Sermon, "Home for Christmas: Prepare Him Room," Luke 3:1-18

Sermon 12/6/15

Luke 3:1-18

Home for Christmas: Prepare Him Room

If you go into my eight-year old nephew Sam’s bedroom, much of the time you might find a path from the door to the bed, but not much else. I imagine he’s in good company. We all love Sam, and we love giving him things, but when he was about 2 or 3, if someone would come for a visit, Sam would say, “What did you bring me?” He was so used to getting gifts from people that it had become an expectation. If you didn’t have a present for him, Sam wondered what was wrong with you! My brother and sister-in-law work hard to make sure Sam is kind and generous and not hung up on stuff, things – and yet Sam has so many toys – and that’s not counting ones that are stored away – so many toys that there isn’t much floor left in sight in his room. Our focus this second Sunday in Advent is Prepare Him Room. The phrase you might recognize from the hymn Joy to the World – we sing: “Let every heart prepare him room.” We’re meant to make room for the Christ Child, room for the Prince of Peace, room for Jesus. And as I mull over this phrase, I just keep imagining that all of us are engaged in trying to prepare our hearts for Jesus like an 8 year old trying to clean his room when “clean” means “a path from the door to the bed is visible.” Let every heart prepare him room!

Last week I talked to you about people having to move into smaller apartments – folks adjusting at the retirement community where I work to having less space than they were used to. I lived in parsonages during my first two appointments as pastor, and then started at a church with no parsonage. For a while, I rented an apartment, and it was smaller by half at least than any house I’d ever lived in. I felt like I had no room for anything. The biggest challenge was my Christmas tree. I have an artificial tree that I store in about 5 plastic bins. And at the apartment I lived in, I felt like no matter what closet you opened, you’d find at least one bin with part of the Christmas tree shoved in side. There was just not enough room. I had to find creative ways to squeeze everything in. Let every heart prepare him room!

            When I was in high school, I went to Austria a group from my school orchestra. It was my first international trip, and I packed ridiculously. I couldn’t manage my own luggage. I needed to get help with it, on and off buses, in and out of hotels, on and off planes. And I vowed to myself never again to pack for a trip in a way that I couldn’t easily manage my own stuff. When I was in seminary, I had the chance to go to Ghana in West Africa, and I packed like a pro, and while I was there, I only bought souvenirs that I knew would fit in my bags easily. Some of my friends were not so wise, and I wondered about all the extra fees they would have to pay at the airport. But then I witnessed something strange – at the airport, where you could only have a certain number of bags – the airline staff would help you shrink wrap several of your bags into one, so that your four items of luggage were turned into one item – one gigantic item – but just one. This seemed to me to be missing the point of the luggage restrictions – making room by squishing everything in, sucking all the air out of it. Let every heart prepare him room!

            My Uncle Bill has shared with me that when he and my aunt were expecting their second child, he went to my grandfather in distress, and said, “I don’t know how I can do it. I love my daughter so much, and I don’t know if I have room to love a second child as much as I love her.” He was so worried that he wouldn’t be able to show child #2 the same kind of total love he had for child #1. My grandfather, father of five children, all of whom he he loved with all his heart, assured him that he would find his heart expanded quite nicely to love with all his heart a new life. Your heart expands and expands and expands and you find you have quite enough room for your heart to be completely filled again with this new life, this new child. There’s no competition, no struggle to divide love. Love multiplies. Let every heart prepare him room! 

Today we find ourselves in the gospel of Luke, encountering one who the scriptures tells us was sent to help the people – help us – prepare some room for the one who would come after him. We meet John the Baptist, cousin to Jesus. Luke tells us that the word of God came to John, and that he began preaching a baptism for repentance and forgiveness of sins. To repent means literally to change the direction of your mind, to change the direction of your life back to God’s direction. Baptism – cleansing with a water ritual – was not a new practice to Judaism – and something about John’s message was drawing people in. Luke tells us that John embodied the words of the prophet Isaiah who spoke of one who would prepare the way of the Lord, that all might see the salvation of God.

