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Sunday December 11, 2005 - Advent 3, Year B

John the Baptist
was a strange character.
With his hair grown long, a straggling beard,
rough hairy clothes
and prone to eating bugs,
you'd be more likely to write him off
as a homeless crazy
than the harbinger
of the light of Christ.

He had a strange beginning, too.
His mother was Elizabeth, Mary's cousin, and his father Zechariah, a small town priest. They were both getting on in age
and all their prayers for a child
had gone unanswered.
And then Zechariah
was summoned
to come and help out at the temple in Jerusalem,
a once-in-a-lifetime honor.
Outside
everyone was praying.
Inside
Zechariah was messing with incense. And then an angel appeared, the same angel
that sixth months later showed up to Mary,
and told Zechariah,
Gabriel appeared
and promised Zechariah
a son.

But Zachariah
couldn't believe it. He was old; his wife was old. No way were they going to have a son. And because he wouldn't believe it,
the angel struck him dumb.
He couldn't speak, not even to tell his wife
this bizarre things that had occurred.

Time passed, nine months,
and Elizabeth gave birth to a son.
And all that time, Zechariah
had been silent.
But when it came time to name the child, and they all assumed
that he would be named after his father, Zachariah signaled for something to write on, and wrote
"His name
shall be John." And suddenly
he could speak again, and what he spoke
was a song of praise
to God.

It was no wonder, with that sort of beginning, that John grew up a kind of odd character. No doubt his parents told him about his peculiar birth
time and time again,
and that only increased his oddity.
The neighbors were probably a bit afraid;
his relatives gossiped quietly about how this late-in-life pregnancy had come about;
and his friends . . .
Well, he didn't have a whole lot of them. They weren't too keen on his weird clothing
and liking for locusts in place of regular snack food.

John was not the sort of guy
who made you feel comfortable.
In fact,
he made certain people so uncomfortable
that they were after his head — literally.
John the Baptist, wilderness prophet
was put to death by King Herod
on the whim of Herod's niece,

and his head
was served up on a platter.
It was a horrible end
but not so surprising
given the way John lived
and the things he said.

And in between, between his birth
and his death
John was no less strange.
Living out in the desert,
wearing hairy rough clothes and scavenging insects for food
and calling the people to repentance,
John is a disturbing character.
Maybe that's why we get him two weeks in a row in our lectionary,
just to make sure
we don't miss him, blot him out of our memory,
move on too quickly.

Because John has important things to say,
important things
for us to hear.
"Make straight the way of the Lord,"
"repent,"
and
"be baptized."
And what they boil down to
is "Get ready for the Messiah. Get ready for God."

John has this image
— which he steals from the prophet Isaiah —
of a wilderness, a desert, a place where there are no roads, no highways, just windings rocky trails.
It's no place
to take a guest of honor. You need to build a new road,
and building it
means carving out lumps of rock, and building bridges, and filling in hollows
so the road will be straight and smooth and true.

If you want to honor God, John says,
you have to provide him
with the first century equivalent
of a red carpet.

But he's not talking about a literal road, a literal red carpet. He's talking about one
that lies within ourselves.
Making a place, a path inside us
that is ready for God.
And just like the path in the desert, this means carving out lumps of rock
and building bridges and filling in hollows. It means being willing to be changed, to be transformed,
it means work.

Making decisions
to rub off the rough parts of us,
to build up the good parts of us,

In practical terms,
it's about putting aside time to pray and to worship,
it's about saying sorry when we hurt someone,
it's about choosing to give to others when we would rather look after ourselves,
it's about
choosing to be more like Christ
in everything
that we think and say and do.
It's not always easy; it can even
be painful.
But that's what John the Baptist
is calling us to do.

And John is calling us
to repent.
Repenting
is about more than just saying sorry.
It's about looking at ourselves
with brutal honesty,
the good and the bad,
and tell God all about what we see,
and asking God for help
to get rid of the bad, about making a decision
to change our ways to live differently
from now on.

