Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
December 11, 2005

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

We have arrived at the third Sunday of Advent. For us this year it will in effect be the last Sunday of Advent, even though technically we still have one more to go. Next Sunday the highlight of our service will be our children’s Christmas pageant, not a first for this congregation but the first Christmas pageant here in a long time. That service will combine Advent and Christmas themes, beginning with an Advent hymn and the fourth Advent candle, then moving into Christmas for the pageant. I won’t preach, a relief to many of you I’m sure, so this is the last chance I’ll have this year to talk to you about the meaning of Advent.

As I’ve been thinking about doing that this past week, I’ve been struggling with a curious, or at least an interesting, fact about the lectionary readings appointed for the Sundays of Advent. Those readings include a couple of different versions from different Gospels of the story of John the Baptist. You know John the Baptist. He’s the wild man wearing sackcloth and eating locusts and wild honey, baptizing people in the Jordan River in the days before Jesus began his ministry in Galilee. He appears in all four Gospels. According to our tradition, John baptized Jesus. As an historical matter it seems to me that Jesus was probably originally a disciple of John. In Mark, the earliest Gospel, Jesus’ first public pronouncement is identical to John’s message: "Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand." See Mark 1:14 Be that as it may, in all of the Gospels John the Baptist comes before Jesus.

At least, he comes before Jesus’ adult ministry. What has made the use of John the Baptist texts as Advent readings seem strange to me is that although John comes before Jesus’ adult ministry, he doesn’t come before Jesus’ birth. Advent is the time of awaiting Jesus’ birth, not his adult ministry. So why John the Baptist in Advent? I guess the reason is that although John doesn’t have anything to do with Jesus’ birth, the Gospels do portray him as having everything to do with people preparing for the coming of Jesus. Thus, the Gospel of John that we just heard has John the Baptist say: I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’... John 1:23

That "make straight" may sound a bit obscure, but it is a quote, sort of, of Isaiah 40:3. That text was in our lectionary readings last week. It reads: "A voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.’" That Isaiah text, which we considered last week, is about preparing for God leading the Hebrew people out of exile in Babylon back home to Jerusalem. It is about the people preparing to participate in the work that God will do. When the Gospels put the same words in the mouth of the one who announced the coming of Jesus, they come to be about the people preparing to participate in the work that God will do in Christ Jesus. And that of course is what Advent is about. So even though these John the Baptist texts don’t have anything directly to do with the birth of Jesus, they are nonetheless appropriate Advent texts. In them, the Gospels call us in this Advent season to prepare for the coming of Jesus.

Well, OK. We’re supposed to prepare for the coming of Jesus, but what does that mean? That’s not an easy question, but because I am so appalled by what our culture has made of Christmas I feel compelled to mention briefly what preparing for the coming of Jesus does not mean. It does not mean covering our homes with gaudy light displays containing non-Christian images like Santa Claus, reindeer, and snowmen. It does not mean going into debt up to our eyeballs to buy overpriced presents for everyone we think will be offended if we don’t give them something or from whom we hope to receive something in return. It doesn’t mean allowing ourselves to be bombarded with insipid versions of the sacred song Silent Night in purely secular setting like Fred Meyer or Safeway, as we all have been in recent days. In other words, preparing for the coming of Jesus does not mean what our secular culture, which has appropriated the Christian holiday Christmas and turned it into a secular mid-winter festival and shopping spree tells us it means. No, for us Christians preparing for the coming of Jesus is something very different indeed. All of those things are superficial, external, material things. True preparation for Jesus is an deep, internal, spiritual thing. It involves prayer not payments. It involves discernment not purchases. It involves seeking to be honest with ourselves, not seeking to impress others or curry their favor.

Which is all very well and good, but what does it mean precisely? When we turn inward, pray, and strive for honesty with our selves, what precisely are we doing? Let me suggest that true preparation for the coming of Christ is a two step process. The first step is honestly to discern what our need for Jesus is. God comes to us in our need, but why do we need God to come to us? The answer to that question may be different for each one of us, which is why our preparation must include personal discernment. What is our need? What is your need, or mine? Our Christian tradition has mostly said that we need Jesus because we need God to forgive our sin. That’s pretty much the only message most of us have ever heard from Christianity. Jesus came to save sinners, we’re told. Jesus died for our sins, we’re told; and certainly sin is a reality in the world and in our lives. So maybe forgiveness of sin is one reason why you need Jesus to come into your life, or I need Jesus to come into mine.