So crowds show up to hear John and get baptized, but he doesn’t exactly thank them for coming. He calls them a brood of vipers, and warns them against claiming their faith heritage, thinking they’ll be safe from needing to bear good fruit because of their good religious pedigree. Everyone, John says, needs to bear good fruit. Hopefully that language should sound a bit familiar to you. Someone bravely asks John, “Well, what should we do then?” And John says that if you have two coats, give one to someone who has none. If you have enough food, share what you have with someone who doesn’t. If you are a tax collector – and remember in John’s day, these were Jewish folks who worked for the hated Roman governments, so they were considered greedy and corrupt – John urges them to collect no more than is due. For soldiers – and again, here he is probably addressing Jewish soldiers working for the Romans – John tells them not to extort money, not to make threats, not to make false accusations, and finally, to be satisfied with their wages. Preaching scholar David Lose writes of John’s message, “Hey, wait a second: share, don’t bully, be fair. These sound like the rules of kindergarten. That’s right. “Fruits worth of repentance,” it turns out, aren’t located at the top of some spiritual mountain; rather, they are right next door, in our homes and schools and workplaces and community.” What John says isn’t complicated. We just have to actually do what he says. Our repentance – our changing direction – has to look a lot more like we turned back toward God and a lot less like we’re still going in the same direction. After hearing all of this, which Luke notes to us is the good news – we read that the people are filled with expectation. Let every heart prepare him room.

A couple of weeks ago, I shared a children’s sermon where I showed the children, using a jar and some stones that if you put God in your life first, instead of trying to cram God in last, make room for God after everything else, you’ll find that you have room for everything. Seek God and God’s kingdom first, and everything else after. That’s the promise of abundant life Jesus shares with us – he wants us to have life, abundant life, full life. And yet, I have to confess that my children’s sermon is also a little bit of a myth. God wants us to fill our lives with every good thing, starting with our relationship with God. We’ll find that our hearts keep expanding and expanding to receive God’s blessings as we fill our hearts with more and more love, more hope, more peace, more joy. There’s always room in our jar for more of that. But when we try to give a part of our hearts to things that really need to be thrown out, we make a part of our hearts inaccessible to anything God wants to give us. And we just can’t prepare room for Jesus if we won’t budge on some of the other stuff we’re keeping there. There are some things that don’t belong in our jar, that don’t belong in our lives, that don’t belong in our hearts. That stuff needs to be cleared out to prepare the way. John suggests we clear out from our lives some of our excess – if you have more food and clothing, more stuff than you need, there’s plenty who could use it. Wouldn’t he be surprised to know that most of us have not two tunics but fifty, or a hundred! If you’ve filled up your heart with greed and envy, clear it out, John says. If you’ve filled it up with the need for power over others, with anger, with pride, clear it out. Let every heart prepare him room.

In ninth grade English class, we had to read the lyric ballad The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. I can’t say I loved it, but my English teacher would be happy to know that some of the most famous phrases have stayed in my mind all these years. In the poem, sailors are stranded in still water in the ocean for some time, and they are dying of thirst, having run out of water. The narrator remarks, “Water, water, every where, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” The high salt content of seawater makes it impossible for your body to process, so if you drank nothing but saltwater, you'd die from dehydration. Water everywhere, and yet so very thirsty. I believe that this is the tension, the crux of our faith journey. We live in the tension of this paradox: some things fill us up to overflowing, and seem to expand our hearts and our capacity to love and serve and give, while other things leave us filled up to the point that we’re empty and starving, thirsty in the middle of an ocean full of water. Our task, our discipleship is the process of learning how to know the difference between these things, and choosing again and again to fill ourselves with things that satisfy, things that expand our hearts, instead of closing them off. 

