Advent 3C - "Have You Heard John Preach?"

Saint Luke 3:7-18

In his classic book Whatever Became of Sin Psychologist Karl Menninger gave us this scene.

On a sunny day in September 1972, a stern-faced, plainly dressed man could be seen standing still on a street comer in the busy Chicago Loop. As pedestrians hurried by on their way to lunch or business, he would solemnly lift his right arm, and pointing to the person nearest him, intone loudly the single word “GUILTY!”  Then, without any change of expression, he would resume his stiff stance for a few moments before repeating the gesture. Then, again, the inexorable raising of his arm, the pointing, and the solemn pronouncing of the one word “GUILTY!”

The effect of this strange faccuse pantomime on the passing strangers was extraordinary, almost eerie. They would stare at him, hesitate, look away, look at each other, and then at him again; then hurriedly continue on their ways. One man, turning to another who was my informant, exclaimed: “But how did he know?”1

Those of us who live in cities can spot street preachers from blocks away.  They are easy to identify with their big megaphones and even bigger bibles.  Their message is almost always the same.  Those who pass by are “guilty as sin” and they need to repent or face the dire consequences.  Most times we can avoid them but there are other occasions where they insert themselves wherever we are.

James Thurber in his essay “The Get Ready Man” remembered that once the “Get Ready Man” interrupted a production of “King Lear” at the local theatre.

The theatre was in absolute darkness and there were rumblings of thunder and flashes of lightening offstage {when} the Get Ready Man added his bawlings to the ranting of the King and the mouthing of the Fool. Right in the middle of the play from the balcony there came the shouts “Get Ready!  Get Ready!  The World is coming to an end!” 

They found him finally, and ejected him, still shouting. Neither father nor I, {Thurber wrote} completely got over the scene... The theatre in our time, {he speculated} has known few such moments.”2

I’ll bet not.  It takes a while to get over any encounter with those who remind us of our shortcomings which is why I tried to deftly avoid John the Baptist last week by talking about his parents,  Zachariah and Elizabeth, in the hopes of giving him a wide enough berth to avoid him entirely.  But apparently, I didn’t swerve far enough because John the Baptist is still here.

It seems that we are not going to able to get to Christmas without hearing John preach.

Long ago in another place in time I quoted a sermon by the late, great, preacher of preachers, Dr. Fred B. Craddock when he let his imagination run wild over the figure of John the Baptist.

He was an oddity. He had long hair, and when I say he had long hair, I don’t mean he just had long hair. It wasn’t like the young businessmen in Atlanta with a little ponytail. He never cut his hair. I mean, he never cut his hair. He had a long beard, not a neat beard like some of you have. I mean, he had never trimmed his beard. He ... was strange. And dressed in an unusual way – camel’s hair and a leather band around the waist. And his food – he never went home with anybody for lunch, and I’m sure no one accepted his invitation. 

 I loved the imagery until after church when a really nice woman who we had spent weeks actively courting for membership came up to me and said, “What do you mean he never cut his hair?  What do you mean he never trimmed his beard? What do you mean he never took a bath?” and stormed out. 

I wanted to run after her myself shouting: “Hey! Hey! Hey!  Don’t blame me! Blame Fred Craddock!” But she was gone, never to be seen at our church again.

While we might try to avoid hearing John and his kind preach I’m with Dr. Peter Marty, who wrote:

What fascinates me about John is that our first-century friends made the decision to go out and hear him in the wilderness. They took the initiative. He didn’t come to them to dwell in their midst and inhabit their lives, as Jesus did. They had to go to him, leaving behind their comforts, conveniences, and suburban cul-de-sacs.3

At the risk of getting in trouble again let me tap into Dr. Craddock’s overactive imagination:

Plows were left in the furrows, bread was left in the oven, shops were left unattended, school was let our early because the crowds were moving into the desert to hear this extraordinary preacher.

I’m sure that many of the people who went were just curious, curious about the way he looked and the way he talked. I’m sure some the young people went out there just out of curiosity, nothing to do, sat out on the hoods of their camels and just watched the crowd and listened to John, bored perhaps. But most of the people who went were very sincere. There was something persuasive about him.4

 Start a sermon like that and the congregation just might come to believe you have real anger issues.  Preacher friends and I can’t remember in all our years of preaching ever starting a sermon by calling our congregations a brood of vipers, a bunch of snakes. We’ve thought about it but thinking and doing are two different matters.

