Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
[please click on one of the items above for more information]
============================================================
"Who Invited This Man?" Dr. Julie Adkins
Texts: Malachi 3:1-4 and Luke 3:1-6
SERMON
You know,
John the Baptist is not one of
God’s most gentle or tactful creatures.
He seems to have a knack for
telling people the truth about themselves
in a way that makes them angry, or uncomfortable, or both.
And if people do take offense at him …
well, that’s too bad, but that’s just the way it is.
John calls ‘em like he sees’em.
I have had fun imagining John the Baptist
in certain TV commercials …
although, since I almost never watch television any more,
most of these are old examples …
John the Baptist is the kind of person
who could walk up to you on the street
and say, "Oh … you’ve got ring around the collar."
He’d enjoy showing up at your house just as the bridge club was arriving,
and putting on a white glove,
and checking for dust on the tops of everything.
John the Baptist
would tell you if you had bad breath,
and he would embarrass you in front of everyone at Tom Thumb
if he caught you squeezing the Charmin.
Now those are of course trivial examples …
but John was a brutally honest kind of a guy.
He had a high standard for himself
in terms of obedience to God …
and he applied that same standard to all people,
at least, to those who claimed to believe in God.
And if you didn’t live up to it,
he was going to tell you about it!
All of which makes him a sort of strange choice
to bring in every year around Christmastime.
And yet each year, usually the second Sunday in Advent,
John shows up in our assigned lectionary readings.
And we wonder what to do with him …
and even beyond that, we wonder
who invited him in the first place?
Picture a quiet December evening …
you and the family are decorating the Christmas tree,
drinking hot chocolate, listening to Christmas carols,
when into your living room
walks this wild-eyes looking kind of man,
wearing a camel-hair shirt
and probably smelling like it, too.
And he comes in there yelling,
and calling you a brood of vipers,
or something pleasant like that …
and you’re so startled that
you drop your mug of hot chocolate on the carpet you just cleaned.
And John screams out "Repent!"
and then he starts pointing at each one of you.
"Dad! You’ve wasted a lot of time and energy this year
coveting your neighbor’s new car. Repent!"
"Mom! Several times this year
you have murdered your boss in your heart. Repent!"
"Sister! At least one a week, you take the car without asking permission.
That’s stealing! Repent!"
"Brother! You’ve been so busy playing on your Play Station
that twice already this week you’ve forgotten to feed the dog.
That’s selfishness! Repent!"
"All of you! Get serious about preparing the way of the Lord!"
And then he turns around and storms out of the house,
probably to go pester the neighbors.
Imagine the discussion among your family …
after you clean up the hot chocolate you spilled …
"Where did he come from?"
"I didn’t invite him …I thought maybe he was a friend of yours;
he certainly seems to know a lot about you!"
"And you, too, if you’ll recall …
Kids, does either of you know that crazy man?"
"No, Mom."
"Honest, never saw him before."
That’s John the Baptist.
You may not like him,
but you can’t forget him.
And he does come around again every year,
upsetting or at least interrupting
our carefully-made Christmas plans and preparations,
with his constant and sometimes embarrassing
proclamations of "Repent!"
Perhaps this is meant to suggest to us
that our preparations for Christmas will be incomplete at best
if we have not heard John, and heeded his words.
After all, it’s not terribly difficult
to prepare for Christmas outwardly.
Tiring and time-consuming, yes.
But most of us have no trouble remembering
that we want to buy a tree,
wrap presents, bake cookies, make travel plans.
After all, the stores and the newspaper and everyone else
have been reminding us ever since
they took down the "Back to School" stuff!
It’s harder to remember
to prepare ourselves inwardly for Christ’s coming …
if only because, these days,
it takes so much time and energy to prepare outwardly.
And I really think that’s why
John the Baptist has to show up each year,
at least in our churches,
if not literally in our living rooms.
We do have to be reminded
to get serious about preparing the way of the Lord.
Not only preparing his way into the world,
but preparing his way into ourselves.
And an important part of that process,
painful though it may be,
is repentance.
In order to make room for Christ to come into us,
we’re going to have to get rid of
some of the garbage that’s blocking his way.
Repentance is a weighty matter.
We know how hard it is sometimes
even to say we’re sorry for something,
and yet repentance goes even further than that.
It includes being sorry for
a particular action or a particular wrong,
but the Greek word, metanoia, (metanoia),
means a complete turning around.
It means not only feeling bad about
a particular wrong thing that we have done,
but it also means undergoing a radical change within ourselves,
so that we are never again tempted to do that thing.
That is hard.
In some areas of life,
it seems quite impossible.
Something that we simply will never have
the strength of character to do.
And when we reach that point …
that point where we realize that
there are some things we have to do with ourselves
that we simply cannot do …
then we are prepared for the coming of Christ.
When we realize that we need him.
That we positively cannot do on our own
some of the things we need to do.
That we have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
and we need God’s help to turn around.
I believe that’s why
we need to hear from John the Baptist every year …
probably more than once a year!
He calls us back to serious thinking
and preparation for Christ’s coming.
One of my favorite books in the world,
which I have read at least ten times,
is called Walking on Water …
it’s by Madeleine L’Engle,
who has written a number of children’s books that you may know about,
like A Wrinkle in Time and Meet the Austins,
but who also writes books for adults
about the journey of faith.
Anyhow, this particular book is subtitled,
"Reflections on Faith and Art" …
and at one point, she quotes an Anglican theologian, H. A. Williams,
who says,
"The opposite of sin can only be faith,
and never virtue."
That really struck me.
Because most of us try to fight sin –
our own and other people’s –
by trying harder to be good.
We work and work and work at it,
and fall short again and again,
and wonder what’s wrong.
But I think Williams is right.
The opposite of sin is not our own virtue.
It is, and has to be, faith.
Faith in Jesus Christ,
who comes with the power
to transform us and turn us around.
Faith in Jesus Christ,
whose coming John the Baptist is preparing us for,
even with his harsh words and strange gestures.
Faith in Jesus Christ,
who comes to us, as one of us, soon.
Praise God for faithful messengers like John!
Praise God for our Savior Jesus Christ.
Amen.
© 2003 Julie Adkins (e-mail: DrJAdkins@trinitypresdallas.org)