sermons — Page 49 — Andy James

a first draft

January 8, 2011 By Andy James

I’m taking the unusual step of posting my first draft of the sermon tomorrow in light of the events of today. I’m particularly appreciative of any comments you might have over the next ten hours or so as I continue to refine this. Thanks for participating in this sermon crowdsourcing!

Texts: Isaiah 42:1-9; Matthew 3:13-17

Yesterday morning, I had the privilege of speaking with a group of women and men at the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica here in Queens about the process and practice of preaching. They are in the midst of a training program to explore and develop their gifts for ministry in that congregation, and as they begin their conversation about preaching, I talked with them about how I approach each week’s sermon. They asked me lots of great questions, but one of our conversations sticks out in light of everything else that happened yesterday. We talked a bit about what I’ve done when I’ve needed to change a sermon, and I noted that I have on occasion chosen to make major changes to my sermon on Saturday night or even Sunday morning.

Today is one of those days. About the same time I got home from that gathering in Jamaica, a gunman shot into a crowd who had gathered outside a supermarket to meet with their representative in the U.S. House of Representatives, and as you probably know, some nineteen people were shot, and six of those have died, including a federal judge who had stopped by to say hello. I spent a good bit of yesterday afternoon in shock, following the story on TV and online, paying probably too much attention to all the details, and tracking the various details about this deeply disturbing and troubling event. So today I can’t just talk about the baptism of Jesus in the same way I had planned to do before the events of yesterday.

One statement in all the events of yesterday stuck out to me in light of our scripture readings for today. The new speaker of the house, John Boehner, offered a simple and short statement in response, saying in part: “An attack on one who serves is an attack on all who serve.” His words are an important reminder that this sort of tragic violence is simply not acceptable.

But even more so, I think his words point us to the prophet Isaiah, one who proclaimed that servanthood is something that comes from God and that the true servant comes to bring justice and righteousness without violence or even a raised voice, showing us that God’s way is unlike our human ways and demands justice in the midst of incredible hope and peace. This servant is steadfast and faithful in seeking and establishing justice, and the earth longs for this to become real.

In light of the events of yesterday, I think our longings for justice to become real are deeper than ever – not just for those who committed this senseless crime to be brought to trial but for something new and different to take hold around us, for violence to ease and warfare to end, for a different way of thinking and being and most especially speaking to take root, putting aside the vitriol and hate on all sides, setting aside the language of violence that pervades so much of our culture when we make “targets” of politicians in the next election, “fight a battle” against illness, or even suggest that we should be “soldiers of the cross” in carrying God’s message to the world, but instead opening ourselves to God’s real and difficult work of bearing forth righteousness and justice into our world. And so the servant joins in this work, stepping up to the difficult task of making God’s way real in the world and standing alongside all those who serve in countless – even at times seemingly conflicting – ways to embody this faithful and persistent justice in the world.

The prophet makes this way of justice clear, but then he continues by speaking directly to the servant, offering words of encouragement and hope for the challenges ahead, and pointing to the hope of justice and peace as the primary purpose and goal of the servant’s work. The servant stands with a mandate from God to be something new, to place the covenant made with Israel into bodily, human form, to be accompanied by God’s presence in the midst of trial, to open a new way for all who face uncertainty, pain, and hurt, and to bring light to the darkness that too often covers the world. In the midst of such incredible pain and hurt, God acts in and through the servant to make all things new, to embody and spread comfort and hope and peace and wholeness into the places of harm and hurt, to stand with those are attacked in body, mind, and spirit, and to make it clear that no one who walks in this way of new life and service will stand alone.

In the end, that is the real important message of the baptism of Jesus for us, too – we do not face this way of life alone. The one whose birth we have celebrated together over the last few weeks – Jesus – was human just like us, lived and breathed and thought just like us, faced temptations just like us, walked and ran and sang and danced just like us, and died just as we will one day do. Most of all, Jesus was baptized just like us – the exact meaning of that baptism can and will be debated, but because we share in his baptism and his life and his death and his resurrection, we can be sure that we are not alone.

