from the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, where the people turned their longings into lust and greed … from the stories of the kings of Israel who abused their power and the empires who crushed whole nations, our longings and desires are so easily misdirected when we disconnect from one another and the source of our being. 

Our world is no different now than it was for the people of Israel 2000 years ago.  There is still a need for the hungry to be fed and the downtrodden to be lifted up.  There is still a need for the loveless to be shown compassion.  There is still a need for us to speak words of forgiveness to one another.  There is still a need for us to speak words of truth to the powers of this world. 

How will we do that?  Each of us may find our own way.  For me, it begins with the Advent wreath.  For less introverted types, there may be other ways.   But each one of us needs to find the way to reconnect, to open our eyes, to see the suffering and the need, and not look away.  Then to ask one another, what can we do, as the church, what can we do?  To defend the powerless, to feed the hungry, and console the afflicted? What can we do to bring some peace to our world?

During this season of Advent, preparing for the season of Christmas, let us speak to one another about the things that matter, about the hope that we can help each other kindle in our hearts.  The world is about to turn, brothers and sisters, and you and I can be a part of it.

Jesus Rules

Jeremiah 23:1-6   Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the Lord. Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who shepherd my people: It is you who have scattered my flock, and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. So I will attend to you for your evil doings, says the Lord. Then I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the lands where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply. I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them, and they shall not fear any longer, or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing, says the Lord. The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. And this is the name by which he will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.”

Luke 23:33-43      When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.” One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

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There was a time in my life when I declared myself sovereign ruler of my home, and the kitchen was my throne room.  It was a wide open room in the back of the house, from where I could survey my domain.  I had a clear view of who entered or exited the front or back door.  I could see anyone coming up or down the stairs.  I could stand at my counter chopping vegetables or peeling apples and maintain command over the household.  I called it mission control.  I called out orders as I kneaded dough.  I answered questions while I flipped cookies onto the cooling racks.  And you can be certain, nobody was getting any forbidden snacks, or failing to clean up their messes, while I was in my place. 

For a time, when they were small enough, I actually extended my kingdom to anywhere I happened to be with my children.  They were, the four of them, essentially, my realm.  One day I was walking with my children, carrying Henry and schlepping bags, Joe running ahead of me as he always did.  I never took my eye off him, though, and when he reached the end of the sidewalk, about to step into the street, I called out in an authoritative voice, “STOP.”  He stopped on a dime.  A stranger who observed this whistled appreciatively and said, “Great verbal control.”  I simply nodded at his recognition of my power.  Of course.  I am the ruler of this realm. 

In those days and those places, I was sovereign.  My will and my desires determined what would happen and what would not happen.  Those were the days, my friends.  It is good to be king.

We don’t have kings, of course, in our nation.  That’s what the United States is all about – our desire to distance ourselves from monarchies.  We have democratically elected leaders and systems of checks and balances, and that sort of thing, because we worry about power in the hands of any particular individual.  Absolute power is a dangerous thing in the hands of men and women.

The people of Israel experienced this over and over again.  God never wanted to give them a king in the first place, because they should have known God is the only king they would ever need.  But they had a serious case of keeping up with the Joneses.  Israel looked around and said, everyone in the neighborhood has a king; we want one too.  And finally, they got their way.

This is where that old saying, “Be careful what you wish for,” seems apt.  For hundreds of years, between the occasional benevolent monarch, they were beset with cruel, careless, and malevolent leaders.  The problem with absolute power was absolutely clear.  But the only ones speaking up about it were the prophets, including Jeremiah, calling out those shepherds who destroy the flock.  A shepherd who destroys the flock!  Shameful, isn’t it?  To allow the destruction of those you have been entrusted with care of; to abandon the least powerful and most vulnerable of the flock for the sake of your own gain.  These are, as the Lord says, evil doings.