Let me suggest, however, that it is not the only, or for many of us the primary, reason why we need Jesus. For me and for many of us I think we need more than anything else simply to know that we are not alone. We need to know that God is present in our lives. The universe is so immense, so cold, so seemingly uncaring. Our lives and the lives of our loved ones are so fragile. We humans seem so incapable of creating a world at peace, with true justice for all of God’s people. It can all seem so meaningless, so futile. In the face of those existential realities, what we need more than anything else is Emmanuel, God With Us. In other words, we need Jesus.

Preparing for his coming means first of all admitting our need, and that’s not an easy thing for many of us to do. We are proud people, most of us. We’ve been told all our lives that we need to be strong, to be self-reliant, not to depend on anyone else but only on ourselves. There’s a line in Barbra Streisand’s song "People" that expresses the idea well. It goes: "Children meeting other children, and yet letting our grown-up pride hide all the need inside." That’s what we do. Out of pride we hid our need. We tend to see need as weakness and weakness as a bad thing. How many people have you known who have needed help because of a change of their life circumstances, often illness or disability, but who have refused to ask for help or even to accept it when it is offered? I’ve known many, and I suspect that many of you have too. We tend to see ourselves as people who give help to others, not as people who need help from others. I suspect that for many of us it’s the same with our relationship with God. We never really admit our need of God out of pride or a misguided and unrealistic sense of self-sufficiency.

Which leads us to the second step in my two-step process of preparing for Jesus. The first step is discernment of our need. The second step is to humble ourselves, to soften our hearts, get over our pride, and admit our need. It is being willing to accept God’s help. Humbling ourselves is not easy for proud people like us, but you can’t help me unless I open myself to your help. I can’t help you unless you open yourself to my help. It’s the same with God. God doesn’t overpower our psychological defense mechanisms and force God’s help on us. We have open our hearts to God’s desire to help us. If we don’t, Christmas when it comes will do us no good.

And here’s one more thing: We have to let God help us God’s way. We humans it seems really do want God to do it our way. We want God to be Santa Claus. We want God to fix things, to make us and our loved ones well, to keep bad things from happening to good people like us. If you don’t believe that many Christians see God as a cosmic Santa Claus consider the sign I say on a reader board in Kenmore just this past week. It said: "I’m keeping a list too. God." Yet Christmas tells us that that’s not how God does it. We have to let God be God. We have to let God do it God’s way. In other words, we have to let God come to us in the form of a helpless baby who to the world’s eyes can’t do anything for us. We have to let God come to us as a helpless infant, as one who has needs himself. As one who later in life will serve rather than rule, who will die to show God’s solidarity with us in all the aspects of our lives and even in our deaths. We need to let God be God, who dies on a cross in the person of Jesus rather than wage war against evil even for the survival of God’s own Son. In our pride we think we know a better way for God to do it. As we prepare for the coming of that infant Savior, we need to get over it. We need to let God be God and not insist that God fit our definition of God.

So, this is a time to prepare for the coming of Christ. It is a time to discern our need, to admit our need, and to open ourselves to God’s help in that need. The help will come. It will come on Christmas. It will come on Good Friday. It will come on Easter. But it will come only if we let it. So go ahead and put the lights on the house. Buy presents for your friends and loved ones. Put up with insipid renditions of Silent Night and even let yourself be regaled with "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" and "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer." It’s OK. It’s not what Christmas is about, but it can all be a lot of fun. It brings back wonderful childhood memories-well maybe some of them like "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" aren’t that wonderful, but still, a lot of them are. Just remember in it all that for now we are in Advent. Jesus isn’t here yet. This is the time of preparation. This is the time of discernment, confession, and humility. This is Advent. May God bless this holy time. Amen.