This is a season of waiting and longing and hoping for the Christ Child, the Prince of Peace. We are filled with expectation. We have been called to repentance, to clear out some of the junk that is closing off corners of our hearts. We have been called to make a path, a highway, a wide-open road to our souls, ready for Christ to enter in. Let every heart prepare him room! Amen.

           

             

           

            (Hymn: Joy to the world! The Lord will Come)

Sermon for Third Sunday in Advent, "Hurry Up and Wait: Message," Luke 3:7-18

Sermon 12/14/14

Luke 3:7-18

Hurry Up and Wait: Message

            Every year around this time, we see news stories and facebook posts and tv coverage of the “War on Christmas.” There’s a story about whether or not you can say “Merry Christmas” anymore or if you must say “Happy Holidays.” People urge us to remember that “Jesus is the reason for the season,” and warn against “taking Christ out of Christmas.” Maybe you’ve even been frustrated by the secularization of the season. I certainly get frustrated by the consumerism, the commercialism, as if spending more and more money will somehow bring us a more joyful and meaningful experience celebrating the birth of Jesus. But I wonder, as we reflect on this season, what might happen if we worried less about how others might try to “take Christ out” of Christmas, if such a thing were even possible, and wondered more about how we, how you and I can produce any evidence that we’re working to put Christ into our preparation for Christmas. We can’t control what other people do, much as we might like to. But we are, in fact, totally responsible for our own behavior. And so, when it comes to Christ in Christmas, we have to ask: Are we putting Christ in? Rev. Robb McCoy writes, “Nothing can take Christ out of Christmas as long as I strive to be Christ in Christmas.” And that’s his sort of slogan for the season: “Be Christ in Christmas.” He tries to think of tangible, meaningful ways that he can act and live and interact as Christ in Christmas, and urges us to do the same. How can we be Christ in Christmas?

Last week we talked about our role as messengers. I asked what others would know from us about Christmas, about Jesus, about God, with us as the messengers. We’re the messengers of God in these days, the ones tasked with sharing the message, the good news. What kind of messengers are we? Today, we turn our attention to making sure we know exactly what our message is. What is the message that we’re delivering? Last week we looked at John the Baptist, messenger, announcing Jesus’ pending arrival, and today, we’re right back with John again. But this time we look to Luke’s gospel for a little more insight on the message that John was sharing.   

As our text opens, crowds are coming out to John to be baptized. Baptism like this was a cleansing ritual, practiced in many traditions. It signified renewal, a fresh start. So folks are coming to John to be baptized. But he’s not exactly warm and welcoming when he sees them: “You brood of vipers!” he hells. “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance.” He goes on to say that the crowds should not expect to rely on their Judaism, their families, their history, their cultural identity, to give them a free pass from responsibility. “Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” In other words, yes, God has had a special relationship with God’s people. But that doesn’t give you the freedom to do anything you want. You still have to hold up your part of the relationship, the covenant. John continues forebodingly: “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

            John obviously catches the attention of his audience – they begin asking him what they should do. He replies to them, to tax collectors, to soldiers – whoever has two cloaks must share, whoever has food must share, whoever has power , whoever has money must be fair and just. The people are filled with expectation at John’s words, and they wonder whether John himself might not be the messiah they are waiting for. But he insists he is not: “I am not worthy to untie his sandals,” John says. But, he leaves them, and us, with a compelling images of the messiah. “His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” A winnowing fork was a farming tool used to toss wheat into the air, so that the wind would catch the good grain and separate it from the useless chaff. Our passage concludes, “So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.”

