PROPERS: ADVENT 3, YEAR C
TEXT: LUKE 3:7-18
PREACHED AT HOLY TRINITY, PENSACOLA, ON SUNDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2018.
ONE SENTENCE: The air of expectancy of 2,000 years ago is hard to replicate in our culture, but the content of the hope is the same, though perhaps misunderstood.
It is hard to replicate the conditions into which John the Baptist came 2,000 years ago. Likewise, it is hard to replicate the need for the hope which burned in some people’s hearts.
But I will try.
We must leave behind our relative comfort and security. We must say good-bye to our creature comforts, our homes, our jobs, our paychecks, our pensions, our ready access to meals.
We must bid adieu to the Bill of Rights, the laws which structure our society, and the freedom to worship as we wish.
Our ability to travel, to enjoy leisure, and to be protected from unjust persecution by authorities must go.
Imagine yourself separated from all that brings you comfort and security now. Picture yourself in a different part of the world. Still today – but in another, alien culture.
See yourself as a struggling common person in a nation such as Saudi Arabia. You are not part of the upper or middle class. You are certainly not a member of the aristocracy – the Royal Family. You are ruled by a modern-day Herod, and the modern-day analogues to Sadducees and Pharisees live in wealth and splendor.
You live by the sweat of your brow. Your very existence is on-the-edge. You are a tiny cog in a massive machine – and one that is easily disposable. No one, save your immediate family, is concerned about you or your life. And they are concerned about their own existence.
You may live in a tiny, cramped, hovel-like apartment in Riyadh – a city teeming with millions of faceless people, who exist at the pleasure of the wealthy, powerful royalty. Or you may find your home in a tiny desert village in the south, across the border from Jordan, in the remotest portion of the kingdom.
You are a member of the horde. You don’t matter. Your life doesn’t matter. The world will not miss you when you are gone. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
You wonder why it is all so pointless. Life should have meaning, you say to yourself. How does the law – which is so punitive – make any difference? So, what if a starving child steals a loaf of bread – is that grounds for cutting his hands off?
I hear about God, you think. I hope someone cares for me. I pray there is hope for this world. But I sure don’t see any changes.
Pretty close to despair. A sense of a meaningless life. Living a life of desperation. The bootheel of rigid civil and religious law is bearing down on you.
+ + +
Into that world – originally little-known – comes a wild, sketchy, hairy, dirty man living in an isolated wadi(or creek bed) many miles from the nearest city.
He’s not the kind of man you would want to know. He would not even be welcomed in the small family gatherings around your table. People would avoid him on the street. They would avoid looking him in the eye.
But that did not matter, because he never came near. He lived among the rock badgers, the hawks, and the scorpions of the desert. People avoided him.
When, on occasion, people would go to see this man – mostly out of curiosity – he would be dressed in an unorthodox manner – a leather girdle, and a shirt made of scratchy camel’s hair. And he would shout his messages randomly – seeming to make no sense: "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” The desert sun had driven him mad.
Still, there was an attraction to this man – a certain curiosity. He spoke in a way that confronted the randomness, the meaninglessnessof life. There was hope in his message – albeit a perverse, sideways hope: “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."
What this strange man was saying was revolutionary – but not a manner that bespoke insurrection, but in a way that brought a transformed heart.
A new way of seeing our fellow human beings; the other cogs in the machinery of this world: "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise."
To the civil tax collectors: "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you."
To law enforcement: "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages."
+ + +
Word spread. He gained notoriety. People began to come from surrounding villages and the cities. The people of the land.Not part of the power structure. The great unwashed.
They wondered if he was the one who was going to change everything– bring in a more just world; relieve their suffering; give them hope; let them know that there is a Great One who cares.
But the man in the wilderness – the one of harsh words and hope – demurred: "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."
In that barren and desperate world – in which meaning was lacking and life was pointless – he was a herald of hope.
It may seem like long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away. But the next act is yet to fully come. Wait. Be patient. The Holy One is coming.
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