Turn Around!

John the Baptist tells us that we need to get ready for the Messiah. But he isn't talking about putting tinsel on the tree or roasting chestnuts oven an open fire. He wants us to repent! What exactly is that all about? My sermon may help to explain it.

I used to have an hourglass sitting on my desk at home, just for my own amusement. When I was stuck writing a paper or outlining a sermon (which was frequently), I would turn that hourglass over and watch the grains of sand falling from the top to the bottom. Sometimes I wondered what it would be like to be one of those grains of sand. I invite you to imagine that with me, just for a moment. As we begin, we’re in the top of the hourglass, shoulder to shoulder with all the other grains of sand; and we’re doing whatever it is that grains of sand do with their time – working in little sand offices, eating in little sand restaurants, and maybe even going to the beach to take a vacation. Our world is wide open and expansive. But then we feel the foundation of our world begin to shake; and we are jostled closer and closer together to all our other sand friends. And then, almost before we realize it, we’re plummeting through a tunnel that becomes narrower and narrower, until we finally tumble through the very center of the hourglass and fall into a world that is very much like the one that we came from, but where everything is upside down! The hourglass opening isn’t “down there” anymore; now it’s “up there.” We are once again in a wide expanse; but now we’re in the bottom of the hourglass.

These verses that we read just a moment ago (Luke 3:1-6) give me that same feeling of falling through an hourglass. The structure of this short section is something like an hourglass itself. It begins by considering the vastness of the entire Roman Empire that is governed by the emperor Tiberius Caesar. Then we move to the slice of the Middle East that we now call Israel, and we meet its governing powers: Pontius Pilate, Herod, Philip, and Lysanias. Next, we move to Jerusalem with the high priests Annas and Caiaphas. Finally, we stand next to a single person: John, the son of Zacharias. From our consideration of the entire Roman Empire, Luke has narrowed our vision to one man in the wilderness. But then, as quickly as it narrows, the scene widens again. John moves “into all the region around the Jordan” to preach. His message is that the Messiah is on the way, and we must prepare for his arrival! Our perspective expands to include the road on which he will travel, the mountains that will be leveled to construct that road, and the crooked paths that will be straightened out so that he can travel faster. Finally, “all flesh” is drawn into the picture. Everyone will see the salvation of the Messiah who is on the way even now, traveling somewhere along that highway. Do you see why the text reminds me of an hourglass? In just six verses, Luke has moved us from the entire Roman Empire all the way down to a single man, and then moved us back out again until everyone on earth has been included.

This text is like an hourglass in another way, too. Just like the sand in an hourglass falls from the top part of the glass to the bottom, Luke moves us from one way of life to another. As the text begins, we are enmeshed in the political power of the world. We are in the company of earthly rulers: Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate, Herod, and Caiaphas. Whatever is accomplished is done by human hands, with human motives, on a human timetable.

But once we fall through the hourglass past John the Baptist, there is not a human being in sight, political or otherwise. We hear a voice – but it isn’t a human voice. We hear a prediction that valleys will be filled, that hills will be leveled, and that crooked roads will be straightened – but human effort won’t accomplish it. And our ultimate destination is the salvation that only God can offer! As we fall through the hourglass, we move from the 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 that is under God’s control alone! And at the point of contact of the two realms – at the very narrowest point of the hourglass – stands John the Baptist. He lives on the boundary between a time that ticks along routinely, one controlled, predictable minute following the other; and God’s time that breaks through into ours and allows us a enthralling 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!

Now, I don’t know about you, but that’s where I really want to live! Whether we’re calling it God’s time or the Kingdom of God or a transformed life or heaven, we’re all talking about the same thing. It’s a life that’s not mere existence but quality, infinite quality! It’s a life that is so full of the love of God – and the God of love – that there isn’t room for pettiness or hatred or greed. It’s the kind of life that the gospel of John tells us Jesus came to give us in abundance! That’s what John the Baptist is pointing towards. That’s the life that the Messiah offers us. And that’s where we can all live if we will listen to John the Baptist and fall through the hourglass out of the world’s kingdom into God’s.

But John the Baptist preached repentance, didn’t he? And we don’t typically think of “repentance” as being very appealing. We usually think that “repentance” is feeling bad about what we have done. But “repenting” doesn’t mean “feeling bad” at all! Repentance means “turning around.” When we repent, we turn away from the world’s way of doing things and turn towards God’s. We give away our control of things and allow God to take charge – and who knows what will happen when we do that! And John tells us that to get ready for the Messiah, we need to do just that: to change our minds and our lives and fall through the hourglass into God’s kingdom where anything can happen! And what a kingdom it is when we reach the bottom of the hourglass! It may look upside-down when we fall into it, but it is really the place where everything is right-side-up! In the bottom of the hourglass, God is so anxious to get back to his people that God builds a superhighway through the desert so that he can travel more quickly! In the bottom of the hourglass, the ones who God cares for the most are the ones who don’t have any power at all. In the bottom of the hourglass, everybody will see God’s salvation, not just the folks we think are acceptable! In the bottom of the hourglass, the Messiah doesn’t live in a palace, but is born in a stable, rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, and dies on a cross. In the bottom of the hourglass, the victory banquet is bread and wine, given by the Messiah himself; and there’s enough for everybody, from every time and place!

