- 1st Reading – Baruch 5:1-9
- 2nd Reading – Philippians 1:4-6, 8-11
- Gospel – Luke 3:1-6
The other day I was opening Christmas cards and I noticed that every one of them showed a cute scene like baby Jesus in the manger surrounded by adoring angels and animals, or the three wise kings following the star to Bethlehem, or jolly old Santa in his red suit with a big bag full of gifts. But I’ve never gotten a Christmas card showing John the Baptist, that wild-eyed desert prophet with the scraggly beard, wearing a dusty camel’s hair shirt and munching on grasshoppers. I can only imagine what a card like that would say. “Greetings from our family at this special time of year. May these words from John the Baptist bring you Christmas cheer. ‘Repent, for the Kingdom of God is near…You brood of vipers! Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire’… Merry Xmas from the Thompsons.”
Somehow, I don’t think there is a big market for John the Baptist cards. He seems out of place in our celebration of Advent. “’Tis the season to be jolly,” as the old Christmas carol goes. Who wants to hear all that talk about repenting, about straightening out our lives…We almost want to say to him.
“Lighten up John! Don’t be such an old grinch! It’s almost Christmas. We’re trying to have fun here!” …And yet, every year at this time – on the second Sunday in Advent – here he is, in our faces again, admonishing us to get ourselves ready for the coming of the Messiah, the Christ.
Now you might be wondering what the heck does John have to do with Christmas. He didn’t even begin preaching and baptizing until thirty years after Jesus was born. Why do we pay so much attention to John while we await the coming of the Christ-child?
Well for one thing, only the gospels of Luke and Matthew tell us about the birth of Jesus, but all four gospels tell us about John the Baptist and his one burning mission in life – to prepare the people for the coming of Christ. John helps us understand that what happened on that first Christmas 2000 years ago HAS to make a difference in what happens today. If the birth of Jesus is what we say it is – the most incredible, earthshaking event in human history – then it HAS to change the world. We can’t have another Christmas come and go, the decorations get put away, the dried-out trees placed out on the curb and have everything go back to how it was before. No, the miracle of Christmas – God coming to us where we are – has to make a difference.
And that difference can only begin with you and me. That’s why we listen to John preach the same message every year, like a broken record, over and over. “Prepare the way of the Lord…Repent! Repent!” …We listen, but do we really believe his message is meant for us? Or are we like that cartoon character Ziggy? One day, as he’s walking along, Ziggy encounters one of those weird-looking street corner prophets carrying around a sign that says, “Repent, before it’s too late!”? And the innocent, naïve little Ziggy says, “Re-pent? I haven’t even pented yet.”
It’s so easy to hear a Biblical call to repent, to change our ways, and think that it somehow doesn’t apply to us. It’s for sinners, not good, respectable folk who come to church every week…But John’s message IS for us…In Matthew’s gospel we are told that even the religious leaders of the day traveled out to the wilderness to be baptized by John. He wasn’t very complimentary to them, calling them a “brood of vipers,” a bunch of snakes. These were respectable folk like you and me. John wanted them to understand that his message was for them as well as for the more obvious sinners. John’s message should wipe away any smug attitude we might have that we are the good guys in here (the church), and they are the bad guys out there.
Right now, I’ll bet some of you are thinking, “Okay, okay, we all have things we need to change, things we have to work on. But we’re getting ready for Christmas and trying to get in the holiday spirit and you’re hammering away on this repenting stuff…Can’t you save it until after Christmas, maybe for Lent?” …Well, that’s just the point, the Church wants us to hear John’s message today – and we’ll hear more from him in next week’s gospel – because there’s still time for us to make this Advent season different. We can make it more than mistletoe and malls, tinsel and trees, presents, and parties. These are all well and good, but it’s something much deeper. It’s preparing for Christmas, for the Lord’s coming, as if it’s the most important thing in the world – because it is. If you really think about it, it’s mind blowing: God loving the world so much that He comes to us in human flesh to redeem us from our sins, so that we might be with Him forever.
If you had an important guest coming to visit your home, you would give it a thorough cleaning, sweep out all the dirt, clear away the clutter, and throw out the trash. Should we do any less with our lives, our hearts as we await the coming of Jesus?
Shouldn’t we sweep out all the dirt, clear away the clutter, throw out the trash – in other words, clean up our act? If this Advent, this Christmas are we really going to make a difference, if we want them to be more than they have ever been before, if we want them to leave us better and the world better, then we can’t ignore John’s call to repent…We have to clean up our act…We have to sweep out all the bad habits and addictions….We have to throw away all our lame excuses, all our faulty attitudes…We have to trash all the junk inside us that makes us hate and hurt and use and abuse others…We have to toss out our selfishness…We have to get rid of everything that keeps us from fully welcoming Christ into our hearts, into our lives, everything that keeps us from being the people He wants us to be.
If we could do that my friends, if we could do that, there would be no better birthday gift we could give the Christ-child; it would be a gift more precious to Him than all the gold, and frankincense and myrrh from all the wise men who ever lived. AMEN.