“Right Where We Are”

A Sermon for the 3rd Sunday of Advent, Year C

Luke 3:7-18

By The Rev. Matthew Emery

Preached at Second Congregational United Church of Christ, Rockford, Illinois

December 13, 2009

I’m going to assume that many of you did not want to hear this scripture passage this morning.  I mean, it’s now less than two weeks before Christmas, our sentimental-ness receptors are on high, we’re in the season of that Charlie Brown Christmas special that warms our hearts and holiday music concerts that bring us comfort.  One of the last things probably many of us were looking for is this red-faced, fiery preacher guy calling people a “brood of vipers” and going on about fire and judgment.  And even more, we probably don’t want to think much about whether his words might not just be for his original audience, but for us too.

              But here we are.  And it is not just us.  It’s not just picking some passage at will in order to rain on our collective parade.  For hundreds of years, the Christian church has turned to the story of John the Baptist in these weeks right before Christmas.  Actually, it goes back even further than the worship traditions of the church.  If you look in the Bible, you’ll find that two of the four gospels—Mark and John—don’t even have any of the beloved accounts of Jesus’ birth, but start right out with this curious, abrasive figure named John and his preaching in the wilderness.  And in Matthew and Luke, the two gospels where we find the two different birth stories, with Matthew’s magi from the east and Luke’s angels and shepherds, John the Baptist pops up near the beginning there, too, before we can get on with Jesus’ life and ministry.

              So what do we make of this John?  It would be easy to assume, I think, that the people who had trekked out to the wilderness around the Jordan River to hear John didn’t necessarily expect or want to hear his sort of message either.  I don’t have any reason to think that people some 2,000 years ago were any more eager to be called a “brood of vipers” than we are today, any more eager to be warned of judgment and fire.  And yet, the story tells us that not just a few, but rather ‘crowds’ of people went seeking out John and his ministry.  Not only do we have the observation of ‘crowds’ going to see John, though, but even more fascinating, I think, is the commentary that the gospel writer offers us at the very end of this passage:  “So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.”  Good news?  Indeed, ‘good news’ Luke tells us.

              In one of his sermons some time ago, well-respected preacher Tom Long tells a story about the church he joined when he moved to Atlanta a while back.  At a new members dinner, the pastor had people go around the table to introduce themselves and say a little something about why they had joined the church.  Some noted the good children’s programs that gave their kids something to do after school and for a week or two in the summer—that kind of thing helps out Mom and Dad, you see.   Some noted the convenience of the church’s location, the proximity to their home, the good parking.  Still others appreciated the organist and the lovely music.  But finally it came around to a man who told the group that, for more years than he could remember, he’d been a crack addict, a boozer, a derelict—but that through this church he found the power of Jesus to turn it all around.  // As Long tells it, there all those new members sat, feeling sheepish.   “We came for the good parking.  He came for the salvation!”

              You see, I think there is something to be said for “telling it like it is”.  There is power in refusing to play along with the everyday play-acting of our lives and to face the true reality of how things actually are.  Sure, perhaps the crowds weren’t eager to be called a “brood of vipers”, but when John asked them “who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”, perhaps they didn’t immediately look for the closest exit because they had some sense—conscious or otherwise—that something about the world or their own lives wasn’t quite as it should be. 

              Perhaps it is so with us too.  Perhaps as we go about in these weeks before Christmas, we have a sense that things aren’t quite as they should be.  Maybe it’s the rampant commercialization of a holiday that was originally about a child born in a barn to parents in poverty.  Maybe it’s the fact that as we prepare to celebrate the birth of the “prince of peace”, that the drumbeat of war marches onward in places around the world, even among people who claim to be disciples the One whose coming we await in this season.  Or maybe as we hear John the Baptist’s charge—“Do not say to yourselves ‘we have Abraham as our ancestor’, for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children of Abraham”—maybe as we hear that charge, we find ourselves a little uncomfortable, realizing that our claims of ‘oh sure, I’m a church member’ or ‘oh yeah, I believe in God’ fall a little flat if it doesn’t make much difference in our day-to-day lives.

              I don’t know whether it is out of despair or hope, but those crowds then ask the key question, “What then should we do?”  What then should we do?  For someone so fiery and abrasive and, let’s just say it, a little weird, John is remarkably practical in his response to this question.  These crowds have trekked out to the wilderness, escaping the routines of their everyday existence, and John’s warnings have met them right where they are with the reality of their lives.  And now John sends them forth with rather practical instruction that meets them right where they are too.  To the people, he admonishes them that if they have two coats they must share with those who have none.  Meeting tax collectors where they are, he tells them not to cheat their clients.  To the soldiers, even, he gives instruction for where they are, too, telling them not to bully and extort.

              Perhaps this is one of the ways in which John’s preaching is good news.  He meets the people right where they are, not letting them shy away from the truth about their life, encouraging them to prepare the way right in their own particular situation.  John does not tell them to escape their life; he does not admonish them to ride off into some wilderness or on some chariot to heaven in order to get away from it all.  No, he meets them where they are and sends them back to where they will be.  Really, this is part of the truth of the gospel as Luke tells it, throughout.  Luke, perhaps a bit more than any of the other gospels, takes great effort to situate the good news of the gospel, the story of Jesus’ life and ministry, in the concrete realities of the world.  You might remember last week’s gospel reading, introducing John the Baptist’s ministry, where Luke goes on at some length naming the real, particular rulers and religious authorities of the time—establishing John’s place in the midst of the concrete, real world.  Luke does the same in telling of Jesus’ birth.  The story of Jesus, the good news of what God is doing, happens right here in this real world, among real people, amidst real concrete realities.

              That, my friends, is part of the deep truth of the day we are preparing to celebrate once again, the joy and good news of Christmas itself.  Just as we see John meeting the people right where they are, what we celebrate in observing Christmas is that God came to right where we are.  God came into our human life; God came to share our human existence, full of all its complexity, its pain, and its joy.  It may be that in this season we find our hearts warmed by sentimental customs and cherished traditions.  Or it may be that in this season we find our souls pained by grief and stress and broken relationship.  Whichever way it is for us—and I suspect it may be a little of both—the good news that we celebrate now is that “from heaven above to earth God came” to meet us right where we are—joyful or pain-filled, confident or questioning.  And, even more, that, to the same, God does come and will come ever again.

              Come, Lord Jesus.  Come.

Recounted by Scott Hoezee in commentary on Luke 3:7-18 for 13 December 2009 for “This Week in Preaching” on the website of the Center for Excellence in Preaching of Calvin Seminary: http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/