We are not alone when things get tough – when life is hard and death and uncertainty surround us, when the darkness of the world seems to close in, when peace and justice seem far off and uncertain, as we have seen all too much in recent days. In these moments, we are not alone because Jesus shares our baptism and makes us whole again.

But we are also not alone when we walk forth from this place as God’s baptized servants – when we struggle to live out the ways of peace and justice set forth for the servant, when we feel resistance to God’s call to step out in a new way of hope, when we need help to find persistence and hope in the midst of changing and uncertain times, and even when we see little glimpses of God’s light breaking into the darkness of our lives and our world. In these moments too, we are not alone because Jesus shares our baptism and invites us to join him in fulfilling all righteousness.

The days ahead for us as a nation will be difficult. We have a tremendous task of mourning ahead for those who died, and even at this early moment, there seems also to be some deeper reflection necessary as well. As Christian thinker Diana Butler Bass put it:

We need some sustained spiritual reflection on how badly we have behaved in recent years as Americans – how much we’ve allowed fear to motivate our politics, how cruel we’ve allowed our discourse to become, how little we’ve listened, how much we’ve dehumanized public servants, how much we hate.

But the good news of Jesus’ baptism is that he shares in this moment with us. He invites us to this conversation, he comforts us in the midst of our pain and sorrow and confusion and hurt, he shows us where we have gone wrong, he gives us grace and mercy for all our faults, he offers us wisdom for finding a new way, and he steps in to lead us there himself. May Jesus’ baptism that we celebrate today remind us of these waters that we share, waters poured out in mercy for a broken and fearful world as we face brokenness and fear head on, so that we might go forth to walk in the light and peace and justice of God each and every day. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

The Other Side of Christmas

January 2, 2011 By Andy James

a sermon for the Second Sunday of Christmas on Matthew 2:13-23
preached at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone on January 2, 2011

Happy ninth day of Christmas! With the blizzard and all the other things swirling around us over the past week, it is easy to forget that our celebration of Christmas continues today and concludes only with Epiphany on Thursday and Baptism of the Lord next Sunday. These twelve days remind us that there’s more to the coming of Jesus than a baby born in a manger, angels appearing to shepherds, or even the journey of the wise men to Bethlehem, and our reading this morning from Matthew’s gospel is an incredible and even disturbing reminder of the other side of Christmas.

This truly unpleasant text shows up in the lectionary on the Sunday after Christmas every three years, just rarely enough that pastors can easily skip over it with a Christmas carol sing or pass it off to a guest preacher! Last Sunday, while relaxing at my parents’ house on the day after Christmas, we tuned in the downtown Methodist church’s weekly TV broadcast to find a young woman, their pastor to young adults, facing the challenges of preaching this text. She had drawn the short straw this year to preach on the day after Christmas, so she offered a simple proclamation of this strange text about mass murder in the midst of a season filled with joy. So today, we’re facing that text together, too, not so that I can just reuse her insights but because the light of our candles on Christmas Eve fades and the strains of our carols grow faint on the other side of Christmas as the real world creeps back into things and we have to make sense of love and hate in our world.

According to Matthew’s gospel, visitors came to Judea looking for Jesus after seeing a star in the east that indicated that the king of the Jews had been born. They started their search for the newborn king at the palace, where they learned little and only aroused the puppet king Herod’s attention. As they continued their search, Herod asked them to return and give him a full report on what they found, but after they found the child, they went directly home by another road.

