So how are we doing one week into the season? Are you feeling the magic? Or are you a stressed-out wreck? Are you finding space and time to observe the small things and to appreciate God’s presence in them? Or is it already feeling like a mad dash to the December 25th finish line? Is it beginning to look a lot like Christmas? Or do you feel like Grandma just got run over by a reindeer?
If you’re like me it’s a little bit of both. I’m still reading Gerard Manley Hopkins every day and he’s helping me slow down and see God everywhere. We’ve got the Advent candles out at home and the Christmas music is playing. But I’m still a little overwhelmed sometimes.
I think it’s starting to show, too. Twice recently I have been working out at the Y in the high school with Matthew Henry, who has been a great personal trainer for me. Sadistic at times, but great. And once I walked out with somebody else’s glasses. Then a second time I had someone else’s workout book and another person’s keys. I wasn’t stealing these things – it’s just the way my brain is working these days. Overload.
So I’m not here today to try to deepen your anxiety about the season or to chastise you for failing to ‘do Christmas right.’ I’m here today for the same reason that you are – to try to keep ourselves listening for a word from God. We are waiting, like a Navy spouse for a returning ship, like a migratory bird for the unseen signal that tells them to fly north once more. We are waiting for Jesus in Advent and for God’s sake we want to do it right.
I began to get a little worried about Advent when I watched the tail end of the Macy’s parade in New York City on Thanksgiving morning. It was great to see the bands and the giant balloons and the floats. I like the parade. But the thing that really caught my eye was on the side of the main Macy’s department store where the parade ends at 34th Street. In bright Christmas lights was one word – “Believe.”
It’s the Macy’s slogan this year and you see it in their advertising. They are inviting us to believe – but they are not saying in what. They leave that for us to fill in.
I went to the website to try to find out what they mean by “Believe.” There was a Believe meter at the top of the page and it had four words with a little needle to indicate where we are in our belief. At the low end it says “Imagine.” And then it moves up in degrees to “Wish,” “Dream,” and finally “Believe.”
The company released a statement about the campaign and they said, “'Believe' is the articulation of everything we treasure about the holiday season and is an authentic celebration of the Christmas spirit. We felt strongly that this year it was important to remember and embrace the real sentiment of the season. We'd like to inspire all of America to believe."[i] And I keep wanting to say…in what?
It’s not their job to say what, of course. They are a national store chain serving a very diverse group of Americans. I’m not expecting them to start holding candlelight communion services in the toy aisles. But the simple word leaves me wanting more.
So how are we helping the world around us to see a savior worth believing in? What sort of messengers are we?
Our scripture readings for today lift up the role of the messenger who was to come before the Messiah. The Old Testament prophet Malachi talks about the messenger who will come to clear the way for God. But it’s not going to be a comfortable experience. Malachi says of the messenger, “Who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and the lye of the launderer. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.”
In other words, God’s advent into the world, God’s coming among us, is going to go against the grain of our expectations. God is going to straighten things out. God is going to restore the religious practices to what they should be. But it’s going to require us to change, to be transformed. To get ourselves aligned with God’s new reign will be like being washed with lye soap or purified like the fire that separates pure silver from the surrounding dross.
The passage from Luke confirms this. In introducing John the Baptizer, the one who came to prepare the way for Jesus, Luke goes back to the prophecies of Isaiah. Isaiah was talking to the people of Israel who had been taken off into exile and who were living in oppression far from their homeland in Babylon.
“A new day is coming,” Isaiah said, “when God will make a path through the desert to take God’s people home. The way things are now will be turned upside down.”
John the Baptizer had a similar message. Speaking to his people in a new day he saw that things were not the way they were supposed to be. The historical setting at the beginning of this passage tells us that things weren’t right. A Roman governor was sitting on the high places in the south. In the north there were corrupt Jewish kings. The high priesthood, which was supposed to be help by one leader, was held by Annas and Caiphas who will play a big role in Jesus’ crucifixion. But after listing all these rulers, where does Luke focus our attention? On a man out in the desert wearing animal skins and eating locusts and wild honey. Because that’s who was telling the people to repent, to turn around, to seek forgiveness of their sins. Because God was coming.
