THE SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT

December 10, 2006

Baruch 5:1-9

Phil. 1:1-11

Luke 3:1-6

Year C

In her book “The Glass Lake”, Maeve Binchy writes, “Advent. What was there to say about it except that it went on forever and was nearly as bad as Lent?” Perhaps some people feel that way because Advent is about truth telling whereas Christmas seems to be about fantasy. A parody on Martha Stewart’s holiday calendar has for the agenda on December 25^th, “Bear son. Swaddle. Lay in color coordinated manger with scented potpourri.” We prefer denial to truth so we wrap ourselves in the world of “Let’s pretend” at Christmas.

But Luke comes to remind us that nothing could be further from ‘Fantasy Land’ than the world in which Jesus came, the world in which John the Baptist erupted.

He said it happened when Tiberius was on the throne and his deputies scattered about. There was Pilate in Jerusalem, the Herod boys down in Galilee, running things in their usual unbrotherly way. There was Lysanias in Abilene, better known to us as the Bekka Valley, scene of Mideast terror. Annas and Caiaphas were in their appointed places providing cement for Rome’s social engineers. Luke says that when the word of God broke into the world it broke into the historical world of politics, economics, and yes; the world of religion.

But who heard that word? Was it Tiberias? Was it Pontius Pilate? Was it Herod? Was it Annas or Caiaphas? How open, how willing, were these people to hear a word from God? The truth is they were not open at all because they were so comfortable in their esteemed positions they were deaf to any voice; even God’s. The Holy Spirit’s fire had been smothered in Jerusalem with false piety and temple taxes and religious hocus-pocus. The only fire around was the fire used to burn animal sacrifices. So God moved out – out into the wilderness, where the air was clean and clear. It was there that God’s fire lit up John the Baptist. People were drawn to him, not because of who he was, but because of what he said God was offering them; a chance to come clean, to stop pretending they were someone else and start over again.

John came then, and now, almost like an exposed nerve, grating against our ears and our sensibilities, bursting into the quiet of life as usual and irritating just about everybody in sight.

John preached the need for repentance for sin, but what IS sin anyway? Sin is whatever it is that separates us from God and God’s will for us. Those in the temple just knew they weren’t separated from God, while those who trudged out to John in the wilderness knew they were. They knew something was missing in their lives. Something needed reconfiguring. Something needed to be changed.

The Pharisees taught that if Israel would meet certain conditions, then the Messiah would come. One rabbi said that if Israel would keep two successive Sabbaths according to all the rules the Messiah would come and deliver the people.

This kind of perfectionism keeps more people imprisoned than all the prisons in the world. One of the finest psychotherapists in the country says many people’s deepest struggle is because they can’t live up to their own impossible expectations. Most of us know better than to think we can be perfect, but many of us act as if deep down we really believe that if we do everything right, then our lives will be fulfilled. We think that is the kind of repentance John comes blasting at us, but John preached a different message. He said there’s nothing you can do about God’s entrance into the world or your life – except prepare. It is often said that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. But John said those who cannot imagine a different future will be condemned to be prisoners of the present.

John’s job was to cut through all the many barriers, religious and otherwise, that were working to keep people from what God was attempting to do in the world and in their lives. The word John uses is “repentance”, which in Greek means “to change”. Change is not possible, however, if you think things are just swell the way they are. To repent is to turn and look in the direction from which salvation comes and to do what is necessary to be done to receive it when it comes knocking on your door.

Our lives often unfold in quiet desperation. The exiled life becomes the familiar life, the accepted life. And much of life boils down to figuring out how to endure situations and circumstances we never imagined we would find ourselves in. That’s why Advent belongs to the dissatisfied, because only those who are disquieted hunger and yearn for a new reality.

However, more often than not the truth telling Advent calls for glides over us as lightly as a feather. We go through the motions of liturgy; hearing words about repentance; change, and preparing for change, but the only thing we usually end up preparing for is Christmas as usual. Joseph Campbell once spoke of those who preferred religious form over religious substance as a “diner going into a restaurant and eating the menu.”

Kloss furniture used to have an advertisement on television that at the end asked the question, “What’s life about anyway?” They wanted us to think it was about furniture, and while we know better than that, scripture says we often live just that way. So I think what John would say to us this morning might be, “Your comfort zone may just be your exile”.

Repentance is the gift of opportunity that God offers to us; not a legalistic obligation. Salvation is not something the church should hold out as heaven’s Grand Prize. It is the end result of inviting God to transform your life completely.

The Advent prophets speak to a people in exile, a people who long for home. Thus, in order to hear John’s cry one must get up and go out into the wilderness. If we dare risk opening our ears to what John is saying, the questions he places before us are these; is there any way in which you experience your life as a kind of exile? Is the address where you live really your home? Or, are there moments when you get the impression that you are not fully at home, that you are in exile, that God might have more in store for you? If so, then it just may be that you could be right up there in the front row ready to hear God’s message from John.

Our lives are formed in the hands of a great mystery that does not ask us for advice or permission to act.

Most of us think messengers from God stopped coming a long time ago, but nothing could be further from the truth. God still keeps sending messengers, coming in various and sundry ways, taking our faces between their hands and asking that we pay attention.

In order to really experience and soak in the fragile light of God’s coming, in Advent or in any other way; you have to first experience and be willing to name the darkness around you. The prescription for that is not fantasy but honesty and truth telling.

Frederick Buechner says, “To repent is to come to your senses. It is not so much something you do as something that happens. True repentance spends less time looking at the past and saying, ‘I’m sorry,’ than to the future and saying, ‘Wow!’”

Every one of us has some idea what our own exile is as well as a whole laundry list of ways to deny it exists at all. That’s because we are comfortable where we know what to expect and what is expected of us. Why search for God doing something new? Why go searching under rocks in the wilderness if life seems just fine the way it is?

The only reason that makes any sense at all is a voice you hear, whether it be the voice in your own head or the voice of a messenger from God telling you to wake up and listen, to prepare a pathway for God to come in. For in these Advent days God is looking for an empty room prepared, not just at Bethlehem, but in your heart, in your life, that you might be made new.

AMEN

The Rev. Virginia L. Bennett, D.Min.

St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church

Edwardsville, Illinois