Get Ready . . .

Text: Matthew 3:1-12
November 28, 2004, Dave Philips

 

 

The Thanksgiving celebration was in full swing at Hal’s place in the Petronius’ Plaza Apartments in Rio Rancho. About twenty of Hal’s closest friends had come to celebrate. The crowd was mainly thirty-something — with a few twenty-something’s mixed in — mostly with graduate degrees, mostly quite well off, the kind of young urban professionals you see at hanging out in great numbers at the Hops and Schnapps on a Friday evening. One of Hal’s guests, a young attorney named Jenkins, hadn’t shown. His empty chair was at the table near the door.

"Where’s Jenkins?" asked Anastasia, a green-eyed beauty with improbable red hair.

"Who knows," said Hal shrugging. "You never can tell with Jenkins. Probably hung over. Save his seat -- he’ll be staggering in soon, no doubt, asking for his tomato juice with Worcestershire sauce."

"If he doesn’t arrive, that will be Elijah’s chair," said Cohen who remembered Passovers from his boyhood where his family kept the door open and an empty chair at the table for the famous prophet. "Open that door just a crack," Cohen advised, "in case either Jenkins or Elijah arrives."

Wine flowed freely, as the revelers consumed much of the turkey with all the trimmings. Some of the members of the party had drunk perhaps one glass too many. The party was on the edge of getting just a bit too raucous.

"I know what let’s do," said Hal. "Let’s all talk about what we’re thankful for."

There was a unison groan. Nobody wanted to get even a little bit religious. Or, even worse, patriotic.

"Come on!" said their host. "It’ll be fun. I’ll go first. Let’s see . . . I’m thankful that President Bush says he’s going to hold honest elections in Iraq, he’s going to rebuild the economy, he’s going to rebuild the infrastructure, and if it works in Iraq, he’s going to try it here!"

The guests caught on. This was just for fun, not at all religious. Tony spoke up next:

"I’m thankful that civilization has progressed to such a degree that we are now faced with only two important choices: work or daytime television."

The redheaded Anastasia then said, "I’m thankful that since we don’t have anyone to hate any more — what with the capture of Saddam Hussein – Zarqawi has come along, and we can all hate him!"

The guests were having fun now. They vied with each other for the most clever, the most outrageous, and, eventually, the grossest items for which they could thank a non-existent God.

In the midst of the mock Thanksgiving, a stranger pushed open the door and walked in. Without a word of explanation, he sat down at Jenkins’ place at the table. He was all in browns: brown eyes, brown hair and beard, moth-eaten brown camelhair jacket, brown leather sandals. The only thing that wasn’t brown were his faded blue jeans. The smell of poverty hung round the stranger. Some of that well heeled crowd affected faded blue jeans, but they paid plenty for them in fashionable stores. This man looked as if he picked his jeans up at the Salvation Army.

Cohen, who weighed 235 pounds, had played college football, and had worked as a bodyguard for a prominent Washington politician, came and stood behind the stranger. He outweighed him by easily fifty pounds, and he gave the gang a thumbs up sign to indicate that he had things under control. The crowd relaxed. Maybe this party crasher would provide them with a bit of amusement.

"Hi!" said Hal. "Funny, we weren’t expecting you this afternoon. Who in the expletive deleted are you, anyway?"

"Nobody special," said the stranger.

"Well," said Hal, "what can we do for you before you . . . leave? Would you like a plate of turkey? A glass of wine?"

"No thanks," said the stranger coolly. "I’ve taken a religious vow not to drink wine. But maybe you could answer a couple of questions for me? Why are you here?"

"Come on," boomed Cohen from behind him. "Don’t play dumb. You know what today is."

The stranger was unfazed. "Why don’t you tell me what today is as if I’d never heard," he said. The guests looked at each other grinning. This might be amusing.

"Well," said Laurie, a ghostly fashion model who had eaten exactly three pieces of celery and two carrot sticks, "Thanksgiving is a holiday that our puritan ancestors celebrated to commemorate being saved from the Indians. And today Americans continue to celebrate Thanksgiving to commemorate being saved from the puritans." The guests chuckled. Count on Laurie to say the clever thing.

"Then why are you here?" the stranger persisted. "What are you celebrating?"

"We just told you," said Hal who was a bit uncomfortable as he sensed he was losing control of the conversation. He didn’t like the look in the stranger’s piercing eyes. He seemed too confident. He looked as if he had them all figured out. He was making them uneasy with his questions.

"Are you serious?" said the stranger. "Are you really celebrating the fact that you’re not puritans?"

"Not really," said Hal in a fit of honesty. "It’s a legal holiday, our offices are all closed, so we’re here for a party. But enough about us: who are you?"

The stranger rose from his chair and stood. His eyes surveyed the crowd. "I am a voice crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord." The stranger spoke calmly in a conversational tone, but his words exploded like a thunderclap in that pagan crowd. They crackled like electricity in the air. Nobody said a thing. Every eye was on him.

"You must all get ready for his coming," he said. "He is not to be trifled with."

"Who?" said Anastasia a little too stridently. "Jeeee-sus?"

"Yes!" said the stranger. "He is among us at the present time, and he will soon appear before you all."

"And just when is this appearance to take place?" asked Tony, grinning. He had the stranger sized up. Just another religious nut.

"December 25^th," said the stranger. "On his birthday."

The crowd hooted its derision. "On his birthday!" they cried. "How appropriate!" Then someone said, "Why don’t we sing happy birthday to Jeeee-sus?" And so they did.