Besides, the people’s reaction to John was amazing.  They don’t announce in returned anger, “Well, I don’t believe it!”  They don’t storm back to their villages and farms. They don’t try to cut off his head. Sadly, that will come later but it will not be one of them but be by a leader who demands ultimate, unquestioning, loyalty from any in their kingdom or court.

Instead, the crowds ask: “Then what are we supposed to do?”6

Just as no preacher I know would start a sermon the way John did, no preacher I know would ever expect that kind of reaction.  Believe me when I tell you, “What do you want us to do?”7 is not a reaction most preachers are used to getting but it is what happens when we hear John preach.

I find it curious that John doesn’t tell the tax collectors to quit working for the Romans and their ... collaborators, nor are the soldiers called to quit serving Caesar and his empire. Both the despised tax collectors and the feared soldiers and called ... to respond to the advent of the Christ, right here and right now in their ordinary everyday lives.8

An encounter with Jesus, the baby in the manger, the full-grown adult who John is pointing us to, makes us different. When we have heard John preach our reaction is “what shall we do?”

And this doesn’t mean just to repeat pious phrases over and over.  This doesn’t mean to try to impress people with our knowledge of scripture or theology.  It doesn’t mean that we only care for our close relatives and friends.  But it does means that we broaden our scope, our horizons, and begin to live like the world really is coming to an end.

When we’ve really heard John preach we may just wind up like Ebenezer Scrooge.  He, and Dickens’ play, A Christmas Carol is playing almost everywhere about now.  

His main complaint about Christmas is that it costs him money.  Money is everything to him, it is his first love.  He has sacrificed everything for it including the love of another person.

is complaint with the poorly paid Bob Crachit is that he wants a day off with or without pay and that will cost Scrooge money in, if nothing else, lost business.

He throws the gentlemen asking for donations to the poor out of his office because he pays taxes, lots of taxes, don’t they know, and his taxes pay for poorhouses.  There is nothing more he wishes to do but be left alone.

After an evening meal and bed, alone as always, he is visited by three ghosts, past, present, and future, that frankly sum up his life in one word, “guilty.”  “How did they know?” might have been his response and it could have been his only response. 

But spoiler alert! Scrooge wakes up a changed man.  Maybe he had heard the three ghosts and they sounded a lot like John preaching.  And, as someone pointed out: “Scrooge’s first merry Christmas cost Scrooge a fortune.”9

Have you heard John preach?  Have you heard him bear witness to the light whose coming we will celebrate in just a few days?  

Have you heard John preach?  It may not cost you a fortune, but it will give you back your life. 

“Share now. Be merciful now. Do justice now. Inhabit your life, no matter how plain, how obscure, how unglamourous, how routine”10 now.

Hear John preach now, and you really will be ready for Christmas.

 

________________

1. Karl A. Menninger, Whatever Became of Sin? (New York, NY: Hawthorne Books, 1197), 1-2.

2. James Thurber, “The Car We Had to Push,” in My Life and Hard Times (Harper Collins, 1999), pp. 13-14.

3. Peter Marty, “The Eerie Call of John the Baptist,” The Christian Century, December 1, 2023, https://www.christiancentury.org/first-words/eerie-call-john-baptist

4. Fred B. Craddock, “Have You Heard John Preach?,” essay, in The Collected Sermons of Fred B. Craddock (Louisville, KY: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2011), 109–14.

5. William H. Willimon, “A Sermon About Sermons,” Pulpit Resource, Year B, 52, no. 4 (2024): 33–35.

6. St. Luke 3:10. (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE:Eugene H. Peterson, The Message (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2004).]

7. St. Luke 3:10. (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible. (Carol Stream, IL:Tyndale House Publishers, 1971.)]

8. Willimon, loc. cit.

9. William Willimon, “How Much Does Christmas Cost?” Pulpit Resource, Year B, 46, no. 4 (2024): 33–35.

10. Debie Thomas, “What Then Should We Do?” Journey with Jesus, December 9, 2018, https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2030-what-then-should-we-do.

