People Get Ready: Advent 2

Sinners, Serpents and Saints

Matthew 3:1–10

December 4, 2016

Good morning. First snow of the year on December 4th. Not too shabby huh? It’s great to see you all today. From this point on, our growing dark days will be surrounded by tinsel and bobbles, mini-lights and mega-sales.

Our calendars will be stretched, our time spent several times over. Our comfort and joy may be challenged in the yuletide greetings and festivities. We’ve got to keep our eyes open to keep Jesus in view. That’s up to us because few of the ads, the magazines and the parties are going to do that for us.

Hence our advent theme, People Get Ready. There is some prep work that should be happening in the background of this season. Some tilling of the soil, some pruning of the plants, prep work…this is where our old friend, JB — John the Baptist comes in. Get ready, he says, someone great is coming.

Talking about getting ready, on Thursday, I got a call from Kim Snoddy, Refugee One — the refugee resettlement agency we partnered with in March when Angelique Musekera and her family arrived from the Congo.

this is a group of us meeting her and the kids at the O’Hare.

She told me the following: Refugee One had a Muslim family arriving in just 10 days. Surprisingly she said, it was a family of women. Fatima, A 52-year old mother arriving with her two adult daughters:

Aliamal 21 years old. And Hiba who has a 22-month-old daughter, named Julia.

Fatima is divorced.. “That’s rare,” Kim said. She also is educated w/ a degree from Damascus University. The women managed to flee to Egypt in 2013. And while they were there, the mom taught English in a refugee school and to her two daughters enrolled in universities in Cairo.

The 24 year old is listed as married. But there is no information about her husband, he will not be joining his wife and child. Not now, and unlikely in the future.

“These are some unusual women,” Kim said. Resilient. But also women who have likely seen horrors you and I will never know. Women who desperately risked everything leaving their country — throwing themselves literally on the mercy of strangers. They had little time to get ready when they left their home, and likely even less time to coordinate their move when they were told they were approved to immigrate to Chicago.

“Would LaSalle be able to sponsor this family?” Kim asked. You would need to raise $8,K, immediately. We would need to get ready what they couldn’t get ready themselves. The 8K covers the first several months of apartment rent, utility and water bills. We would also need to help outfit their apartment, stock it with pantry goods, get a dinner ready the night they arrive, meet them at the airport and help get them settled. Along with some supportive visits as they get on their feet.

Of course I answered yes. I answered YES on behalf of our current amazing team of Jacque Carter, Janet Milkovitch and Maria Hodapp. I answered YES on behalf of the Kingdom of God. I answered YES on behalf of you guys who I knew wouldn’t take NO for an answer.

I can’t tell you how amazing it is, to know that your congregation wouldn’t take NO for an answer? When I emailed a few folks, Within a few hours, I had some enthusiastic responses and $1,500 committed.

Wow. You guys…it can really take your breath away.

Anyone interested, Jacque already had a training scheduled. Right after second service in Leslie Hall. Going to take about an hour. We ordered food for 25, if you RSVP’d cool, if not, don’t let it stop you, but don’t pig out either, okay? We’d love to have you.

People get ready. That was JB’s message. He urged people to do it by driving a stake in the ground. Deciding this was the day to wise up, get serious, clean your glasses, do your moral inventory. That marker was baptism. You go into the water and some things get left behind.

We’ve had baptisms here in the sanctuary and at Foster Beach in August.

This year there was a photographer there — who said Chicago magazine was going to do a photo spread on rites of passage, and wanted to include baptism. I thought, “1. Super cool. 2. I can’t imagine Chicago mag — primarily read for its restaurant reviews is actually going to print that, and 3. You’re kidding me, Dang, I rolled out of bed and put on this?!?”

Fortunately, there is always dazzling Randall. In answer to your question, why us? I think we are just in somebody’s Rolodex — or the 21st c. equivalent to that.

I love this photo. And I think I know why they loved it too. There is so much happening here, right? Not just what it shows, but what it reveals. In a climate of such racial divisions, here is black and white practicing the kingdom of God. In a time when church and organized religion is becoming less appealing than ever, millennials leaving the church in droves, here is a young man (the handsome Eli Lauger) putting his internal convictions on the public stage. For all to see. Literally.

As Randall said, “This is a win for the kingdom.”

***

Baptism was a win for the kingdom too in the eyes of the Baptist.