The stranger stood surveying them calmly as their song ended. "Even now," he said, "his finger is on your house of cards. One push from him, and over it goes. Your ONLY HOPE for survival is in him. He’s going to put each one of you, like a computer disk, into his disk drive, and he’ll run the spell check on you. If you’re not spelled right, out you go. But there is still time for you to change your ways and repent of your sins."

"Sins!" Tony burst out. "What sins? This is the 21^st century, buddy. We’re educated people. We don’t believe in sin any more."

The stranger turned to Tony. "Is that so? Tell me, Tony, what does your wife think of that?"

Tony had not introduced himself, and he felt a bit sick that the stranger knew his name. "I’m not married," he said belligerently.

"That’s true, Tony," said the stranger. "You’re not married. You never have been. You’re living with your tenth girl friend. Nine others you’ve abandoned, including one who bore a child for you, a little boy you’ve never even seen who is growing up without a dad. Tell me, Tony: you say this is the 21^st century and you are an educated man? Educated to do what, Tony?"

The stranger’s words were right on target, and everyone knew it. Tony was a notorious womanizer. His live-in girl friend had not come to the Thanksgiving party because, as everyone knew, the couple had been fighting, and it looked as if Tony was about to walk out on her, too.

"And you, Hal," said the stranger to the host. "You look like a million dollars and you’re worth several. But you’ve gotten your money by cheating retirees out of their pensions. So is that what you’re celebrating today?"

Hal turned white. This was the truth, but nobody in that crowd knew it. They knew Hal only as president of an investment firm. They didn’t know that his company robbed the elderly.

"And you, Laurie," the stranger said turning to the fashion model. "You’re gorgeous, you’re popular, you’re successful, and you’re earning money hand over fist. But none of your success, popularity and money — and not even your $200 a day cocaine habit — have been able to fill the emptiness you feel inside yourself. Isn’t that true?"

There was dead silence in the room. Nobody had a word to say. They looked at each other uneasily, wondering if this stranger knew everything about everybody, and they were next in line to be skewered by those laser eyes.

"Don’t presume to tell me you’re children of the 21^st century," the stranger continued. "That cuts no ice with God. Your days are numbered, and you will soon be disappearing never to return unless you repent. God is able to raise up children who will obey him from the dust of the earth, from the people you scorn: the pensioners, the girlfriends you have abandoned, the people you call the scum of the earth and exploit so that you can live in luxury.

"You are not here to give thanks to God. You don’t believe in God. You believe only in yourselves. You believe in getting your own way, and you are here to stuff yourselves with delicacies while the poor of your city stand in line at rescue missions hoping for a single square meal for just one day this week. You treat them with contempt and disdain them as dumb and lazy. Yet you have never even once reached out to one of them.

"But the cries of those you have cheated and hurt and neglected have come to God. He has sent his Fixer. He will put things right. You will be punished, unless you repent in all humility and turn to him."

The silence was broken by the sound of a woman weeping. It was Anastasia. Her mascara, melted by her tears, was making dark tracks from the corners of her eyes down the sides of her cheeks. "I used to be religious," she sobbed. "It’s been years since I was. And my life is so empty now. Can I get my faith back?" she appealed to the stranger. "Can I feel clean again?"

"You can," said the stranger. "You must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be baptized. Right now if you want to. And at Christmas will come the one who is more powerful than I, whose shoes I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire."

I’ve put the story told by our scripture lesson into a modern setting to give you some small idea of the impact John the Baptist had when he came baptizing and proclaiming the coming of Jesus.

And I’ve retold this story on the first Sunday of Advent to remind you once again that Christmas is not what you see at the malls. The relationship between our consumer orgy and the story in the gospels of the first Christmas is in name only. The season of Advent is a season of joy. But it is also a season of repentance.

Advent is a time to rethink our faith. Why are we here? What are we celebrating? What do we worship? If Advent is focused on ourselves, and if the object of life is self-indulgence, then we live in a house of cards that will sooner or later come crashing down.

But if we are here because we are poor in spirit, because we mourn our sins, because we are meek and teachable, because we are hungry and thirsty for right living, then Advent can be once again a season of hope, a season of rededication of our lives to God, a season when the Christ child of Bethlehem enters our hearts and renews our lives.

Which will we choose this Advent? Most of us choose not to think too much about what we are celebrating. Give yourself a small self-test: in a twenty-four hour period, how much time do you devote to reading the Advent texts, meditating on the coming of Christ, and reaching out to the poor whom God loves, compared to buying Christmas presents, planning Christmas parties, and complaining about how hectic the Christmas season has become?

On this first Sunday of Advent, how about an Advent resolution? I’m going to bet that none of you has ever made an Advent resolution! But for Christians, the first Sunday of Advent is the beginning of the Christian year. Here’s a suggestion: "during Advent I will read the first four chapters of all four gospels that describe the birth of Jesus and the beginning of his ministry. I will ask myself: what is God saying to me in these chapters? How does he want me to change based on these words? What does he want me to do? And how can I write what he wants me to do into my calendar?"

If you read half a chapter a day of these first four chapters of the four gospels, you’ll be finished with your readings by the first of the year.

If you’ve never done such a spiritual exercise during Advent, I guarantee you that if you do this one and take it seriously, this Advent, this Christmas, will be different for you. Don’t do this because I’m asking you to do it. Do it because God is talking to you and telling you, "I love you, I want the best for you, and I want you to get off the spiritual plateau you’re on and begin to grow again."

How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given!

So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven.

No ear can hear his coming, but in this world of sin,

Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.