Malachi 3.1-6; Luke 3.1-14
Welcome to the Second Sunday of Advent …
A little more waiting … as the Psalmist says:
Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!
Those who wait for the LORD shall inherit the land.
We wait for the LORD … but not sitting around twiddling our thumbs … we’re getting ready, doing something, preparing ourselves, our world, for the Messiah.
Prepare the way of the LORD! … and we begin with John the Baptist.
All four gospels introduce us to Jesus through John the Baptist …
John is more than a warmup act for the main show … John is part of the main show … Jesus goes to him for baptism … Jesus affirms John’s work and message … Jesus stands in the River Jordan with John …
John is NOT the Messiah … John rightly says to Jesus, You ought to baptize me!
But Jesus makes it clear: I’m here with you John … we’re in this together … I will take your message and build upon it … I will say what you say in the course of my ministry … I will point to a level world for all God’s children … a world where mountains are brought low and valleys filled in …
A world of fairness and opportunity …
Jesus is more than John … but Jesus is not less than John … Jesus affirms John’s message - Prepare the way of the LORD.
In the Season of Advent, we do well to hear John’s message.
Get ready for the Messiah! To receive him in our time and for our world!
John says to the crowds: Don’t yak about being children of Abraham … God doesn’t care about your pedigree … your ancestry … where ya’ come from or what your mom and dad did … the only thing that counts is here and now … produce fruit, says John, that shows the world what salvation looks like … show the world that you have changed your hearts and lives.
Prepare the way of the LORD!
I do a lot of cooking … I’ve learned some important things:
- Know the recipe; how it works: what comes first, what comes second.
- Do the prep work before hand - dicing, slicing, chopping and mincing - measure out the spices, if precision is needed … if you don’t use measuring spoons, be sure you’ve done it enough to know what a teaspoon of salt looks like or tablespoon of salt … do the prep work … have it all there … at hand and ready.
Prepare the way of the LORD.
This is a big deal ...
Because the Messiah is big.
Bigger than we imagine … and sometimes the church makes Jesus very small!
I’m reading an American history book right now … all about 1919 … the year after World War One ended.
It was a time when women couldn’t vote, and the church pretty much said, That’s right; women ought not to have a voice in the affairs of men … women are inferior and unpredictable; women can’t be trusted to make important decisions … they can’t preach, nor can they be elders or deacons … preachers quoted chapter and verse to make their point, and felt mighty good about it …
A time when divorced men couldn’t hold office in the church … couldn’t be an elder, a deacon or a minister … preachers quoted chapter and verse to make their point, and felt mighty good about it …
A time when Americans were spying on Americans for all sorts of reasons - if you were German, your were suspected of disloyalty … if you were Russian, you were suspected of being a Communist … if you were Italian, you were suspected of being an anarchist … and the church said it was good and right to love this nation, and protect it from mongrel races, revolutionaries, agitators, Reds and Communists, and Jews and African-Americans who would undermine the Constitution … preachers quoted chapter and verse to make their point, and felt mighty good about it.
A time for lynching - an average of 200 lynchings a year, mostly in the south, but in the north, too … 200 lynchings, and many more beatings, shootings and burnings … Black soldiers had fought in the war, and many were highly decorated by the French, only to return home to Jim Crow laws and discrimination - black soldiers in uniform were beaten, shot and lynched … some were stripped of their uniforms and made to walk home in their underwear … and the church pretty much turned a blind eye to all of it … and in some parts of the country, the church said it was all right, because people of color shouldn’t be uppity, and they need to know their place … white preachers quoted chapter and verse to make their point, and felt mighty good about it.
A time when interracial marriage was prohibited by law, and if a white woman professed love for a black man, she was considered insane, and the black man a seducer … the church pretty much said, That’s right - it’s an abomination to mix the races … the white race is superior, and the black race inferior … white preachers quoted chapter and verse to make their point, and felt mighty good about it.
It was also a time when white men could rape a black woman without penalty … and have children with a servant girl, and everyone thought, That’s just the way it is …
A congressman from George proposed a constitutional amendment banning interracial marriage: he said, “No more voracious parasite ever sucked at the heart of pure society, innocent girlhood, or Caucasian motherhood then the one which welcomes and recognizes the sacred ties of wedlock between Africa and America … the term ‘negro’ or ‘person of color,’ … shall be held to mean any and all persons of African descent or having any trace of African or negro blood” [Savage Peace, p.287].
The churches of America closed their eyes to most of this, raised their voices and sang, What a friend we have in Jesus.
Truth be told ...
Women still struggle in the American church and throughout the world …
As for racism, human beings have an infinite number of ways to hate one another.
Doors remain closed in much of the church to gays and lesbians - lots of preachers say it’s all right to hate gays and lesbians - and how they love to use the word abomination -and if gays and lesbians happen to get beat up and killed, that’s okay; some of your may recall the Briggs Initiative of 1978 here in California - to fire all public school teachers who were gay or lesbian … the initiative failed!
In some parts of the world, to be gay is criminal, with prison time and even execution … preachers quote chapter and verse, and feel mighty good about it.
Painful, isn’t it, all this history?
I’m sorry to share all of this with you … it’s painful for me to know such things, and I’m sure it’s painful for you to hear it … but if the gospel message is going to have any real meaning for us, we have to know these things … we cannot ignore the truth … it’s sin these stories highlight, and if Jesus comes to deal with sin, then sin is what we must understand …
Sin is real, and sin is social … sin rips apart the human community, one from the other, pitting human beings against each other, filling the mind with suspicion and fear … the sins of the past are always the sins of today, wearing differing clothes, using cell phones rather than index cards.
We remember the sins of the church because truth requires it …it’s painful to remember, but memory is the key to honesty, humility, and hopefulness.
Things swept under the carpet will only trip us up again and again.
Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it …
Our work is far from done!
Wild and lone the prophet’s voice
Echoes through the desert still,
Calling us to make a choice,
Bidding us to do God’s will:
Turn from sin and be baptized;
Cleanse your heart and mind and soul.
Quitting all the sins your prized,
Yield your life to God’s control.
John’s message is vital to our times … keep Jesus big … big enough to open the big doors of compassion and mercy … big doors of intelligence and kindness … big doors that are big enough to welcome God and the world God created and loves.
Our work is far from done!
Prepare the way of the LORD!
Amen and Amen!
1 comment:
Thank you, Tom. Any time we reject people, we resist the very work of God who reconciled us to himself through Christ. He did the work and many Christians act like he didn't.
Humanity is already adopted, but many don't want to believe it. We're already a family, but many don't want to see.
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