No one but the prophets were speaking out about it, because no one really wanted to put themselves at risk by challenging the ultimate authority in the land.  Most will choose to rally around the ruler because it is the safer thing to do, thereby making it many times worse for the one who would protest.  Not only will they have the wrath of the king but they will have the wrath of the whole kingdom coming down on them for the crime of disturbing the peace.

And when Jesus challenged the authorities of his day, this is what happened.  It did not matter that he made no claims to be king of Israel.  It did not matter that he voiced no intentions of revolting against kings or emperors.  It did not matter that he broke no laws of the empire.  It only mattered that he questioned the conventional wisdom.  He shone a light on the cracks where evil seeped in.  He peeled away the veneer of law and order, showing the corruption that lay beneath.  This just would not be tolerated because we all, every one of us, wants to believe that the system is ok, that the benefits we carve out from it, however small they might be, are safe.  My tax cuts, my job, my cheap goods are safe.

So it wasn’t just the empire that could not tolerate someone like Jesus.  The Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Chief Priests, who had all carved out their little realms of power could not tolerate Jesus.  The people who just lived day to day, hand to mouth, a breath away from homelessness, who had carved out their tiny realms of what little they had, who heard the authorities warn he was a threat to their safety – they could not tolerate Jesus.  Jesus had to be cast as a criminal, an enemy of the state. 

So they mocked him as king, oblivious to the truth of what they were saying.  They hung him on the cross, alongside two other men who had been charged and convicted in their courts.  And one of these men turned to Jesus and said, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

Remember me when you come into your kingdom.  This one hanging alongside him recognized him for who he was.  He saw in him what so many others could not see, the kingdom of God.  And this man wanted to be a part of this kingdom. 

Perhaps the only reason this man could speak this way was because he had nothing left to lose.  

The truth is that for most of us it is a hard thing to proclaim Jesus’ kingdom because so much of what we value stands as a barrier to it.  The truth is that we may not want to recognize the kingdom of Jesus because it bids us come and die along with him.  The truth is that if we live in fear we won’t be able to see that his kingdom is not just pie in the sky in the sweet by and by, but is also here and now.  The kingdom is in our midst. 

The kingdom of Jesus is here as well as there.  It is now as well as then.  The kingdom of God is present to all who can see it and live into it, and living into it means dying to all that resists it.

Christ is the king of both heaven and earth, of here and now and always, of this realm and the realm of eternity.  He is the one who would be called, in the words of Jeremiah, The Lord Is Our Righteousness.  And we cannot make light of this kingship.  It does not serve us or this world well if we try to reduce his realm in time and place to one hour on a Sunday morning, one room in one building. 

It does not do to reduce his rule to the lord who puts Band-Aids on my wounds, the lord who is my cheerleader, I shall not lack self-confidence.  It does not do to pit him against others because he is my Jesus.  It does not do to claim him as the lord of my needs while ignoring the needs of the refugee, the slave, the hungry, and the homeless. 

If Christ is our king, we will stand with those whom he stands beside, however much the powers of this world despise them.  We will stand with whom he stands with, however different they might seem from us.  We are being called to do this even now.

There has been a new level of hate unleashed in our land.  We are seeing this hate expressed against those who live on the margins of our society – immigrants, or those who simply look like immigrants; racial and ethnic and religious minorities. We must resist this, if we believe in the kingship of Jesus.  We must work for justice if we are citizens of the kingdom of Jesus.

Jesus rules in this world wherever there are people who choose his reign over the reign of might makes right.  Jesus rules in this world wherever there are people who choose to stand where he stands – with the outcasts of this world, the least, the last, and the lost.

Whenever someone stands with the person who is being taunted or bullied.  Whenever someone gives up a privilege so that another might have their basic human dignity.  Whenever someone calls out the authorities who are neglecting their responsibility as the shepherd to all the sheep. 

Jesus rules in this world when he rules in our hearts.  And when he rules in our hearts, the world will know it, my friends.  The world will know it.