So in our reading today, we hear that an angel of the Lord spoke to Joseph and directed him to flee to Egypt with Mary and his newborn son. They got away just in time. Once Herod figured out that the wise men were not going to help him put down this apparent threat to his reign, he decreed that all children in and around Bethlehem under age two were to be killed. As a side note, I think it is important to note that there is no historical record of this mass murder of about twenty children in this small village, but as one commentator puts it, “it is nevertheless consistent with what we know about Herod.” (R. Alan Culpepper, Feasting on the Word) He was known to have his enemies and even his friends ruthlessly punished for crossing him, and that commentator notes that he even commanded that upon his death “political prisoners should be killed so that there would be mourning throughout the land.” With this kind of king holding even limited power, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus remained in Egypt until they received word in another dream that Herod was dead. But Joseph was still concerned – Herod’s son Archelaus was his successor, and Joseph suspected that cruelty and oppression of Herod’s sort rarely skips a generation, so rather than returning to Bethlehem, they made a new home in Nazareth, in the region of Galilee, outside the reach of Herod and Archelaus. Finally settled in to their new home in Nazareth, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus could emerge from the other side of Christmas, yet they surely would not be the same as they tried to make sense of the love and hate they had witnessed.

Matthew suggests in his story that all these things happened to fulfill the words of the prophets and show that Jesus had been through all the trials of the Hebrew people – going down to Egypt, returning to the promised land, and continuing in his own version of exile – so that he could emerge to a new way of faithfulness even amidst the old stories (Stanley P. Saunders, Preaching the Gospel of Matthew), an important perspective for his first readers who were most likely steeped in Judaism. But there is something equally if not more important for us in these words to help us see that there is more to Christmas than dreams (and occasional realities!) of a white Christmas, visits from Santa Claus, or even a baby born in a manger.

The other side of Christmas is clear to many in our world, but we so rarely speak of it. Some people find the joy of this season so difficult in the midst of mourning, pain, and loss, as they face the season distant from those they love due to death, illness, or displacement. Others must travel to spend these days with friends and family as is the custom and requirement, only to find even the best-laid plans disrupted by snowstorms and airlines and other complications that we know all too well after this last week. But even these pale in comparison to the millions around our world who face harsh persecution and life in exile more directly as Jesus, Mary, and Joseph did, forced to move from their homes and families due to genocide, suffering, war, and religious or ethnic strife.

And so Matthew also offers us a story that reminds us that Jesus knew the other side of Christmas very, very well himself. Mourning, pain, and loss came right alongside his birth. Strange travels and new homes were part of his experience as an infant. Exile and displacement were his experience from his earliest months. In fact, I don’t think it is unreasonable to suggest that the prosperity and joy that stand as the ideal for us in these days were far from Jesus’ own experience. Even though he began his days with visitors from far away who brought him fine and extravagant gifts, Jesus lived much of his life like a refugee, wandering from place to place, never completely at home, always waiting in fear of what might come next, surviving only by the power of God to protect, save, deliver, and free.

With a savior like this, whose origins are on the other side of Christmas, in a world very different from our own, it seems to me that we should not get too comfortable on this side of Christmas. Jesus is already on that other side of Christmas, and his life and ministry and death and resurrection all invite us to join him in that world – our world, filled with refugees, homeless women and men, persecuted persons, and victims of every sort of violence and hatred – our world that so desperately needs the work he has already begun to bring comfort and peace and hope and salvation to all.

Our world needs more people to step in and stand with those who are in times and places and situations like Jesus’ – those we know in our lives who find new situations and difficult challenges before them in this new calendar year because of death, illness, or other uncertainty; those in our world who are displaced from their homes or are forced to walk away from their families and friends for their own safety, like refugees in Palestine or Darfur; those whose lives have been torn apart by war, like women, men, and children in Rwanda, North and South Korea, Afghanistan, and Iraq; and even those in our own city and nation who are forced to move from place to place to find work or a safe place to live.