SLIDE — TEXT

The wilderness prophet of fiery doom. He is always the lead in, isn’t he? Every year the baptist appears on the scene. The front man for the baby Jesus. Raising his pitchfork, stoking the fires of destruction. Comparing his visitors to venomous snakes.

Each December I read this text, and whether I preach on it or not, I come away with the same feeling: This is just a bit much! It’s overkill. The images, the language: axes, vipers, bonfires of flames. It’s a weird scene right out of the show, True Detective. First season. Dante meets Apocalypse Now.

I can’t relate to what it says about God. Does God really look at me and you and desires to throw us into the fire? Are my sins really so murderously awful that we would be compared to slimy snakes? Who is this God?

Here we are — with the baby Jesus in sight, Christmas on the nigh, the one over whom Mary will coo, who will declare himself a friend of sinners, the physician tending the sick. What does the gentle savior have to do with this fire-breathing God? I mean, can’t we all agree that God has got to be at least as nice as Jesus is?

So that’s my first challenge with this text. God seems so horrible. So then I’ve got to think, well, check out who he’s talking to. Those Pharisees and Sadducees must have been a serious piece of work; Their sins particularly egregious. I mean, how else do you understand this? Whatever THEY did, really got God angry. Off to eternal hell for you and you and you!

This is the beginning of the advent season — one that begins in the dark. Not just the darkening days, but with words deep with darkness. From the prophets Isaiah, Elijah, Malachi and John the Baptist. This is why the medieval church preached four things during Advent:

Death

Judgment

Heaven

Eternal Hell

This was how people got ready for the baby Jesus.

***

Theologian Fleming Rutledge, wrote, Advent is a season that forbids denial. In advent we can no longer deny that we are sinner. She was thinking of the prophets. It is a season where lights begins to shine into the darkness — illuminating the outlines and the heft of things long hidden. Advent is a season that forbids denial.

Ok, since this is the season of bracing honesty. I’ll say it: I don’t know what John the Baptist has to say to me. I’m just not too imaginative a sinner. Oh yeah, I’ve done stuff. I’ve said stuff. You have too. But let’s face it, we are pretty much run-of-the-mill average sinners. Nothing too exciting about your sin. There is little that even gets us too worked up.

David can weep and mourn over his transgressions, “My sin, my sin! Is ever before! I have done what is evil in your sight!” as he says in Psalm 51. And you think, yeah, it should be ever before you! You had an affair, impregnated the wife, then had her husband murdered. That’s some serious you-know-what.

Let’s be honest: Most of us aren’t such great, dramatic sinners. I mean here it is Sunday morning, and you’re sitting here! How much sinning can you do?

As one Methodist pastor put it, “The Methodist church would be so much more interesting if we sinned on the level of King David. I, for one, just don’t have the energy!”

No, we are the shave on our taxes, run the red light (if there’s no camera), bark at our kids, grab some extra office supplies kind of sinners, aren’t we?

That doesn’t make you a serpent! Listen, I know that the little tidbit of news you repeated (and to which I listened) was just shared from a “good heart” You just thought more people should be aware. So they could pray about it. And really, who has time to consistently recycle? And hey, who wouldn’t understand the fact that we have more passion for Game of Thrones than we do for our next door neighbor. We need to blow off some steam after working hard all day!

Is it really possible that your sins really anger God in the way John the Baptist says? People Get Ready! John said.

If Advent is the season that forbids denial then let’s be clear: Your sins don’t offend God. Probably you do things that hurt those around you — most likely those you love the most. Perhaps you brush off the eagerness of your children — make a sarcastic comment that crush their spirits. Maybe your inattention makes your partner feel less than, undesired. But your sins? Likely they don’t bother God. John’s words make it sound like you are a raging game of thrones loving psychopath sinner.

But most of you are just basic-cable, modern family kinds of sinners.

What need do you have to “get ready?” You’re not a snake, you just block your mother’s calls…because you don’t have time. You’re not self-absorbed, you’re just slightly PO’d that you’re not appreciated enough by those around you.

That’s the kind of sinners you — we — are. John the Baptist was talking to THEM, not us.

**

Hmm. The average American will drive through no more than 3 traffic lights to find a church. That’s a fact. Congratulations, likely you made it through more. The Pharisees coming to see John the Baptist likely traveled 20 miles — on foot. Who arrived not to hear a soothing murmur of you’re okay, don’t be hard on yourself. But instead bracing words to jolt them into repentance: you are snakes.

