Advent – Waiting
Preached at Atonement Lutheran Church in Wyomissing, PA, and live-streamed. The Gospel and Sermon start around 16:30 minutes.
This is the sermon manuscript that I preached from.
Advent is one of my favorite seasons of the year. I like to lean into the blues and light of the season. The twinkle lights everyone is putting up and added candlelight for the long nights. Here in church we see that too – reflected in the paraments and the trees. Advent is a period of waiting for Emmanuel, God with us – we do this at Lent as well. We use this time to contemplate that very idea of waiting – How do we wait for things? It’s not always easy. That pause between taking an important test and getting a diagnosis. The waiting between job interviews and the offer call. The exciting things we count down to as well – families who are expecting to expand via marriages, births, and adoptions. A trip we have been counting down the days to or seeing a loved one again after a long break.
One of my other favorite parts of Advent is John the Baptist. We don’t see him depicted in a lot of Christmas cards or on Advent calendars, but his presence is a vital part of this season.
Not every Gospel has Jesus’ birth story – but each one has John the Baptist. He is an important part of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. He is who his mom, Elizabeth, is pregnant with when Mary sings her song rejoicing in her own pregnancy with Jesus. He is the voice crying out in the wilderness about Rome’s rule over Israel, and the one who baptizes people in the Jordan River, including Jesus.
John is a rough and tumble kind of guy. He lives an aesthetic lifestyle out in the wilderness. He wear rough clothing and eats locusts and wild honey. He doesn’t wear fine robes or live in privilege in the city like he could, being the son of a priest and a holy man himself. Instead, he moves into the wilderness, proclaiming some pretty unpopular opinions against Rome and Rome’s governors. Opinions that will anger Harrod enough to call for John’s head eventually.
But there is something special about his relationship with Jesus. There is always a John the Baptizer calling us to be prepared before there is a Jesus of Nazareth. So what can we learn about and from this important figure who sets the prologue to our Holy Advent story?
Wilderness
Location is the first thing to notice. We meet John in the wilderness. What does the wilderness represent here? This landscape is a barren dessert. Why the lonely desert for our Advent reflections? First of all, the wilderness represents a lack of a safety net. Far away from a wealth of food or water, the wilderness is a place where we must rely on God. Our vulnerabilities, shortcomings, and insecurities have nowhere to hide out in the wilderness. Any idea of being able to solve every problem on our own is quickly shattered, and at the forefront is needing to rely on our community and God when we need help.
And it is here in the wilderness that John calls for people to repent of their sins. To leave the lives they once knew, repent because the reign of God in heaven has come near, and prepare for the Reign to come. There is something about the wilderness that brings us to our knees in repentance as part of our preparing for Jesus to be with us.
The word repentance has a lot of heavy meaning for us today. It reminds me of fire and brimstone preaching that doesn’t always include a lot of Grace which we really like as Lutherans. When we hear repentance used, there is usually a lot of shame, guilt, and condemnation wrapped up in the use of it. As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I hear messages from some siblings of faith to repent because of my sexuality, calling me sinful despite being made in God’s wonderful image. Repentance has been weaponized as a moral tool to control people’s behavior and make us feel unable to have a relationship with God.
John is all about repentance however, and there is no getting through Advent to Jesus without John. So is there something about this repentance that might lead to relief, then?
The Greek word used for repent in this passage is metanoia, meaning “Change your whole self.” We can think of repenting, then, as understanding what went wrong and knowingly making a change in our lives. Understanding how sin operates in our lives, the choices we make or do not make, the things we say or do not say when we should. Sometimes we think of sin as these great big immoral actions we take that we totally separate us from God. Or breaking God’s law like the 10 commandments, or falling short. These are some ways to think about sin but don’t quite capture a Lutheran understanding. Another way is what Augustine describes: sin as curving in on ourselves and away from God; sin is not just some great big thing that destroys our relationship with God, but an understanding of those things that come between us and God. Not a relationship destroyed, but something that needs to be worked on. Mended.
So as we understand those things that cause us to curve in on ourselves, create barriers between us and God, we can then make a conscious decision to repent. To then be open to receivign God’s saving Grace through Christ on the cross which is there for us whether we repent or not. Overall, this is a practice – a spiritual practice – of noticing, reflecting, responding, and then reflecting again on our actions and our relationship with God. Easier said than done, right? But what helps is having an open curiosity when reflecting rather than a strict judgement which can lead toward shame and resentment; we are here to openly choose to listen for God’s will in our lives rather than choosing our own. That is what John is calling us to do. To reflect and be open to our relationship with God because Emmanuel, God with us, is on his way.
Brood of Vipers
Now - John gets a bit heated in the gospels about this. He’s a bit of a hothead, a strong, prophetic voice that gets him into trouble later. He talks about being baptized in fire to the Pharisees and Sadducees, which were the religio-politico figures during Jesus’ time. He calls this group a Brood of Vipers and they are showing up in the wilderness to what? Act as they always have? Rely on their positions and ancestry to insist that they do not have to repent but want to be part of this community all the same? John knows who these people are, his father can be numbered among them, and he is not letting them get by on their connections, history, and nostalgia. John is holding their feet to the flame and reminding them that we all need to do this Advent work. John is leveling all of us, not raising one above another, but reminding us that when the one who is coming after him finally arrives, we will all be equal in his sight and all equally welcome in Christ. We are preparing for the way of the Lord in our own hearts, making the pathways easy to travel.
We are preparing our hearts, our lives, and this world for God to be here with us, what fruits will we bear? We are receiving this awesome free gift of Grace from God through Jesus’ coming to live among us; how will we respond? A quick answer to John the Baptist is to think of the Fruits of the Spirit from Galatians: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Repentance is an invitation to a new way of life which is demonstrated by its fruits. Being a son of Abraham or being born again through moral standards isn’t enough - our lives must change and our actions must bear out that reorientation in response to God’s grace. Are we, like John, willing to prepare the way of the Lord this Advent?
Amen.
