Sermon 12/14/14
Luke 3:7-18
Hurry Up and Wait:
Message
Every year
around this time, we see news stories and facebook posts and tv coverage of the
“War on Christmas.” There’s a story about whether or not you can say “Merry
Christmas” anymore or if you must say “Happy Holidays.” People urge us to
remember that “Jesus is the reason for the season,” and warn against “taking
Christ out of Christmas.” Maybe you’ve even been frustrated by the
secularization of the season. I certainly get frustrated by the consumerism,
the commercialism, as if spending more and more money will somehow bring us a
more joyful and meaningful experience celebrating the birth of Jesus. But I
wonder, as we reflect on this season, what might happen if we worried less
about how others might try to “take Christ out” of Christmas, if such a thing
were even possible, and wondered more about how we, how you and I can produce any evidence that we’re
working to put Christ into our
preparation for Christmas. We can’t control what other people do, much as we
might like to. But we are, in fact, totally responsible for our own behavior.
And so, when it comes to Christ in Christmas, we have to ask: Are we putting Christ in? Rev. Robb McCoy
writes, “Nothing can take Christ out of Christmas as long as I strive to be
Christ in Christmas.” And that’s his sort of slogan for the season: “Be Christ
in Christmas.” He tries to think of tangible, meaningful ways that he can act
and live and interact as Christ in Christmas, and urges us to do the same. How
can we be Christ in Christmas?
Last week we talked about our role as
messengers. I asked what others would know from us about Christmas, about
Jesus, about God, with us as the messengers. We’re the messengers of God in
these days, the ones tasked with sharing the message, the good news. What kind
of messengers are we? Today, we turn our attention to making sure we know
exactly what our message is. What is
the message that we’re delivering? Last week we looked at John the Baptist,
messenger, announcing Jesus’ pending arrival, and today, we’re right back with
John again. But this time we look to Luke’s gospel for a little more insight on
the message that John was sharing.
As our text opens, crowds are coming out to John
to be baptized. Baptism like this was a cleansing ritual, practiced in many
traditions. It signified renewal, a fresh start. So folks are coming to John to
be baptized. But he’s not exactly warm and welcoming when he sees them: “You
brood of vipers!” he hells. “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
Bear fruits worthy of repentance.” He goes on to say that the crowds should not
expect to rely on their Judaism, their families, their history, their cultural
identity, to give them a free pass from responsibility. “Do not begin 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.” In other words, yes, God has had
a special relationship with God’s people. But that doesn’t give you the freedom
to do anything you want. You still have to hold up your part of the
relationship, the covenant. John continues forebodingly: “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.”
John obviously
catches the attention of his audience – they begin asking him what they should
do. He replies to them, to tax collectors, to soldiers – whoever has two cloaks
must share, whoever has food must share, whoever has power , whoever has money
must be fair and just. The people are filled with expectation at John’s words,
and they wonder whether John himself might not be the messiah they are waiting
for. But he insists he is not: “I am not worthy to untie his sandals,” John
says. But, he leaves them, and us, with a compelling images of the messiah.
“His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather
the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
A winnowing fork was a farming tool used to toss wheat into the air, so that
the wind would catch the good grain and separate it from the useless chaff. Our
passage concludes, “So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good
news to the people.”
Is John’s message “Good News?”
There’s such an underlying tone of threat, between the vipers, the ax, and the
winnowing fork. And yet, obviously his message was compelling enough to have
crowds flocking to him to be baptized, ready to say: I’m changing things in my
life starting now. John is sharing
with the crowds, with us, his vision of what the messiah will be. In
fact, John will eventually have to send word to Jesus to find out if he really
is the messiah, because Jesus certainly acted differently than John was
expecting. John sees judgment, just
as surely as Jesus comes with salvation – a bit different in emphasis.
John has a picture of the messiah that is his own – but the good news still
comes because of the core of what John is preaching, as we read last week:
Repentance for the forgiveness of sins. What John is preaching, at heart, is
that all this preparation is for one who is coming who has the power to free us
from the consequences of our sins, one who has the power to cancel out the
results of our messes. And that, certainly, is good news. Remember, way back to
the summer, when we talked about what the good news was Jesus was talking
about. He came preaching about God’s kingdom, God’s reign, how it was here and
present and not far off and unattainable in this life. Good news. So both John
and Jesus preach the same action in light of this arriving kingdom: Repent. It
means literally: change the direction of your mind. Change the direction of
your life from all the other ways you’ve been wandering, and head in God’s
direction fast, because God’s realm is
right here, and you don’t want to miss out.
A good message.
John tells
us, though, that we need to “bear fruit worthy of repentance.” In other words,
baptism and saying you “repent,” you’re starting fresh is great – but let’s see some signs that will show that we’ve actually
heard – and lived – the message we’ve received. He gives some examples – to
tax-collectors, to soldiers, to anyone who asks – about how they, even those
who might normally be shunned or disliked or excluded – they – everyone – can bear the fruit of
repentance. And not only does John urge the crowds to prepare for the kingdom of God’s imminent arrival by acts of repentance
that make room for God, but also those
very acts of repentance, preparation, and renewal are in themselves signs of God’s kingdom. Whenever I think of John
the Baptist I always think of that phrase “the proof is in the pudding.” The
little proverb is actually a shortening of the original saying, “the proof of
the pudding is in the eating.” It means that you can tell how good a pudding is
not by describing but by actually eating it! Nothing will prove the goodness
like eating it will. That’s what John means about fruit – we can describe our
transformation all we want. But nothing will prove that our lives are transformed
better than our actually transformed
lives. Nothing will better demonstrate that we’re Christ followers than our actually following Jesus. And so, then,
nothing will better help us be messengers of the Christmas message than
actually being the message with our
very lives. Be Christ in Christmas.
As
Christians, we celebrate what is called incarnational
faith. Incarnation means for us first of all the event of Christ’s birth –
God became human. It means embodied.
Jesus is called God-with-us, Immanuel. As the gospel of John puts it so
beautifully, “and the word became flesh, and dwelt among us.” Our faith is
embodied in God incarnate. Jesus is God-in-the-flesh, come to live among us. We
celebrate it as a sign of God’s great love for us, that when we failed to get
the message in so many other ways, God made the message tangible, made God’s
own self into the living embodied
message in Jesus Christ, the light of the world.
But our
incarnational theology doesn’t end there. It isn’t just that Jesus is the light
of the world. The gospels tell us that we,
then, as followers of Jesus, are the light too. We’re the light of the
world, meant to shine for others to see, so that they might see Christ within
us. We are the body of Christ in the world, the hands and feet of Jesus in the
world. We are the body of Christ, the embodiment of Christ, in fact the incarnation of Christ that lives in the
world today. We’re not just the messengers. We embody the message. We have the
potential, the power, the responsibility to
be Christ in Christmas.
Here’s the
amazing thing. When we seek to be Christ in Christmas, which is exactly
what we incarnational folks are supposed to
be, called to be, created to be doing, we are not only the messengers of this good news. We actually embody the
message itself. If we are Christ in Christmas, we become living, breathing,
walking and talking messages of good news. And when we do that, when we live
and breathe the good news, there’s no way we can miss the meaning of Christmas.
Friends, if you find yourself worrying that we’re losing our grasp on
Christmas, the best thing you can do is look into your hearts, and see if you
find Christ there. Is the light of Christ shining from you? Are you not only a
messenger, but the message? When people meet you, talk to you, interact with
you – and by people I mean all the
people – are they seeing Christ in you? If they do, we won’t have anything to
lament! Be the message. Be Christ in Christmas. Amen.
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