One week from today, the people of southern Sudan will vote on their independence after decades of violence and war have torn their lives apart. Over the coming week, as a step into that other side of Christmas, I urge you to keep the people of Sudan in your prayers, and there are a few suggestions for prayers available on handouts in the auditorium at refreshments today. While there may seem to be little we can do to make a difference in these and other similar situations, the life of none less than Jesus himself demands that we speak up about injustice, call out for life and peace in the midst of death and destruction, pray for a new way to take hold and shape in our world, and step in where we can in whatever way that we can to work for a world where violence is not the final word and God can step in to make all things new.

And so my friends, this is the other side of Christmas – a place where we join God in stepping in to a broken and fearful world as God has already done with boldness in Jesus Christ and pray and work and pray some more for all things to be made new on both sides of Christmas. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

A New Perspective for Christmas

December 19, 2010 By Andy James

a sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent on Matthew 1:18-25
preached at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone on December 19, 2010

The Christmas season is filled with wonderful traditions in our lives, and the life of our congregation is no exception. We’re right in the middle of the biggest span of Christmas events, as you probably know. Many of you joined in hanging the greens here in the sanctuary a week or so ago or in celebrating at our congregational Christmas Party this past Friday night, and we still have our annual caroling excursion tonight and the festive celebration of the coming of our Lord on Christmas Eve.

Each year, we approach this very familiar holiday in much the same way, with things changing mainly by necessity and only rarely by choice. In my family, we celebrated Christmas in much the same way every year up until seven or eight years ago. On Christmas Eve, we always gathered at my mom’s parents’ home, went to the early church service, came home to a festive and sumptuous dinner, then adjourned to the living room to sing carols, hear the Christmas story from Luke, and open most of the gifts before going to bed. Then on Christmas morning, we would get up and see what Santa had brought us in our stockings, topping off our celebrations at lunchtime with yet another overwhelming holiday meal that prepared us well for a long winter’s nap on Christmas afternoon!

But then, about seven or eight years ago, things changed in our Christmas celebrations. My grandfather died, and my grandmother moved from their home, first to a condominium and then to an assisted living facility. I moved to New York City and took up a job that carries responsibilities until late on Christmas Eve – and sometimes on Christmas Day, too, leading me to spend my first Christmas night as a pastor by myself in a hotel near the Cincinnati airport after missing my connection there! At the same time, others in the family started to develop their own practices and habits based on their own changing and shifting lives.

After a year or two of trying to hold onto all the old traditions, we quickly learned that we needed to see Christmas from a different perspective, to stop trying to fit the square peg of our Christmas traditions into the round hole of our lives that was emerging before us and to open ourselves to something new for Christmas, built less on the practices and traditions we had established for ourselves over the years and more on the concepts and principles that had shaped our practices in this way over the years. It’s not perfect, but slowly and surely, with each passing year, we are starting to see and celebrate Christmas from a different perspective.

This morning, our reading from Matthew offers us a different perspective on the Christmas story. Beginning with this Advent, we’ll spend much of this next liturgical year making our way through Matthew’s gospel as we do every third year, but Matthew’s take on the Christmas story that we heard this morning is quite different from what we are used to hearing. While the gospel of Luke goes on at length about angels visiting Mary and Mary offering an incredible song of of praise to God in response, Matthew makes Mary the secondary character in the story. Here, Joseph takes center stage, receiving his own visit from the angel of the Lord, facing his own challenge to receive a strange and uncertain word and respond with grace and hope.

Mary and Joseph had gotten engaged, but before they could get married, Mary became pregnant. Joseph, just trying to do the right thing for Mary, felt like he should just let her go, but then the angel appeared to him in a dream, instructing him to go ahead and take her as his wife, for she had not been sleeping around on him but was rather pregnant by the Holy Spirit and would bear a child to be named Jesus because he would save the people from their sins. Matthew interrupts the story to note that all this happened to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah that we heard this morning, but he finally reports that Joseph did as the angel had told him: Joseph took Mary to be his wife and named the son born to her Jesus.