 

Advent 2C - "Wait for It"

 

Saint Luke 1:5–23 & 57-80

On Friday, November 1, WLIT-FM which bills itself as “Chicago’s Christmas Music Station,” began playing Christmas music exclusively 24/7. In a press release, Mick Lee, program director and host said:

“93.9 LITE FM listeners have spoken year after year — once Halloween ends, they are ready for Christmas music on 93.9 LITE FM. We’re thrilled to celebrate our 24th year as Chicago’s Christmas station, spreading cheer, unity and warmth all season long!”1

 Now don’t get me wrong and don’t expect the usual harangue one gets from preachers who bemoan the fact that if you start Christmas music on November 1st it does seem that you are rushing headlong into Christmas without giving it a second thought.

There is nothing like a little Christmas music to get you in the spirit but honestly how many times can one listen to Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You” or Burl Ives’ classic rendition of “Frosty the Snow Man” or even a wonderful choral rendition of “Jesse’s Carol” which, the first couple of times can make me tear up, but after that I just dry my eyes and get on with my day.

For, as my friend and Scotsman, Callum MacLeod, said in a sermon once: “It really seems that a sane person can only listen to ‘Feliz Navidad’ so many times before taking a hammer to the appliance.”2

months worth of Christmas music if it didn’t result in exceptionally high ratings.  But I do have my doubts about politicians who promise that if they get elected we’ll be able to say “Merry Christmas” once again to everybody, even our beloved friends of other faiths and traditions, that makes them feel not quite so beloved.

Or, Nicholas Maduro, the Venesuelian dictator, who decided to hide behind a stolen election, political unrest, and lawless gangs causing countless to flee his country for fear of their lives to decree:

“It’s September, and it already smells like Christmas,” Maduro said Monday night during his weekly television show. “That’s why this year, as a way of paying tribute to you all, and in gratitude to you all, I’m going to decree an early Christmas for October 1.”3

 If you can’t give your people peace and prosperity, at least give them “bread and circuses” or in this case, tinsel and garland, and the promise that they will be able to say “Merry Christmas” to anybody they want whenever they want.

The season of Advent that liturgical churches celebrate so well reminds us in the words of the poet Edwina Gateley:

Advent means we are waiting for something; we are to expect something good and up-lifting to make us feel better. And why not? We struggle so, and we only want peace, security and even a little happiness. We dream of it—like a lost treasure in an empty desert. Then, in the very dying of the Autumn Season, along comes Advent with candles, prayers, songs and promises of new possibilities. And, all tingling with excitement and expectancy, we are seduced into hoping once again.”4

 There are two people, glossed over in the Christmas story by all the surrounding hoopla, who were seduced into hoping once again but before this hope became a reality they had to wait.  And their waiting began in a very strange place – at worship.

There is a name hidden deep in our Gospel reading this morning. It is the name of John the Baptist’s father, Zachariah. 

We know a lot about John.  He may be one of the noisiest characters in all of scripture preaching a message of repentance at the top of his lungs out in the wilderness to any and all who will listen.

But his dad, his father, Zachariah is another matter.  He’s an elderly man, the kind of guy with whom I am having a greater and greater affinity.  His wife is getting up there too and she suffers the ignominy of bearing the cruelest title of all, she is called “barren.”

They are an old couple, a faithful couple, who have long since given up on the idea that they will ever be called mom and dad by a child of their own.  That is until one night at worship something happens.  

Zachariah is a priest and it falls to him, entirely by chance, to go into the temple and be the one to burn incense.  It is to be, as my Episcopal friends call it, “a smoking service” which is something that we here at Saint Luke can relate to.

I can see the old priest, perhaps with a smile on his face, putting the coals in the incense pot, loading spoonful upon spoonful of incense in the censer, and swinging that baby around until the temple bore a striking resemblance to St. Luke on a Pentecost Sunday.

Then, from within the smoke, of all things, an angel appears striking terror into the old guy who may have then wondered, “What’s in this incense anyway? One too many, ‘nose hits’ perhaps?”  