***

No. We don’t take our sin too seriously. Which is precisely the problem: We don’t take our sin too seriously. We simply don’t see what our sin is doing to us. “You brood of vipers” JB says. In antiquity, people thought vipers were born inside their mother. The babies had to eat their way out of their mothers body killing her in the process. That’s a picture for what your sin may be doing to you little by little. All those little sins are eating us alive.

Listen sin doesn’t change God’s heart toward us. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. So don’t think that by confessing your sins this advent God is suddenly going to love you more. God couldn’t love you more than the complete, total, uncompromising way God already has. No. What sin is doing to you, is obscuring your love for God. Our ongoing inattention to the things that matter starts to legitimize those things. Like a diet of handing on social media for 3–4 hours a day or night, starts to seem normal. It sets the dial in a way that you can’t dream of doing something else with that time.

Or, after this campaign season, the frequency with which we’ve heard demeaning words about women, jokes about the disabled and Mexicans, has become legitimized.

Thomas Aquinas, said that when we uncover sin, we uncover where our love lies. Sin is our affections, our flirtations with the things that are lesser. It’s valuing the good a little bit of presumed intimacy when we pass along a story that integrity says should have been kept silent. Or it’s not acting for what is right — even when that thing in your gut is saying, do something because the desire to just be included, to be one of the group, is even stronger. St. Ignatius picking up on Aquinas a few centuries later called sin dis-ordered affections.

Sin has to do with where your love lies. Trace that grudge you’re nursing against a family member and you may find that its rooted in your desire to prove yourself right, your withholding of forgiveness in order to teach them a lesson than it is in following Jesus. That’s the love of power, the hubris of righteousness, not the love of god and neighbor.

This insight doesn’t change how I think about John’s rhetoric, but it does change who I think he’s talking to. Because it’s to us. It’s a call to pay closer attention to your life. That prissy pride you take in always knowing the right answer? It’s eating you alive. All those sins that “really don’t matter” do. They do matter. They are desires that can become flirtations or more if left unattended.

This week I’m urging you to get really practical. Because how can you get ready for Jesus if you don’t even know what he looks like? Here’s the first step: Carve out time to listen to your life. Getting ready starts with getting healthy. And getting healthy begins with recognizing what’s going on. You’ll have no way of understanding these crazy purchases you’re going to make this month, or that big stress migraine you’re going to have later, unless you intentionally, doggedly, make some time to listen. Call it prayer. Call it silence. But set a timer for 5–10 whatever you have, and simply stop and listen to what’s going on in you. For me, it is first thing in the morning. I get some coffee and I get down to the basement so when Jesus shows up, I’ve got the eyes to see him.

Second step, know your trigger points. I can become a serious consumer during the month of December. Which is why for the past 15 years or so, I make it a point to limit my exposure. I try not to go into stores — and if I must — because I didn’t plan well enough — I make a list and get just what I came into get. Here’s another: some of you have the disordered affection of too much alcohol. Others have a bent toward self-absorption. When you start listening to your life (step one) you start to see why you are doing what you’re doing. Take precautions. Don’t treat it like it’s just a purchases, or ME TIME, or “Hey, it’s Friday!”

Third, remember this is about love flooding your life. John shook ’em up to get their attention. Jesus will do the same. Not to slam them, but to save them. Because there is such beauty and grace; honor and integrity to come into your life. There’s such joy that’s waiting to come into your marriage and your relationships. And it starts with making the road level and the path straight.

And lastly, if you want to see Jesus when he comes, then turn your affection to the things Jesus loves. Turn your attention to the things he cares about. Allow your heart to be held by the ones who held his heart.

The refugee. The stranger. The lonely. The lost. The little. The weak.

This is where Fatima, and Aliamal and Hiba come in. This is where Anglique and her children come in. And Joseph and Tsibola Mischek. They’ve left everything to start over.

It’s where the lonely guy at work becomes part of your salvation. This is the place where you stand with those who are vulnerable. You don’t take part in the demeaning joke. You break away from the lunch table at school to eat with the girl who’s been left out. You not only recognize, you believe and act, like Jesus came to heal the world. And you start to be part of that healing.

***

People — sinners, serpents and saints — get ready. Jesus is coming.