Sunday,
December 5, 1999
Rev. James A. Todhunter
"Get Ready - for What?"
Isaiah 40:1-11
2 Peter 3:8-15a
Matthew 3:1-12
This time of year my step gets a little brisker, my spirits lift, and I feel an old familiar excitement in my heart. "It’s getting to be a lot like Christmas," as the old song says. My sense is that the closer we get to Christmas, people start catching the spirit and their behavior changes. Neighbors who usually ignore one another, say hello and wish each a Merry Christmas. The other day I noticed, crossing the street, that drivers were especially polite, several times waving me on and waiting patiently. I am surprised by instances of good behavior. Now, I know what the holiday stresses do to people. There are sometimes eruptions of anger that directly fly in the face of the Christmas spirit. There will be shopper frenzy and road rage. And I know that holiday celebrations are tinged with grief for loved ones that we’ve lost. But at the same time I think there is, on the whole, a remarkable sense of joy and happy participation that makes it a blessed season, in spite of the stresses and strains, the commercialism, and the readiness of some to mutter "Bah, humbug!" Perhaps some of us carry a little Scrooge around in us, but by Christmas day, we’ve become the new Scrooge.
I find myself wondering why this is. Several weeks ago I was speaking with the son of a woman, a long time member of our church, who had passed away after having had to relocate in California. At the reception here following the memorial service, I said to him, "I have really been moved by how patiently and tenderly you have dealt with your mother’s move and her illness. I know this has been hard on you and your wife, but you have really done what needed to be done with a love that honors her. You’re a fine man." The son, who is humorous and self-effacing, then muttered, "Well, I guess I have a lot of people fooled." My answer to him surprised me. I could have argued with him or gone along with the joke. But what I said was "Maybe you’re right, but I don’t think so. But I am convinced that we can grow spiritually into better people, by starting to behave differently. By trying to act like spirit filled people, we can become spirit filled people." Howard Thurman once said that we should wherever possible treat people not necessarily as they appear to us, but treat them as the people we know they are capable of becoming. So it is with us. We can act toward ourselves as the people we know we are capable of becoming, and become those very people. The holiday application would be that when we start acting like Christmas is in our hearts, there is where we will find Christmas.
The three Advent scriptures this morning shed interesting light on what I’ve been describing. The central figure is John the Baptist, of whom we heard earlier this morning. Christians believe that John was that voice crying in the wilderness that Isaiah speaks of, the voice that announces "Prepare ye the way of the Lord." According to Isaiah, how do we prepare? "Make straight in the desert a highway." How do you prepare for a welcome guest? You shovel the snow off the sidewalk. You spruce up the house. A child prepares for Santa on Christmas Eve by leaving milk and cookies and seeking assurances that the chimney is clean. What you are getting ready for is something good, a visit from someone loved and venerated, someone bringing something wonderful for you. What does Isaiah say this special guest will do? The Lord will heal and bless and hold the wounded people Israel to his bosom like a tender shepherd. This is good news, wonderful glad tidings. So make ready. Live in joyous anticipation for the One who is to come.
John the Baptist echoes this sentiment. But there is a new element here. Preparation is not just sprucing up and living in joyous anticipation. Preparation involves careful self-scrutiny and inward reflection. For John all this is summed up in the word repentance. John’s baptism was an act of repentance in preparation for the Messiah, the One who was to come. Matthew says that people from Jerusalem and all Judea came down to the River Jordan to be baptized. But when John saw the Pharisees and Sadducees among them, he bitterly rebuked them, saying "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance!" He tells them their behavior is inconsistent with their preaching. Like every prophet before him he accuses them of the religious hypocrisy of thinking that God will overlook the injustice they visit on the poor and oppressed. John tells them the Messiah who is to come is not bringing them comfort. Comfort is for the afflicted. What awaits the Pharisees and Sadducees is very different. Their preparation would be more like getting ready for an unwelcome guest, such as a hurricane. John says "I baptize you with water for repentance…He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire." John is saying that your preparations better take into account the state of your soul. For the Bible the element of fire is always seen not as a destructive conflagration, but as a violent cleansing, a purification, a winnowing. Fire is a symbol of the Holy Spirit, the spirit that Jesus brings. Indeed, elsewhere in the gospels Jesus even says, "I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled!"
