Third Sunday of Advent

December 17, 2006

Sermon by Pastor Joy Bussert

The Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. (Luke 3:7-18)

John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. 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. 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.”

And the crowds asked him, “What then should we do?” In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?” He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.”

As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 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.”

So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.

The Gospel of the Lord.

If you had been a Church Mouse in the Lower Commons 2 Sundays ago after church, you would have enjoyed a visit from the rare and very strange character of Saint Nicholas. Now you may not think of Saint Nicholas as strange or counter-cultural do us today, but had you been there when it all started now over 15 centuries ago, you might have thought that this was a very strange yet wonderful character indeed.

Saints Nicholas was born in Asia Minor and it is believed that he became a Bishop of the Church at a very young age. He was born into a family of Christian nobility but orphaned while yet a small child… and so throughout his life Saint Nicholas was to use his inherited wealth to be a friend to the poorest of the poor children of his charge….even when he grew up to find himself a Bishop at the Center of political and ecclesiastical Power. Saint Nicholas never forgot his origins as an orphan child and so the legends that surround him include many stories of kindness, generosity, and compassion for those forgotten by the rest of the world.

The most famous story about him that the children heard once again this year…involved a poor family of three daughters during a terrible famine in the Region where Saint Nicholas served as Bishop. The family was so poor that the desperate father felt that there was nothing that he could do but sell his daughters into slavery. Saint Nicholas, quietly, anonymously, unseen, in the darkness of night, secretly dropped a bag of gold through an open window, thus saving the daughters from a terrible fate.

On many other occasions Nicholas was discovered, as legend would have it, to have tossed gold coins and tangerines through open windows for many other poor children, even dropping them down chimneys if he feared his identity might become known. Some of the gold coins and tangerines dropped into the stockings hanging from the mantels or into the boots drying in front of the fire below. And so, ever since, children have eagerly hung their stockings above the fireplace or put out their boots in the hope that Saint Nicholas as sure as he always does yet to this very day…will come again bringing gifts and oranges and apples and maybe even gold coins for the children while they wait fast asleep for morning to come.

“But, Pastor Joy!” you say”this is the Season of Advent in the Church.” What does Saint Nicholas have to do with that?

Well, in Advent we remember the Legends surrounding another strange character who leaves the Centers of Power, this time not in Asia Minor, but in Jerusalem, this time not a Bishop of the Church but a High Priest’s kid from the Temple of the Church, John the Baptist, the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth. A Character so strange and so counter-cultural, that the Church devotes 2 Sundays in Advent to the Legends and stories surrounding him. And the message of John is not that far removed from the deeds of the legendary Saint Nicholas “whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none,” he tells his hearers, “and whoever has food must do likewise.”

John went out to the wilderness, removing himself far from the glitz and glitter of Jerusalem, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ”Prepare the Way of the Lord.” As is so often the case in Scripture, it is not those who remain at the center of social, political, and ecclesiastical Power to whom the Word of God comes” For the most part the Word of God is revealed to those far removed from the glitter and glamour of Jerusalem or Rome….or long before that, to those who chose to remove themselves from the Seats of Power in order to bring a Word that has Power of a Different Sort.

Think of Jocheved, Miriam and eventually the exiled Moses minding the sheep of Jethro in the faraway country of Midian. Think of the Boy Samuel. Think of Esther or Ruth. Think of Jeremiah or Amos among the sycamores. Soon we will hear of Elizabeth and Mary and the Song that Mary will Sing known as the Magnificat which literally turns the world upside-down. There will be the Shepherds on a hillside and all will take place not in the big center of Jerusalem but in a tiny out of the way unheard of place called Bethlehem.

Listen to this introduction to our strange counter-cultural character from the third chapter of Luke: “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Ceasar….” There’s Power for you. “Ponttius Pilate being governor of Judea…” More Power. “And Herod being tetrarch (or Prince) of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Iturea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, and in the ;high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas”…there’s religious power joined to secular power….”The Word of God came to John the son of Zechariah….in the wilderness.”