“But the angel spoke to him, ‘Do not be afraid, Zacharias; your prayers have been heard. Elisabeth your wife will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. This will be joy and delight to you and many more will be glad because he is born.’”5

 Now one would think the Zachariah would be overjoyed at the news but instead of listening to the angel and rejoicing over the message he snaps back at the angel. “Do you expect me to believe this? I’m an old man and my wife is an old woman.”6

Stop and think about this for a second.  He’s spent years of praying.  He’s spent years of hoping perhaps followed by years of sad resignation that he and his wife would never be parents and an angel shows up, in the temple no less, right in the middle of worship, and tells him that his prayers have been answered and Zachariah is acting like somebody who has either spent too much time in seminary or too much time around other old priests.

He wants to talk about it. Discuss the offer the angel is making. Determine the biological probabilities.

But the angel Gabriel has better, more important things to do.  So instead of listening to the old boy hem and haw and go on and on, the angels just takes away his power to speak.  

A priest who can’t speak! How long have many of you been praying for exactly that?  You may even be praying for that now.

Kathleen Norris, in her book Amazing Grace, writes: 

When the angel strikes Zachariah dumb he is given a pregnancy of his own. I read Zachariah’s punishment as a grace in that he couldn’t say anything to compound his initial arrogance when confronted with mystery. When he does speak again it is to praise God.  It’s just that he needed nine months to think it over.7

When the baby is born his pondering is over and everybody gathered around the mother and the child thinks the little guy should be named after his father. However, Elizabeth and Zechariah make a stunning announcement. They are going to name their son John.

“What?” [the relatives, neighbours, and friends] exclaimed. “There is no one in all your family by that name.”  To affirm his wife’s decision the happy father motions for “a piece of paper and to everyone’s surprise writes, ‘His name is John!’ Instantly Zacharias could speak again, and he began praising God.”8

As Dr. John Buchanan reminded us in a sermon when “old Zechariah finds his voice ... the first words out of his mouth are a kind of joyful poem; the birth of a child turns fathers into poets. Whatever he said, Luke arranges it in a canticle, which the church has loved for twenty centuries, the Benedictus: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people.”

[Then,] “as new fathers are inclined to do, Zechariah can’t resist a little boasting: “And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High.”

And then the most beautiful images I know: “By the tender mercy of our God the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”9

Our temptation is to rush headlong into Christmas.  To, by our own power and might, make rough places smooth and paths straight.  Our temptation may be to crank up the carols as soon as we can even though we know that it won’t be long before we tire of hearing them over and over.

Our temptation may even be to use Christmas as a tool to fool people into believing that everything is okay and if they just rush around a little more, or buy a little more, or pretend a little more that everything will be alright. 

But not so cleverly hidden in the Advent celebration are real people like Elizabeth and Zachariah, John’s parents, and Mary and Joseph, who simply had to wait.

And you and I, here and now, wait for that moment when we can celebrate the birth him whose coming marks the day when the dawn from on high will appear once again the and tender mercies of the one for whom we wait will break upon us.

Wait for it!  For it is something worth waiting for.

________________

1. Kelly Bauer, “Nonstop Christmas Music Is Back on 93.9 Lite FM Starting Friday,” Block Club Chicago, October 30, 2024, https://blockclubchicago.org/2024/10/30/nonstop-christmas-music-is-back-on-93-9-lite-fm-starting-friday/.

2. Calum I. MacLeod, “A Christmas Eve Sermon.” Sermon preached at The Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, December 24, 2012.

3. Jorge Rueda, “Christmas in Venezuela Kicks off in October, President Maduro Has Declared,” AP News, September 4, 2024, https://apnews.com/article/venezuela-christmas-october-maduro-elections-tensions-2889fbab6a6a063d1f3bfe9d0afd33ba.

4. Edwina Gately, “Advent.” https://www.journeywithjesus.net/poemsandprayers/3776-advent

5. St. Luke 1:5-17. (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English (London, ENG: HarperCollins, 2000).]

6. St. Luke 1:18. (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE:Eugene H. Peterson, The Message (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2004).

7. Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith (New York, NY: Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc, 2003).

8. St. John 1:61-63. (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible. (Carol Stream, IL:Tyndale House Publishers, 1971.)]

9. John M. Buchanan, “Keep Calm and Carry On.” Sermon preached at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. December 6, 2009