Pastor Jim Wood
1st Sunday in Advent
November 28, 2004
"Warning: Christmas Ahead!"
Luke 3:7-18

One of my favorite TV characters is Columbo, that unusual and eccentric detective, as played by Peter Falk. I like how he underplays the role as off-center of most law enforcement officers. I like the car he drives and his rumpled appearance, but what I like most is the way Columbo moves in the background of events as he makes his investigations. In unlikely places and at unsuspecting moments he quietly appears on the edge of things or suddenly emerges from the shadows as a disturber of conscience and a telling symbol of accountability and judgment. All at once a suspect looks up and Columbo is there, precipitating a moment of truth that counters evasion and deception.

John the Baptist appears during Advent something like Columbo, asa disturber of conscience, as a messenger of repentance and judgment and as an agent of revealing light for the darkness of people's lives. We meet John again this morning, and we hear him preaching that God's coming kingdom is not going to be pleasantries over tea, but a rigorous sifting of good and evil, a harsh demand for moral righteousness and a revision of personal lives, values and loyalties. "Your only hope," John says in effect, "is to clean up your act as if your life depends on it, which it does, and to be baptized in a hurry as a sign that you have."

A lot of people today would prefer that John the Baptist get lost at Christmas, that he be silenced as King Herod tried to do, putting John in prison at his fortress. Most of us prefer a sentimental approach to Christmas, a Currier and Ives Christmas, one that is charming and nostalgic. That's why we focus on angels singing about peace, on a homey setting for the tender scene of haloed birth that saturates everything with warm feelings, detached from the harsh realities of life and our own inner contradictions.

But the deepest meaning of the holy event at Bethlehem is more than sentiment and promise. It is also warning and threat. That's our first word this morning. Christmas is more than lullabies and starshine, more than hushed silences and humble shepherds kneeling at the manger.

Christmas is also about a Savior who comes because people need saving from their sin, about God's light that invades the darkness of this world's evil and spiritual hosts of wickedness, about God's truth that exposes and convicts our deception, lies and deceit, about God's love that judges and reveals the exploitation and disguised self-serving we often call love. Christmas is about a world that shut out God's saving power at Bethlehem, a world where, as William Sloane Coffin put it, "the only place Jesus finally found room was on a cross," a world that still shuts Jesus out and rejects God's saving power. Christmas is about a world where people make their living by competitive triumph over others, where we maintain a sense of security by suspicion, ruthlessness and a calculating outguessing and overpowering of others, a world where communities are held together by fear of external foes and where nations get caught up in a wholesale destruction of each other, a world where millions are homeless, starving and suffering because public policies serve special interests, and priorities are distorted by the lust for power, greed and pride. Christmas is about God who enters human history both to save and to judge, both to harvest and to separate the wheat from the threshing debris.

That's why Christmas can be dangerous, enough so that warnings should be posted about the risks it includes. I mean, we're approaching that event when God changed human history forever and turned human life inside out. Christmas expresses how it still happens today, how persons are brought under conviction, how God in Christ changes families, neighborhoods, institutions and nations through the persuasion of Jesus' reconciling love and, sometimes, through the threat of God's righteous judgment. The people moved by John the Baptist's preaching asked, "What then should we do?" That was a dangerous question, but it's the question . .

Christmas prompts in us every year. "What are we to do?" It's a dangerous question because when we ask it, we're told the answer. The birth of Christ calls for our thorough response and not just a brief, seasonal gesture of warm feelings. God's promise of hope and peace made known in the birth of Christ only has meaning for us when we claim it and we can only claim it when we turn away from those things that have hold on our lives and turn toward God. There's no promise for us without the warning of what life is without it. I mean, who needs a Savior when we don't think we need to be saved? Who needs grace when we consider ourselves self-sufficient and try to prove ourselves worthy? Who needs forgiveness when we don't think we've fallen short of the mark? Who needs God's kingdom when our private little worlds are intact? Who needs hope if we live for the moment's pleasure and don't care about tomorrow? Who needs light when we're afraid of it and prefer the shadows? Who needs love when we don't want love because we can't give it or receive it? Without the warning of truth's judgment and love's challenge, there's no promise. Wheat to become food must have the chaff separated from it. So we must yield ourselves to God's judgment and face love's truth if we're to come alive and experience the fullness of our being and Christ's presence. Christmas is both warning and promise, and we cannot have one without the other.

