Second Sunday of Advent 2000

Speaking Index

Delivered 4 December 1999, the Saturday service based on the readings for the Second Sunday of Advent.

This sermon is from very early, I either didn't compose a greeting or had it in another file. Oh well!

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Grace and peace to you from God our Father, and from his son Jesus the Christ, and from the Holy Spirit. Amen

This is the second Sunday of Advent, a time dedicated to preparing the way for the Christ to walk among us on earth. Advent is a celebration of the preparations of the prophets that foretold the first coming of the Christ, and at the same time is our own preparation for the next coming of the Christ.

Outside the church it is also a season of preparation, in a completely different way. I don’t do well in the malls at this time of year. I long for the quiet darkness of the season. No fiery reds or bright whites on the altar, we don’t put flowers in the sanctuary during Advent. In the tradition of the church calendar we will go from preparation in Advent’s dark blues to white paraments and a riot of poinsettias at Christmas, and I love that contrast. Those who spend Advent racing around the malls, stressing out over whatever this year’s “must have” toy might be, maxing out their plastic, they miss the whole point. When Christmas comes around they’re exhausted. Remind them on the 26th of December that it is the second day of Christmas and you won’t get a happy response.

There is one cultural icon in common between the church and the secular world at this time of year. All over the English speaking world you find folks gathering to hear or sing Handel’s Messiah. And what do they hear? They hear our Old Testament text, from the 40th chapter of Isaiah. The very first words are, “Comfort ye my people, saith your God; speak comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned. The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” That’s Number 2 of the 53 parts of the entire work, and the first three verses of our first text. Number 3 is the next verse, “Every valley shall be exalted.” Number 4, the first chorus, is the next verse, “And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.” (OK, it’s reveal-uhd when you sing it.) Handel then does a couple of rousing numbers with texts from Malachi, and we’re back to verse 9 of our text, “O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion.” Ten more parts based on Luke and other parts of Isaiah follow, then Number 20 is back to the 40th chapter, “He shall feed his flock like a shepherd.”

The texts, and the music, are comforting with proclamation that Jerusalem’s warfare is over, that her iniquity is pardoned, that the shepherd will feed his flock. But don’t get too comfortable, it calls us to prepare a highway for the Lord in the desert.

Isaiah points directly to John the Baptist, the voice crying in the wilderness. John is portrayed as a wild man, today we would certainly say that he had run mad. Clothing made of camel hair? Fabrics made from horse hair are pretty unpleasant, I certainly wouldn’t want to wear the stuff, even with the textile processes of the twentieth century. Cloth woven from camel hair, particularly considering the available technology two thousand years ago, had to be nasty stuff, bad for your delicate skin.

When I first saw the text I thought I would dwell some on his strange dietary preferences, but apparently the Bedouin tribes still eat locusts to this day. I’ve actually seen chocolate covered grasshoppers for sale, and locusts are part of the grasshopper family. Of course, chocoholics probably buy the things merely as a demonstration of what lengths they will go to for their fix, but scripture never mentions John eating chocolate. Locusts were a treat for royalty at times, and Leviticus discusses what varieties of locusts are clean, therefore available for food, and which locusts are unclean. What seemed bizarre at first glance from our civilized American perspective now just seems like a limited and boring diet. If locusts and wild honey were the whole diet, we’re looking at a man who didn’t care much about what he ate.

Having removed himself from the cities and villages of Judea, we can guess at the level of energy he applied to personal hygiene and grooming. Walking into a river as part of a group baptism doesn’t give quite the same effect as taking a good hot shower every morning. In a community that couldn’t devote many resources to their personal appearance, John probably stood out as a mess.

John raises a challenge to our sensibilities here. We know that John was a true prophet sent from the father to prepare the way of the Lord, but we only know this because after his message had been widely spread and well received Jesus went to be baptized by John. Most of us are pretty sure that David Koresh, the Seventh Day Adventist who proclaimed himself a prophet and led a congregation in the desert outside Waco Texas a few years back, was a nut case rather than a prophet. But during their respective ministries there was no particularly good reason to prefer one over the other. We need to look closely at the ministry and the message, not the presentation. It certainly looks like God is more likely to send a wild man from the desert than a slick television evangelist with perfect hair and big-budget video production facilities.

So John was out there in the desert, and everyone went to hear him. “The whole Judean countryside, and all the people of Jerusalem.” What did they hear? John told them to repent. In modern English this means to feel remorse for our sins, to be contrite, but as Pastor Dan [Erlander] told us on this second Sunday in Advent last year, the root words in the Greek mean something more. To repent means to turn around.

Some of you may recall that Dan brought a branch torn by the wind out of a tree in his yard as a visual aid for that sermon. It was a marvelous image of human life and repentance, growing this way and that, tying itself up in knots as it changed direction.

We do the same in our lives, and John’s call for repentance cannot be a one-time thing. If we needed to be baptized every time repentance was in order in our lives this room would be full all week as we lined up at the font. I’d be here several times a week myself. We don’t need rebaptism, but to feel remorse and contrition over our behavior, our turning away from the path of righteousness, is natural and even an important step. God speaks through Isaiah again: “I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.” But we are not called to a life of remorse, we are called to turn.

Even though I had Messiah on the CD player most of the time I worked on this sermon, I couldn’t help hearing the great sixties interpretation of the third chapter of Ecclesiastes by The Byrds: “To everything there is a season, turn, turn, turn, and a time to every purpose under heaven, turn, turn, turn.”

Between that old song and Dan’s branch the message was pounding away at me. Turn, turn, turn.

In our traditional worship service there is a musical element immediately before the Gospel. Most of the year the classic text is “Alleluia, Lord, to whom shall we turn? You have the words of eternal life. Alleluia.” During Lent, when we don’t use the word Alleluia, the text is “Return to the Lord your God, for he is merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”

Turn, turn, turn.

Over and over, we turn away. Again and again we are exhorted to turn back, invited by a loving God to repent, to return to the arms of the shepherd.

So what’s with John in the desert? Is it just God’s sense of humor that this ill-kempt long-haired wildman is the one calling us to turn our lives around? Or is it a marketing ploy to get our attention, feeding one of the most important of his prophets on bugs and compelling him to dig into beehives to steal honey? And who cares about the desert anyway? Look around you, do you see any desert?

“The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” I submit that our hearts are that desert, our busy lives are that desert. In that fractured landscape we are to make straight the way of the Lord. And it is on that highway that we are called to return.

To gather here and listen is paving another little bit of that highway. Listening to my words may not be the key, but to the texts, to the hymns, to the ancient words of the vesper service.

To hurry past the Salvation Army bell ringer, probably avoiding eye contact, and to turn back and slip a rumpled dollar in the slot. Paving a highway between us and God.

To turn and apologize to your spouse, to tell a child that you still love him even though he spilled paint on the new carpet, to tell a child that you still love her even though you had to pick her up at the county jail last night. More paving.

Yes, even to buy a gift for a friend, when the season reminds us that our friends are gifts from God’s endless grace, when the season reminds us of the debt we owe these friends, this smooths the way between us and God.

Be comforted by the word of the Lord. Listen to the voice crying in the wilderness, no matter how long the hair or how rough the clothes on the madman doing the crying. Pave that road between you and God, work on that a little every day. And when you have strayed, as we all surely will, repent, return, return to that highway, return to love, return to the Lord your God. Amen.