You know one thing these passages tell me? They tell me that God is after a whole lot more than just me. God wants to change me, but God is going to change the world. God loves the world and wants to see it transformed. God would like me to go along for the ride, but it’s not just about me. Slaves will be set free. The blind will be able to see. The poor will have good news preached to them. And those who are oppressed will see their liberation. God is doing all these things and wants us to join in what God is doing.
It reminds me of the story of Esther. Do you remember this story? Esther has become the queen, the wife of the Persian king, and an order has gone out from the palace that all the Jews should be killed. So Esther’s uncle Mordecai comes and tells her, “Do not think that in the king's palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter…Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this [Esther 4:13-14, NRSV]. Mordecai tells her that God is going to deliver the people. The question for Esther is whether she will use the position she has to cooperate with God, painful as that might be for her, or whether she will let this moment pass by without participating.
So what would it mean if we took this opportunity to be participants with God in the new day coming? What would it mean if our identity as Christians was not something that we took for granted but something that led us to doing something different in this world? What if we found ways to give of ourselves and our resources in touching the people of our community who are truly suffering? What if we changed our Christmas spending so that we didn’t feel compelled to give presents beyond our means?
What if we invited our friends and neighbors to experience the story of Christmas with us by inviting them to church or to Wednesday night or an Advent gathering? It’s a risk, I know. We have to risk being open about what we care about and believe. We have to risk that by announcing our faith others might start to think of us as one of those kind of people. But if God is truly changing the world, wouldn’t it be a shame if they and we didn’t respond somehow?
What if we searched our hearts to see those places that still need to be burned by the refiner’s fire? Where are those places that still need to be given over to God? What is keeping us from experiencing the fullness of God’s love for us and for the world? That’s what needs to be burned away.
We’re going to have some failures along the way. It’s inevitable. But I’m learning not to be afraid of failure. In my physical training sometimes Matthew will have me do an exercise to the point of failure. But every time I stretch and utilize those muscles until they can’t do that particular motion any more – every failure leads to a stronger muscle. If we are not stretching ourselves in following Jesus, then we won’t be prepared to see him, to greet him, to know him in his advent here.
Some of my Methodist clergy colleagues in northern Virginia have been having a series of discussions they are calling holy conferencing. This week I noticed they are having a conversation on the emerging church – a loose term for new expressions of church in our day. In their promo for the meeting they quoted Leonard Sweet, who is a provocative writer about the church. Sweet looks over the landscape of troubled churches and says, “God is not so much dechurching Christianity as re-Christianizing the church. The crisis of the church today has little to do with dwindling number, aging congregations, outdated facilities, financial crises, and lace-by-day/ leather-by-night priests. Today’s church crisis stems from one thing: Jesus Deficit Disorder. The church’s narrative is biblically, theologically, and spiritually bankrupt. The church has been busy telling stories other than God’s story, dreaming other dreams than God’s dream as revealed by Jesus.”[ii]
What if we have been too captivated by the circus in the city, the madness at the mall, and have forgotten to tell our story – the story that God is changing the world and wants us to be a part of it? Christmas is coming. Do you feel the burn? It’s the sign of something new about to be born. Thanks be to God.
Malachi 3:1-4
“Look, I am sending my messenger who will clear the way before me. And suddenly Adonai will come to his temple, the one whom you seek; and the messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight, will surely come,” says Yahweh, Lord of Hosts.
But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and the lye of the launderer. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver. He will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to Yahweh as in the days of old and as in former years.
Luke 3:1-6
In the fifteenth year of the reign of the Caesar Tiberius, during the reign of Pontius Pilate over Judea, and when Herod was tetrarch over Galilee and his brother Philip was tetrarch over Iturea and the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He came through all the area of the Jordan proclaiming a baptism of repentance and remission of sins.
As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, "The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his path. Every valley will be filled and every hill and mountain leveled. Every crooked way will be straightened and rough places made into a level way. And all flesh will see the salvation of God."
[i] Sarah Mahoney, “Macy’s ‘Believe’ Campaign Rings Truer than Ever,” MediaPost Publications, 3 Nov 2008, http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=94000.
[ii] Leonard Sweet, So Beautiful, [David C. Cook, 2009], p. 20.
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