"Out Of Touch" - Advent 2A

Isaiah 11:1-10
Saint Matthew 3:1-12 

Did you ever wonder what it would be like to celebrate Christmas in the southern hemisphere where it is summer instead of winter? 
 

In Sydney, Australia yesterday the high temperature was 76 and the low was 65 with partly sunny skies.  Tuesday the high temperature will be near 90!  The average temperature for Christmas day is around 80.
 

What kind of songs would one sing in weather like that?  “In the Bleak Midwinter” seems a little, well, bleak.  The Native American “‘Twas in the Moon of Wintertime” wouldn’t ring true because it was summer.  “Cold December Flies Away” would fall flat because the coldest it ever got in December was in the low 60's.
 

I looked at some web sites for the larger churches and they looked like ours.  Lesson and Carol’s were scheduled with freshly scrubbed choir members in neatly pressed choir robes that looked like they could be singing for a church in the north of England.  The church’s pictures from Christmases past show the sanctuaries decorated with garlands and evergreen boughs as if they were in the Bavarian Alps.  

One church’s Christmas page even had a graphic of the night sky complete with snow flakes.   I’m no Tom Skilling but I think that those snow flakes would melt in the temperatures they were enjoying.

The closest I ever came with such a seasonal disconnect was the Thanksgiving I spent in Palm Springs.  For a Chicagoan it was really strange to be sitting pool side one minute and then rushing off to a traditional piping hot  Thanksgiving dinner the next. 
 

That year in the church we worship at - Saint Margaret’s Episcopal in Palm Desert  the rector, Fr.  Lane Hensley, mentioned that his blue Advent vestments were a gift on his departure from his congregation in Illinois and that, beautiful as they were, he was roasting in them even in an air-conditioned building.
 

There must be a certain disconnect in celebrating what is seen by western Christendom as a winter holiday during the height of the summer.  Even the thought of  carols about cold and snow amid summer’s heat seems odd to me.   It would underscore how much the message was out of touch with the climate and the culture.
 

Today we might be feeling the same way as we endure our annual encounter with John the Baptist right as we are preparing to celebrate Christmas.  He doesn’t come to pour cold water but rather hot coals on this very special season.
 

The rest of the world and even some churches are singing carols.  Their pastors are skipping over these passages, bailing out on John the Baptist for the more peaceful vision presented by the prophet Isaiah, and here we are with John wanting to burn everything down and start anew.
 

John is the speed bump on our road to Christmas.

Frankly, John the Baptist is not the kind of preacher I would venture out of my house to hear.   His whole persona is off-putting. 
 
We like our leaders to, at least, be presentable.  John has this wild man look going on.    He looked like he had never cut his hair and was combing it with a balloon. His wardrobe is minimalist and his diet is appalling.  He probably was never asked to go home for lunch with any of his listeners.
   
His preaching is severe, to say the least. He seems to have only two points to his sermons which he repeats over and over again.  Threat, repentance, repeat.  Threat, repentance, repeat.  There is not one glimmer of grace in his preaching.  But still they came.
 
Dr.  Fred Craddock invites us to think about this:

He was no politician trying to make yes sound like no and no sound like yes. He said, ‘The judge is coming, and I’m here to serve subpoenas.’ He was no candle in the sanctuary, he was a prairie fire with a stump or rock as his pulpit. The sun and moon and stars as chandeliers. And the Jordan River, his baptistry.1 

John saves his best for the curious religious leaders who come out and have a look.  They want to hear and see this guy who is out in the desert drawing big crowds with a “hell-fire-and-brimstone” message that they haven’t preached in a thousand years.  

The Pharisees and Sadducees had played it safe abided by the rules and kept life, faith, and perhaps even the people’s understanding of God manageable, controllable, comfortable.  They had this God stuff all figured out – play it safe and nobody gets hurt.

John will have none of that.  He saves his best verbal volleys on these guys who have been trying to keep the faith as best they can for as long as they can. 

He calls them snakes in the grass. “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”2 he says.  “Hey John!” we might ask, “Is that any way to talk to potential baptismal candidates.”