The Message is Clear: The Star of Bethlehem cannot be seen if it is dimmed by the glitz of Jerusalem. The Powerful can never see the Love of God incarnate on Earth should they remain at the Centers of Religious and Political Power. On the contrary….the Bible makes it abundantly clear that those furthest from the places of Power are generally nearest to the Heart of God. And so John, removed from all that glitters and glows with the attraction of status and the proverbial social and political climb to the top, hears and speaks a Word from the wilderness. And not only would his coat be thrown out by ARC, the Salvation Army and indeed from the clothes closets and flea markets of most churches, he suggests if you have more than one, give one of them away. Even more than that, he eats food that poor people would have been forced to eat…in an act of solidarity with those for whom the Savior of the World …will come….and will be found in something so out of the way and so removed from the centers of Power…the ChildChild will be in a cattle stall behind the Inn of Bethlehem…reserved for the One…for whom there will be No Room.

Our problem this Advent Season in America is that we are listening to the wrong people and looking for salvation in the wrong places. It seems that so many have come to expect so little. What we have learned from the War is that while powerful rulers may think they have all of the Facts, as they frequently claim, once all of the Facts are in, no one seems to have had the Truth. The Soul of the People seems to have shriveled. Unlike Mary’s Song, their Soul no longer Magnifies the Lord, but magnifies the sights and sounds of spears and swords instead of ploughshares…and the sounds of coins and credit cards filling up cash registers in places that can never in the end, satisfy the human longing for God. For the glory and mystery of the Season will be found not in the marketplaces of Jerusalem or in the negotiations and war-mongering of Rome…but only where shepherds and Magi alike will fall on their knees before a poor mother and child and behold the glory of God in a Manger.

The gift of Saint Nicholas in his day…and the Task of John the Baptist even centuries before in his day…was to be a witness to the people to a Different Way….before it was too late. John wanted the people to hear and see a different way…to imagine a different future so as not to be condemned to the present. Saint Nicholas offered a way of Hope to those for whom there was no hope. And so John says, might we give one coat away or provide food for the hungry yet today.

“In the 15^th Year of the Reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was the governor of Judea and Herod was ruler of Galilee….and Annas and Caiaphas were the Presiding Priests…..a new Drama was about to unfold in which the lives of the out-of the way people would become illumined with the Glory of God. The locus of Power was about to shift from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, from the marketplace to shepherds on a hillside, from the palace to the manger…all the while that a whole contata of angels is preparing to light up the sky and sing all about it. Away from the rich, powerful places of prominence, in an out-of the way place, something new and significant for all time and all places was about to happen. And characters throughout history like John the Baptist and Saint Nicholas receive Word of its coming and feel compelled to Prepare a Different Way.

And speaking of Preparing the Way at Immanuel, if you get a chance, stop by the Gathering Space on your way out this morning, peek over the Railing into the Foyer and you Behold the Boxes and Gifts piled up underneath the 15-ft Tree all ready to be delivered to the Children and Families of the Wilder Child Development Center. Every day since Gay Bartholic secured that humongous tree and the Boy Scouts put it up and the Improvers secured it so it wouldn’t fall over…and then the children at our Advent Celebration decorated it with their ornaments and snowflakes and strings of popcorn and cranberries….it has been my task to Prepare a Way that is ‘Make a Way” through the Boxes to Water the Tree underneath.

Every day in December, as the boxes accumulated from just one or two to 20 to now, goodness knows, well over 50…..the Way through the Boxes to the Base of the Tree has become more and more arduous! But every day as I carried my water pitcher and made a path through the boxes in the foyer, I would do so with the words of John ringing in my ears: “Prepare the Way…Make a Path….a Highway for our God. For in giving these Boxes for the Children of Wilder, the people of Immanuel (I would think to myself) are preparing the way for what needs to be done so that the ChristChild who is coming can enter into the Life of the World around us, into the Lives of Children for whom God came as much as for us…and into the place of transformation this Season…the very places of the Human Heart and Soul.

For Just as John encouraged people who had 2 coats to give one away, and just as Saint Nicholas through those coins to children waiting for a better day….so too, I can assure you….that there will be a child waiting on the other side of that Box, the very box that you took time to prepare amidst all of the other things you have to do this Christmas….there will be a child waiting for whom your Box might be the only Christmas that they will have!

John’s Task was and is this Advent Season to name what needs to be done to Prepare the Way…so that the one we await this Advent Season can truly come once again…into our Hearts…and into the Life of the world around us…. into the very lives of those so in need of God’s Love and Redemption.

Lift up your Heads! John the Baptist announces to the world and to us. For Your Redemption, indeed the redemption of the whole world, is, even now….Drawing Near! Amen.