Is John’s message “Good News?” There’s such an underlying tone of threat, between the vipers, the ax, and the winnowing fork. And yet, obviously his message was compelling enough to have crowds flocking to him to be baptized, ready to say: I’m changing things in my life starting now. John is sharing with the crowds, with us, his vision of what the messiah will be. In fact, John will eventually have to send word to Jesus to find out if he really is the messiah, because Jesus certainly acted differently than John was expecting. John sees judgment, just as surely as Jesus comes with salvation – a bit different in emphasis. John has a picture of the messiah that is his own – but the good news still comes because of the core of what John is preaching, as we read last week: Repentance for the forgiveness of sins. What John is preaching, at heart, is that all this preparation is for one who is coming who has the power to free us from the consequences of our sins, one who has the power to cancel out the results of our messes. And that, certainly, is good news. Remember, way back to the summer, when we talked about what the good news was Jesus was talking about. He came preaching about God’s kingdom, God’s reign, how it was here and present and not far off and unattainable in this life. Good news. So both John and Jesus preach the same action in light of this arriving kingdom: Repent. It means literally: change the direction of your mind. Change the direction of your life from all the other ways you’ve been wandering, and head in God’s direction fast, because God’s realm is right here, and you don’t want to miss out. A good message.    

            John tells us, though, that we need to “bear fruit worthy of repentance.” In other words, baptism and saying you “repent,” you’re starting fresh is great – but let’s see some signs that will show that we’ve actually heard – and lived – the message we’ve received. He gives some examples – to tax-collectors, to soldiers, to anyone who asks – about how they, even those who might normally be shunned or disliked or excluded – they – everyone – can bear the fruit of repentance. And not only does John urge the crowds to prepare for the kingdom of God’s imminent arrival by acts of repentance that make room for God, but also those very acts of repentance, preparation, and renewal are in themselves signs of God’s kingdom. Whenever I think of John the Baptist I always think of that phrase “the proof is in the pudding.” The little proverb is actually a shortening of the original saying, “the proof of the pudding is in the eating.” It means that you can tell how good a pudding is not by describing but by actually eating it! Nothing will prove the goodness like eating it will. That’s what John means about fruit – we can describe our transformation all we want. But nothing will prove that our lives are transformed better than our actually transformed lives. Nothing will better demonstrate that we’re Christ followers than our actually following Jesus. And so, then, nothing will better help us be messengers of the Christmas message than actually being the message with our very lives. Be Christ in Christmas.

            As Christians, we celebrate what is called incarnational faith. Incarnation means for us first of all the event of Christ’s birth – God became human. It means embodied. Jesus is called God-with-us, Immanuel. As the gospel of John puts it so beautifully, “and the word became flesh, and dwelt among us.” Our faith is embodied in God incarnate. Jesus is God-in-the-flesh, come to live among us. We celebrate it as a sign of God’s great love for us, that when we failed to get the message in so many other ways, God made the message tangible, made God’s own self into the living embodied message in Jesus Christ, the light of the world.

            But our incarnational theology doesn’t end there. It isn’t just that Jesus is the light of the world. The gospels tell us that we, then, as followers of Jesus, are the light too. We’re the light of the world, meant to shine for others to see, so that they might see Christ within us. We are the body of Christ in the world, the hands and feet of Jesus in the world. We are the body of Christ, the embodiment of Christ, in fact the incarnation of Christ that lives in the world today. We’re not just the messengers. We embody the message. We have the potential, the power, the responsibility to be Christ in Christmas.

            Here’s the amazing thing.  When we seek to be Christ in Christmas, which is exactly what we incarnational folks are supposed to be, called to be, created to be doing, we are not only the messengers of this good news. We actually embody the message itself. If we are Christ in Christmas, we become living, breathing, walking and talking messages of good news. And when we do that, when we live and breathe the good news, there’s no way we can miss the meaning of Christmas. Friends, if you find yourself worrying that we’re losing our grasp on Christmas, the best thing you can do is look into your hearts, and see if you find Christ there. Is the light of Christ shining from you? Are you not only a messenger, but the message? When people meet you, talk to you, interact with you – and by people I mean all the people – are they seeing Christ in you? If they do, we won’t have anything to lament! Be the message. Be Christ in Christmas. Amen.