At the core so much of this story is the same as what we’re used to hearing from Luke – a young unmarried woman is found to be pregnant, her husband-to-be decides not to cast her off, and an angel appears to explain how all this works and encourage everyone not to be too alarmed by what is happening. Even so, Matthew’s telling offers us just enough of a different perspective on things that it reminds us how much we need a change sometimes. Putting Joseph rather than Mary at the center of things invites us to consider that there were a lot of people who had something to say about what was happening here – not just Mary and Joseph but surely also their parents, their relatives, their neighbors, even the spiritual guides of their community. Hearing a different angel voice speaking to Joseph reminds us that we can all hear different things from our one God. And Joseph and Mary’s strange and seemingly inappropriate pregnancy suggests that God can and does work outside the boundaries we establish in our world.

This story reminds us that especially in these days we need a different perspective on Christmas. Too often the story of Christmas we tell is so familiar that we forget its radical message and purpose and so miss the real meaning of Christmas for us and our world. My favorite clergy comedy, The Vicar of Dibley, put this tendency so well. As the female vicar prepared to celebrate her second Christmas in a small town, her quite ditzy assistant notes that she didn’t remember the first sermon Christmas sermon the vicar had preached the year before.

“Not that it’s your fault – you probably just chose a boring subject,” she said.

The vicar responded, “The birth of Jesus Christ, otherwise known as the greatest story ever told?”

“Well, yeah, the first time you hear it, but after that, it’s a bit predictable, isn’t it? Man and woman get to inn, inn full, woman has baby in manger, angels sing on high, blah blah blah.”

“You have forgotten to mention that that baby is in fact the son of God.”

“Oh yeah, I know, I mean, that’s a nice twist.”

“Nice twist?”

“Yeah, but they aren’t exactly a lot of laughs!” (“The Christmas Lunch Incident”)

I don’t think we necessarily need a lot of laughs to get a new perspective on the Christmas story, but we do need something to help us see this incredible event in a new way. This is about more than shepherds and angels, more than an unwed mother and an uncertain father, more than a baby in a manger – the Christmas story is about how God breaks into our world and does something new when and where we least expect it, shifting our perspective at every turn and inviting us not just to go through the motions of a well-worn season but to see how Christmas changes everything – how God shows power and salvation through a little child, how God works through a strange, unexpected, unmarried couple to shape and mold one who bears salvation into the world, even how God invites us today to stop forcing our square pegs into round holes and so be a part of the incredible new thing that is coming even now. Christmas reminds us that God has changed the way God relates to us in these days, shifting from enforcing laws to proclaiming good news, moving from a set of rules to a wide-ranging relationship, enabling a new vision built not upon grudges but on grace.

That’s why I believe Advent is so important, my friends. If this Christmas is worthy of our celebration, then it is worthy of our preparation, to make space for something incredible and new to take hold in the world. If we believe what we say happens on this coming Christmas Day, then things ought to be different on the other side of it – and this side too! – so that God in Jesus Christ is more than just another baby and another birthday for us. If Christmas really is the day when God breaks into the darkness of our world and of our lives, then it deserves not to be the culmination of all worldly holidays, uplifted in the public sphere and celebrated even by those who misunderstand and disbelieve its central claims, but rather should be a time to celebrate and live our call to see things from a new perspective, for this is the time when God began to see things so clearly through our own human eyes and began to bring new light into all the world.

As these Advent days draw to a close and we welcome the Christ child, may God bring us all a new perspective on these Christmas days and the days to come so that we might be strengthened to walk in this new light even on the darkest of days until God’s brightness comes again to illumine us all forever. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

Joyful Waiting

December 12, 2010 By Andy James

a sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent on Isaiah 35:1-10 and James 5:7-10
preached at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone on December 12, 2010

This is a special Sunday for us in these Advent days, for today on the third Sunday of Advent we light that strange pink candle that stands so lonely among the deep rich blue of longing and hope that marks these days. Like that pink candle, today is a bit of a suspension of the introspective mood that marks most of Advent, for this is Gaudete Sunday, from the Latin word for “joy,” a time for celebration in the midst of a dark and uncertain season.