And finally
John calls us
to be baptized.
To submit ourselves
to the public ritual
where water is poured over us
a symbol
of the washing clean of our hearts and lives
that happens in repentance.

But that's not all.
Because our baptism
is not just the baptism
that John the Baptist
offered his followers.
He said it himself.
After him would come another person,
and that one
would not just baptize with water
but with the Holy Spirit.
And that one who was coming
was Jesus.

We are baptized in the name of Jesus.
We owe baptism
to John the Baptist.
But ours is not simply
about repentance.
It's about following Jesus,
welcoming his Spirit
to transform us.
It's about total
wholehearted
commitment
to Christ.

Those are uncomfortable words, worthy of John the Baptist himself. Because we tend to think of baptism
as a nice ritual
that we do for our children, to somehow bring them to God's notice and get God's blessing.
But what it is
is committing them to Christ,
making a decision on their behalf
that they will be followers
of Jesus.
Joining the church, the group of people
who follow Christ
is like joining the military.
Your life is no longer your own. It could cost you
everything.

Today we are baptizing Evelyn, we are setting her apart and putting the mark of Christ on her forehead, just as every person here
who has been baptized
is marked with the mark of Christ.
It's like a tattoo
in invisible ink — and just like a gang tattoo,
this mark
marks us as
belonging to Christ.
Our lives are no longer our own;
they belong to Christ.

That's why we ask questions during the baptism service, questions that all of us that are baptized
answer again
each time we attend a baptism.
The questions spell out some of the details
of what this commitment is all about.
It begins with what we do together.
Will you continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?
In baptism
we commit ourselves
to continue to follow the apostles' teaching, that is, to follow the way of life that the Bible lays out for us. That means actually taking time to read the bible — otherwise how will we know what it asks of us? And we commit ourselves to continuing in fellowship and the breaking of bread and prayers. That means coming to church, to worship as a community, to pray, to share in the Eucharist. Every week. Because while there's no frequency listed here, the apostle's teaching, that is the bible,
tells us that it should be every week. Every week that we miss church
we break this promise, and have to ask God for forgiveness.
It's easier to make a habit of showing up.

The second question:
Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?
We've talked some about repentance already. But there's another whole step before that. We need to pay attention to resisting evil — not just the big stuff, but the little stuff as well. The area most of us have the most trouble with is how we use our tongues. It means choosing not to gossip, not to say unkind things about other people, not to undermine them — even if we are angry at them. If we are afraid of being found out doing or saying something, it probably means we shouldn't be doing or saying it.

The third question:
Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?
This means being public about our faith.
Being willing to talk about what we believe
and how we live that out.
Not just with people like us — other Christians —
but with people who aren't like us.
It's about saying proudly, "I'm a Christian, and that's why I live
the way I live."

The fourth question:
Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
This is about treating other people
as if it were Christ standing in front of us,
as well as treating in the way
we ourselves would like to be treated.
Honoring them. Loving them.
In a practical sense, it means being generous to those who are in need. It's the day to day practice
of looking out for the needs of others
and doing what we can to help.

And closely related to it is the final question:
Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?
If the last one was about day to day practicalities, this one is about the bigger picture. It's about things like how we vote — which party is going to do a better job of working for justice and peace. It's about pushing our leaders to make decisions that are for the greater good, and not just short term benefits. It's about getting involved in organizations and campaigns that work to make our world a better place — issues like the environment, debt and trade, poverty, and so on.

It sounds a lot. And it is. Because being a Christian
isn't just about a little bit of water poured on our heads on a cold Sunday morning. It's about living lives
that are committed, dedicated
to Christ.
It can be tough.
But the rewards
are incredible.
Some of them come here and now — a loving community that encourages and supports us,
life that's not boring but full of passion.
But even more than that
we are welcomed by God, arms open, for all time.

 

Sermon ©Raewynne J. Whiteley 2005