But the promise is so wonderful that it's worth any separating process or judgment. That's our other word this morning. The certainty of being loved, accepted and upheld by God is worth any upheaval or radical changing that we must experience. The peace in our heart at being forgiven and made whole is worth any struggle. The revelation at Bethlehem's manger is worth any journey we must risk. To come home where we belong is a joy so beautiful that it's worth any repentance and change in life that are required.

To know Christ and the power of his resurrection is worth . . .anything, any cross we must bear, any commitment we must make, to have any illusion we hold die, to lose our lives again and again and again in order to find them.That's why the apostle Paul could sing: Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
Paul himself had faced the judgment of God's love, had repented of his sin, and had received the amazing grace of God's salvation promise in Christ. Life may have never been easy for Paul, but it was always good, it was always good! "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say Rejoice."

Anne Tyler's novel, St. Maybe, records the life of a family in Baltimore. Perhaps you saw the Hallmark Hall of Fame television dramatization. The novel centers on Ian, the younger son of the family, who at one point passes on to his older brother suspicions that his brother's wife, Lucy, is cheating on him. Later the same day, the older brother takes his own life. Ian is consumed with grief and guilt, feeling he has caused his brother's suicide. Later he learns that the suspicions he had passed on were unfounded, and to atone for his destructive deed Ian becomes a surrogate father to his brother's two stepchildren and to the new baby born after his brother's death. When Lucy, his sister-in-law, falls ill and dies, Ian now overcome with added guilt takes in all three children and raises them as his own. Ian attends Lucy's funeral, despite his being burdened with grief and guilt. The funeral, held in the local Presbyterian Church, is a heartfelt scene. Anne Tyler describes it this way: The organ music dwindled away. Dr. Prescott, the pastor, rose and announced a prayer. It was a prayer for the living. "We know Thy daughter, Lucy, is safely by Thy side," Dr. Prescott intoned, "but we ask Thee to console those left behind. Comfort them, we pray, and ease their pain. Let Thy mercy pour like a healing balm upon their hearts." Like a healing balm. Ian pictured something white and semi-liquid-the bottle of Jergens lotion his mother kept by the kitchen sink, say-pleasantly scented with almond. Could the balm soothe not just grief but guilt? Not just guilt but racking anguish over something impulsively done that could not be undone?

Ordinarily indifferent to prayers (or to anything else even vaguely religious) Ian listened to this prayer yearningly. He leaned forward in his seat as if he could ride the words all the way to heaven. He kept his eyes tightly shut. He said to himself, Please. Please. Please.

In the pews around him he heard a rustling and a creaking and he opened his eyes and found the congregation rising. Struggling to his feet he peered at the hymnbook Cicely held in front of him. "Abide with me," he joined belatedly, "fast falls the eventide . . ." His voice was a creak. He fell silent and listened to the others-to Cicely's clear soprano, Mrs. Jordan's plain, true alto, and Dr. Prescott's rich bass. "The darkness deepens," they sang, "Lord with me abide!" The voices ceased to be separated. They braided themselves into a multi-stranded chord, and now it seemed the congregation was a single person-someone of great kindness, someone gentle and wise and forgiving. "In life, in death, O Lord," they finished, "Abide with me." And then came the long, sighed "Amen." They sat down. Ian sat too. His knees were trembling. He felt that everything had drained away from him, all the grief and self-blame. He was limp, pure and pliant as an infant. He was, in fact, born again.

How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given,
So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven.
No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive him, still the dear Christ enters in.

O yes! Christmas is ahead! We remember that it's dangerous promise is so wonderful, it's worth any giving up of ourselves for the saving grace, the joyful experience of belonging to the Lord. Amen!