Our text from Isaiah suggests a bit of that joy for us, too. In the midst of the prophet’s relentless attacks on the people of Israel for their disobedience, simple stubbornness, and deep injustice, we find this little glimpse of hope for something new, a claim that one day things will be different and all people will cry out with a new song of joy and hope. The prophet makes it clear that things will be strangely different in this day to come. The wilderness and the desert will no longer be places for the outcast but will instead be filled with the glory of God. The weak and suffering will long for wholeness no more, for they will be made strong by the power of God. In this day to come, human bodies will work as they were intended as God eases pain once and for all. This way of life will not be difficult to find – it will be easily accessible by the best road imaginable, with God’s people always welcome and safe there, rejoicing and giving thanks to God at every step of the journey, with “everlasting joy… upon their heads” for all time thanks to the provision of God.

Now this joy that Isaiah describes is a bit beyond our imagination, let alone our immediate understanding – but we surely have had glimpses of this kind of joy here and there in our lives. As I think back over the last year, I must say that one of my greatest joys came back in July when Julie and I spent a week at St. Olaf College for their Conference on Worship, Theology, and the Arts. I’ve long admired St. Olaf from afar, but the sheer joy we found as we walked into that incredible place and shared such wonderful experiences of worship and music is some of the deepest joy I have known in a long time.

But what about you? Where have you seen joy at its fullest in these days? Where have you come closest to the kind of joy that Isaiah promises will mark all of our days? Take a minute or two to reflect and share your joy with someone near you, then we’ll come back together with a bit of singing. For blog readers, post in the comments!

(pause for conversation, concluded by singing “He Came Down” by John Bell)

Today, when we celebrate a bit of our joy in this season, we remember that even the greatest joy we know now is not complete. There is something more ahead. God is not done with the world quite yet. As amazing and joyous as Christmas is, there is more joy to come. But therein lies what makes this joy all the more difficult – it is not here yet. The world does not work as God intends all the time. Pain and sorrow and suffering and sighing are very much before us. Sometimes when it does come, joy disappears all too quickly and leaves us wanting and waiting for more.

And it is for moments like these that our reading from James this morning speaks so loudly to us: be patient. In fact, he says it four times in these four verses: be patient! He and his first readers knew that there was something more ahead, but like us they all too quickly recognized that something was missing from the world. In days of waiting, it is easy to give up, but James urges us to wait patiently, “for the coming of the Lord is near.” All the things that Isaiah promised and more will come true soon. Things will work as God intends. Pain and sorrow and suffering and sighing will be a thing of the past. And joy will be at its fullest, for God will be among us once again as Christ returns to live and reign among us forever and ever. But in the meantime, we must be patient.

It’s not quite as easy for me to be patient as it is for me to be joyful. Sure, it’s hard to wait on Christmas sometimes, but I think this kind of patience and waiting is even tougher than that. As I think back on the Advent season in recent years in my life, I remember so often waiting for something or other to come along – and year after year I find myself still waiting for so many of the same things, still frustrated by things too absent or too present in my life, still longing for that promised joy to become real – but it doesn’t.

What are you waiting patiently for this Advent season? How can you be reassured in the coming of the Lord that this need will be fulfilled? Take a moment and think on these things, and share with your neighbor again if you like before we come back together with a bit more singing. For blog readers, post in the comments!

(pause for conversation, concluded by singing “He Came Down”)

In these Advent days, I think we find a strange mix of patience and joy, a blend of these very different emotions as we walk with anticipation and hope into the incredible fullness of life that God intends. Our third text this morning blends patience and joy as well as any I know as it looks forward to that new thing that God is doing even now. We didn’t even really read it, but we sang it in our last hymn – this beautiful hymn is actually a powerful setting of the great, joyous text of Mary’s Song, an outburst of praise offered after encountering the angel who told her she would bear a son and name him Jesus and after sharing a sacred moment with her relative Elizabeth who was also bearing a strange and unexpected child.

