Like Sand Through an Hourglass

On the third Sunday in Advent, it is traditional to preach about John the Baptist, the one who calls us to prepare for the Messiah's coming. In this sermon, the structure of the first 6 verses of chapter 3 in Luke is a clue to the author's strategy as he moves us from our human kingdoms into the Kingdom of God. If you choose to read it, read the passage first (Luke 3:1-17) and see if you agree with my analysis.

 



The walls of my office at home are lined with bookshelves. (That will come as no surprise to those of you who know me well!) Sharing space there along with my books are a few items that have special meaning for me. Some are gifts that family and friends have given to me: a handmade rosary, for example, and a baseball signed by pitcher Jamie Moyer. Others are mementoes that I have picked up from my travels: a stone from Israel, and a hand-painted box from Russia. And some are little gadgets that I tinker with when I want to unlock my right brain and get creative. One of those gadgets is an hourglass. Actually, it’s not really an hourglass – it’s really more of a “few minutes glass.” But, just like an hourglass, it’s filled with sand that sits neatly at the bottom until the glass is turned upside down. Then the sand rushes to get back to the bottom like travelers emptying out of an airplane.

I wonder sometimes what it must be like to be a grain of sand in that hourglass. One minute, your world is wide open and expansive; and the next, you’re plummeting down through a tunnel that becomes narrower and narrower, until at last you’re in the very center of the bottleneck. But after less than a second, you’re through the center and into a world that widens into another expanse. You’ve gone from open space to open space through a bottleneck in less time than it took me to describe the trip.

Reading the first verses from the third chapter of Luke gives me the same feeling. The structure of this little introduction to John the Baptist is something like an hourglass itself. It starts with the vastness of the whole Roman Empire under the jurisdiction of its emperor Tiberius Caesar. Then it moves to the slice of the Middle East that we now call Israel, and we meet the governing powers there: Pontius Pilate, Herod, Philip, and Lysanias. Next, it narrows to Jerusalem with the high priests Annas and Caiaphas. Finally, it focuses on a single person: John, the son of Zechariah. From a view of the whole Roman Empire, Luke has narrowed our vision to one man in the wilderness.

But as just quickly as it narrows, the scene widens again. John goes “into all the region around the Jordan” to preach the message that the Lord is on the way, and we should get ready for his arrival! Our perspective expands to include the roads that God will use, the mountains that will be leveled for its construction, and the crooked ways that will be made straight. Finally, “all flesh” is included. Everyone will see the salvation of the God who is even now someplace on that highway.  Do you see why this text reminds me of an hourglass? In just six verses, Luke has moved us from the entire Roman Empire down to a single man, and then expanded out again until all the people on earth have been included.

The movement in this text from Luke is like an hourglass in another way, too. Just like the falling sand that moves from the top to the bottom of an hourglass, Luke moves us from one way of life to another. When we start our journey, we are thoroughly involved in the political power of the world.  We are rubbing elbows with earthly rulers: Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate, Herod, and Caiaphas. Whatever gets done is done by human hands, with human motives, on a human timetable.  But once we fall into the bottom of that hourglass, there is not a human being in sight. We hear a voice – but it isn’t a human voice. We hear a prediction that valleys will be filled, hills will be leveled, and crookedness will be straightened – but that doesn’t happen through anything that humans do. And our ultimate destination is the salvation that only God can offer! As we travel through the hourglass, we move from an area of human power into the realm of God’s activity. We travel from politics into mystery; from possibility into impossibility; from the grimly predictable into the wildly unexpected. We move from a place of human control into a place where God alone controls events.

And where those two realms meet – at the very narrowest point of the hourglass – stands John the Baptist. John lives at the boundary between our time – a time that ticks along routinely, one predictable minute following the other; and God’s time that breaks through into ours and allows us a glimpse of the eternity that is filled by our creator. John may not be the gatekeeper into God’s time, but he is the one who points toward it. He shows us the way to the Kingdom of God.

 nd isn’t that where we all want to live? You can call it God’s time or the Kingdom of heaven or a transformed life – it’s all the same thing! It’s a place where we don’t merely exist, we live – we live richly and fully. It’s a place where we are free from the chains of pettiness and jealousy and greed. It’s a life that is so full of the love of God – and so full of the God of love – that there isn’t any room for hatred or violence. That’s what John the Baptist is pointing towards. That’s the life that the Messiah offers us. And that’s where we can live if we are willing to risk falling into the Kingdom like sand through an hourglass!

Of course, to do that, we have to give up a few things. The middle of that hourglass is very narrow. We can’t take a lot with us as we go through into God’s kingdom. We can’t take our pride with us. If we try, our heads will be too swelled to get through that bottleneck! We can’t take our prejudices and our notions of how God ought to work. If we do that, we won’t even recognize the kingdom of God, let alone get into it. And we certainly can’t take all of our belongings with us. That big sack of stuff would never fit through the bottleneck! We’d be like Scrooge, dragging all those cashboxes as he plods through life.

But giving up all those things will allow us to get into a place that is more marvelous than we ever imagined! It’s a place where God loves his people so much that he lives not in a temple, but right in the middle of them. It’s a kingdom in which not just a favored few, but everyone will see God’s salvation. It’s a kingdom in which the Messiah isn’t born in a palace, but in a stable; in which God rides into Jerusalem not on a war horse, but on a donkey; and where the most important person in human history is lifted up not on a throne, but on a cross.

Listen to what John has to say to us! Risk falling through the hourglass into the Kingdom of God! And then – then – you will be truly ready to welcome the Messiah.