If we turn to 2 Peter, we find the writer picks up on this theme of fire. He says:
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed.
The early Christians lived with the lively expectation that the return of Christ on the clouds was immanent. Some Christians today live with a literal sense of this Second Coming. Personally I do not believe that, nor do I think that such a belief is necessarily to Christian faith. But I would say that the coming of the Messiah to the Jews, the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem, and the Second Coming of the Risen Christ, are all ways of urging us to think about being prepared to receive the Holy One into our lives right now. I believe that my view is very biblical. The author of 2 Peter says, "…for God, one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day." Forget about chronological time. The coming of God will not transpire according to the calendar. The coming of God is about Eternity infusing and transforming the world of time and space at every instant.
Let me tell you what I believe. Jesus said that the Kingdom of God is within you. He said that the Reign of God is also all around us. Heaven is not just some place we go when we die. Heaven is right there before our eyes, and right here within our hearts. One simple step outward, or one self-aware glance inward, and we can encounter Eternity. One might even say that we are happy now without knowing it, living in Heaven right now and not realizing it. Why not? Because the accumulation of things, the obsession with pleasure, the trust in power, and our whole pursuit of happiness is in the way. We yearn and hunger and thirst for the person or object that we are convinced will make us happy. And then when we get it, that person or object becomes either an obsessive attachment that brings us more misery, or a boring familiarity, and we start looking again. Happiness repeatedly eludes our efforts. The irony in this is that the happiness we are looking for we already have. We have each been created in the image of God. We have each been given all we need to live fully and fruitfully. We have been given the capacity to appreciate beauty, to give and receive love, and to experience each moment of life as a precious gift. You and I have that capacity now. We have Heaven.
So how do we find it? We find happiness, I think, not so much by searching for it "out there" or seeking it "in here", as by connecting with it everywhere. What may be missing is the link between us and Eternity. You are like your computer. It’s all there in you. You’ve got the icon for a program on your screen. And you’ve got the program somewhere in the depths of the computer. But you’ve got to have the link, or the pathway, that is, the connection. The whole process of personally assessing that missing connection and clearing away the computer viruses that may be in there, is what repentance is about.
So how do you make that connection? Peter says "Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by him at peace, without spot or blemish; and regard the patience of our lord as salvation." Peter says live without spot or blemish. But who can live spotless lives, really? You or me? No. And, of course, we know that we cannot forge that missing link between heaven and our hearts ourselves. It can only be an act of grace. Our awareness of the gap is our waiting, our yearning for God. But yet, our preparation matters. We can strive to be spotless and without blemish. We can do that.
When I was new to the ministry, an older colleague once said to me I should be aware that when people are around clergy, they invariably clean up their acts. They watch their language, how they present themselves, and are very aware of the impression they are making on you, whom they see as God’s representative. His caution was not to be naïve about the world, because people may not really be how they act in your presence. At first, that was discouraging for me to hear. I wanted to be real and I wanted others to be real with me. But over time I’ve decided that maybe this is not so bad after all. Why? Because it never hurts any of us to consciously clean up our act. It is good to know that we are capable of that, even if only for brief intervals, and even if we think we are fooling others and not being real, like the loving son I mentioned earlier. So, why not try it?
We can strive to be spotless and without blemish and at peace in our hearts and in our homes. We can do justice and love mercy. And we can seek to spiritually detach from all those attachments that have become barriers. Why can try out living like better people, and then see what happens. Maybe that is what St. Paul meant when he said, "Put on the garments of righteousness." Put them on and you may find they fit much better than you would have thought.
I began by talking about Christmas and catching the Christmas spirit. Prepare for Christmas and expect that it will be wonderful. I believe that God is saying this to us: Prepare for me and do it this way. First, get rid of the barriers you have erected to my coming. You must forsake the attachments that have blinded you to the truth about who you are and who I am. That may be hard. That is like going through the fire. And it may be get worse before it gets better. But the truth will be disclosed. And then strive to be spotless and without blemish. Strive to be at peace. Just do it. Try it out. Try living into a new way of being. You don’t have to do it perfectly, but do it. God says, "I will be with you. I will walk with you. I will coach you. And the hardest parts I will make easy for you. My yoke will be easy and my burden light. My grace and love will be a gift to you. Trust me and all will be well." Amen.
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