Mary’s Song, in this great setting by Irishman Rory Cooney, shouts forth immediately with great joy for the many blessings God has showered on Mary and the people – but then it reminds us that “wondrous things” come “to the ones who wait.” Mary sees things changing – but they are not fully real yet.

“Could the world be about to turn?” she asks in the words of our song. There are incredible marks of God’s justice ahead, worthy of great rejoicing even now, even though they are not all real yet. There are amazing possibilities for God’s way to take hold, so awesome that she can sing praise for them even though their fullness is still far off. And even amidst the turmoil and waiting of the world, Mary rejoices because God “holds us fast” as we bear the promise from generation to generation until we must be patient no longer.

And so my friends, it is this kind of joy we find before us today – joy not fully revealed, joy still strangely incomplete, joy still awaiting its full revelation in Christmas and to the end of the world. But this joy nonetheless breaks into our waiting – our stubbornness, our frustration, our despair, our pain, our doubt, our certainty, our uncertainty, all the things that mark this season and all our days – and then this joy starts to turn things around. We know that Christmas and all its glory and hope lies ahead, but we must still wait for the even greater glory yet to come, when all things will be made new, the world is turned around, and rejoicing will be all we do.

May God strengthen us in our waiting and sustain us in our rejoicing until we know the fullness of God’s joy each and every day. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

Making Room

December 5, 2010 By Andy James

a sermon on Matthew 3:1-12 for the Second Sunday of Advent
preached at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone on December 5, 2010

In the midst of a busy season, somehow John attracted a crowd. People didn’t come because of his clothes – if anything, they came in spite of his animal skin wardrobe. People didn’t come to enjoy the finest meals in Judea – his food was the simple subsistence of the poor, as he ate whatever insects he could find and made them palatable with wild honey. And people definitely didn’t come because it was nearby – John made the wilderness his headquarters for living and teaching and preaching, choosing to stay far away from the center of power and prestige in Jerusalem, and yet people went out of their way to hear him.

John was on the margins, and yet he attracted a crowd. Maybe people came because of John’s message, then. But this was no easy message, either: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Turn away from the way of life you have known and turn back toward God. Leave behind the accommodations to the empire and lip service to religion. Take up the mantle of new life, peace, and hope because something bigger is on the way.

But John’s message wasn’t all that he offered – he also invited those who heard him to join him in a ritual washing of sin in the Jordan River. Even this ritual washing wasn’t all that was going on – people were changing. Things were shifting. The old ways were starting to open up. A new way was coming into being because there was something more ahead, and a crowd was gathering around to see what was going on.

Nowadays I for one wonder a bit about John’s message and the crowd it brought in. Repentance doesn’t seem to be the way to attract people these days – so many churches that seem to be successful by the world’s standards in 2010 worship in buildings that look more like a school auditorium than a sanctuary, come up with creative names that avoid the word “church” – let alone any denominational affiliation! – at all costs, and promote a faith that belongs more in the self-help section of the bookstore than in the pews of Sunday morning – all a far cry from the message of repentance that John offered in his ministry. But John nonetheless offered his proclamation to them and us: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

Repentance is a cornerstone of our faith, and it is good that John reminds us of it in this season. While we have often allowed commercialism and nostalgia to take precedence in this season, the real preparation for Christmas comes in making room amidst the clutter of our lives for the new thing God is doing at Christmas and beyond, opening ourselves to the kingdom of heaven as it becomes real around us. The call to repentance is an excellent approach to these days, but it is more than just a legalistic condemnation of moral missteps. As one commentator puts it:

Repentance is not primarily about our stands of moral worthiness, but rather about God’s desire to realign us to accord with Christ’s life. Repentance is not so much about our guilt feelings as about God’s power to transform us into Christ’s image. (John P. Burgess, Feasting on the Word)

Maybe it was John’s message that brought people out to him after all, and maybe that same kind of message should shape our own proclamation in these Christmas days, our simple living in peace and joy and justice in response to the one who has come and is coming again.