Then he goes on to insult their heritage.  Saying, in one translation, “And don’t think you can pull rank by claiming Abraham as father. Being a descendant of Abraham is neither here nor there. Descendants of Abraham are a dime a dozen. What counts is your life. Is it green and blossoming? Because if it’s deadwood, it goes on the fire.”3

Suddenly he is looking at us.  His words have drawn us in and we may not be happy with where we are standing.  Is my life in full flower or am I toast?

Will somebody pass John a note that Christmas is 17 days away.  Will someone tell him to chill.  Will someone please tell him to settle down and perhaps take up Yoga.  We have enough going on in our lives — both good and bad — without being yelled at or having our faith called into question.

Dr.  David Lose, amazing preacher and pastor of Mount Olivet Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, admits that he can’t figure out or warm up to the John in Saint Matthew’s gospel.

 But what if that’s Matthew’s point all along? What if  . . .  he wants us to be certain about who and what John is – the forerunner, the one who points to Christ, for sure, but also the one who not only calls our attention to Jesus but creates in us a hunger for him.4

John’s job is to point people to Jesus.  To call them to attention and you can’t get people’s attention by being subtle.  Something is about to happen that they need to see and be a part of.  And who better than a grumpy, poorly dressed guy who seems so out of touch with the world  around him to do that.  

John is reminding us what we are waiting for.  

We are not waiting for gifts under the tree, or a Christmas dinner, or winter to be over, or summer to come, we are waiting for Jesus, the Christ.  

For John the matter is terribly straightforward,  “it’s Jesus, always and only Jesus, the one who judges in order to forgive, accuses in order to justify, gives law in order to show grace, and dies that we might have life.”

That is the Christmas message and while it may seem really, really out of touch with all the other messages that bombard us every day it is the only message worth sharing. 

Our job in the Christmas season and every season is to point to Christ. 

This doesn’t mean you have to get all wild-eyed and fanatic about it.  You don’t have to emulate John and call attention to yourself like one man on my recent cruise through the Panama Canal did.  

 Every time, everywhere I saw him, he was wearing a “Jesus First” T-shirt and carrying a big bible.  That was fine and it probably was a whole lot more tasteful than the mismatched outfit I was wearing.

But he also had a sofar wrapped around his arm.  A sofar is an ancient musical horn typically made of a ram's horn, used for Jewish religious purposes.  If the horn wasn’t on his arm, it was on the table in front of him.  I never ventured close enough to find out whether the horn was real or a replica. 

I am sure he was walking around just waiting for someone to come up to him and ask: “Hey buddy!  What’s with the horn?”  At which point I am sure he told them in great detail.

I don’t doubt the guy’s faith but I have my doubts about his method.  

Most of the people I was traveling with had left the church because of bad experiences and were put off by the guy’s in your face — John the Baptist-like — approach.  It was heavy-handed, over the top and, most of all, easy to spot.  

We could avoid him, like we could avoid guys like John the Baptist because they made us feel judged, uncomfortable.  We were afraid that if we approached it would be all judgement and no grace.

What we are to do is reflect the grace we found in Jesus by pointing people to him not in judgement but in love.  

Nineteenth century author Edith Wharton said: “There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”

Jesus is the light that comes into the world.  He’s the candle and all we are called to be is the mirror that reflects his love.

That’s something that will work no matter what the temperature, no matter the climate, no matter the hemisphere.  

If we reflect God’s love not matter where we are it will be Christmas somewhere.  Don’t you think?   
__________

1.  Thoughts, Scattered. “Fred Craddock and John the Baptist.” hermeneuts, October 2, 2015. https://hermeneuts.wordpress.com/2015/10/02/fred-craddock-and-john-the-baptist/.

2.  St.  Matthew 3:7b.  (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

3.  St.  Matthew 3:7-10.  (MSG) [MSG=The Message]

4.  David Lose,  “A Really Nice Guy.” A Sermon for Every Sunday. Accessed December 6, 2019. https://asermonforeverysunday.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/David-Lose-Matthew-3.pdf.