But John was not finished with his message quite yet. Repentance was important for everyone, but he had a special word to share with some of those who had made the trek out to the wilderness. Some of the religious leaders of the day – from two different and opposing sects, no less! – all made their way out to the wilderness to see for themselves what was going on – perhaps to join in, perhaps to oppose it (the Greek can mean either – see William R. Herzog II in Feasting on the Word). But John’s message was not about reinforcing the establishment leaders. Instead, he called them a “brood of vipers,” suggesting that they too needed to take repentance seriously so that they too would bear fruit in these new days. No one had an exclusive hold on the line of faith after Abraham as they seemed to think – instead, John reminded these leaders that God could raise up children to Abraham even from the stones of the wilderness. So he called everyone who would hear to be a part of something more, to do more than just repent and be baptized but to wait and listen for another with more power and more presence who was coming after him to do what he did and much, much more.

The second part of John’s message is one we would probably prefer to ignore, and usually we drown it out with choirs of children and all the other wonderful sounds of the holiday season. But John’s message of judgment upon the religious leaders of his day hits pretty close to home. It suggests that we may not have the exclusive claim on God’s message that we think, that God may be working in the world beyond our imagination or comprehension, even that we might not deserve the privileged status of faith that we think we deserve in these days. In John’s proclamation we see hints of this becoming real in the world. John doesn’t put the focus on himself but insists that the focus be on repentance and preparing the way. He demands not assent to his way of life but a change in each person’s way of life to align more closely with God’s intentions. And John steps out of the center of power to say that there always places where God’s message needs to take root – not in bringing more to “believe” exactly as we do but in making God’s way of justice, peace, and love more real and complete for all people.

So how do we proclaim this message? Can we take John’s proclamation of “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” seriously in this season when we are so focused on getting ready for the trappings of the holiday that we so easily miss the incredible things that God is doing? Can such a message be heard? And what sort of response can we really expect?

While we certainly can wonder about how others will hear this, I think we have to start by hearing these words anew and taking them seriously ourselves. At the core, these words call us back to a way that we can remember. They suggest that we reclaim something we once had and demand that we look back to determine what is ahead. These words do not suggest that we can solve our problems by returning to what we think we once were but instead offer us something new grounded in the core promises of God that we can remember: the ability to overcome sin by no power or action of our own, the promise of God to overturn the ways of the world and make all things new, and the response that we are called to offer as we walk the way of repentance in this day and always.

And so John invites us to repent – to ground ourselves anew in the promises of God to bring new life, to be held accountable by God and the community of faith for the kind of life that we see demonstrated in these days, and to hold our hope not in the gifts or trappings of an arbitrary holiday but in the new life that God promises to make real and whole around us. Only after all this can we find the kingdom of heaven coming near and imagine the way of peace and justice described in the incredible words of Isaiah we heard this morning becoming real in our midst. In the light of repentance, we can finally see the creatures of the earth coming together in peace and harmony, led by the grace and mercy of a little child as God’s presence becomes real and whole in all the world.

So as a seal of this promised day yet to come – and a reminder of the promises already fulfilled – we gather at this table, a place where we can know God’s presence and God’s grace as all are welcome to be filled and made whole again and we glimpse the coming kingdom of heaven in the faces of those with us here and the presence of no less than Jesus himself.

Until that day when Isaiah’s words become real and complete and whole for all creation and we feast at table with Christ as our host, may we make a place in these Advent days for what God is doing in our world, what God has done around us and before us, and what God promises to do ahead of us so that all things can be made new. Lord, come quickly! Amen.