Listen to John the Baptist calling us to repent! Turn around! Change your minds and your ways! Fall through the hourglass out of the ways of the world and into the Kingdom of God! And when you do, then you will be ready to join together with all the other people in God’s Kingdom in welcoming the Messiah.

Pay Attention!

The sections of the Bible that talk about the coming of Christ are not terribly popular with most mainline churchgoers, because these texts have been hijacked by folks who want to use them to predict the future (and scare us in the process). On this first Sunday of Advent, the text is one from Luke in which Jesus is describing what will happen when he comes again. I think that it has something to say to us, especially in these troubled times. After you read this sermon, I hope that you'll agree with me.

So, what zodiac sign are you? That question is more than just a line that you can use to pick up a good-looking girl (or guy) in a bar; because many people think that the stars determine our character. If you were born around this time of the year, for example, you’re probably a Sagittarius: open-minded and loving, but a bit blunt with others. And, of course, you need to read your daily horoscope so that you’re working with the stars instead of against them. If you’re smiling right now at what you consider to be harmless nonsense, remember that lots of people really believe that the heavens determine our destiny. We are fascinated by the possibility that what happens up there has an effect on us down here! But our interest in astrology pales in comparison with the attention that people gave the stars in the time of Jesus. They were convinced that the gods made their actions known to human beings through the movements of the stars and planets! The heavens were alive with activity that we could interpret if we paid attention to it. Van Gogh has captured that activity in his painting Starry Night. It fairly bursts with color and movement! Those are the stars that we watch for clues about our future, and even the future of our world.

Near the end of Luke’s gospel (21:25-28, 34-36), Jesus describes some heavenly activity; and it’s not a happy scene at all. The movement of the stars in the heavens predict disasters on the earth. The sea roars and foams, and the stars themselves are tossed about as the entire universe is shaken and turned upside down like a cosmic snow globe. In this snow globe, though, we are the ones who are thrown hither and yon like snowflakes! And what is the reason for all this commotion? Why, it’s a sign that God himself is coming to set things right in the world that he created but that has gone badly astray. So, what does Jesus tell us to do in response to all this chaos? Should we run and hide in a fortress with a collection of AK47s and a year’s worth of canned food and bottled water? Not at all! “Lift up your heads,” Jesus says, “because your redemption is drawing near!” Far from being victims of all these cosmic disasters, we can rejoice because God is about to rescue us from all the suffering that the world has imposed on us.

I surely see the kind of chaos that Luke describes, and I'll bet that you do, too. Oh, the stars may be fairly secure in the heavens; but we live with chaos on this earth all the time. Hurricanes and tornadoes and wildfires are a big part of it; but that chaos invades our personal lives, too, like termites that silently eat away at the foundation of the house that we had thought was secure. When the checkbook has shown a negative balance for weeks; when the doctor comes into the room where you are waiting and says, “I’m afraid the news isn’t good;” when the voice on the other end of the telephone says, “I’m sorry, there’s been an accident…” Those are the times when the stars fall from the sky, and our world is shaken like a snow globe. At those times, the chaos is so deep that we almost drown in it. At those times, we can’t count on much of anything, and certainly not the worldly powers that caused all that chaos in the first place!

But those are the very times, Luke declares, when we can rejoice, because the Messiah is about to arrive. When our world is in turmoil and there seems to be nothing that we can rely on, we can bet the farm on the fact that the Messiah is coming. Of course, we don’t know when he is coming; so Jesus tells us to pay attention! Watch for signs that God is on the way! Don’t lose sleep worrying; don’t drown your troubles in booze; and don’t run after things that really don’t matter like money or possessions or status! If you don’t keep your eyes open for signs, Jesus says, you’ll miss what really does matter! But when we do pay attention… those are the times when we can see that God has already begun to creep into our world wielding the power of love. The Messiah’s new world of love and justice is springing up around us even in the midst of the chaos! Arundhati Roy affirms that “Another world is not only possible; she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

Now, the signs of God’s coming aren’t always obvious. There are no neon signs in the sky announcing, “I’m on the way!” and signed “God.” But wherever we see love, charity, compassion, unselfishness, and hope, we catch glimpses of the God who is creeping in among us. Those glimpses are sometimes very hard to see. But the Kingdom of God won’t arrive with trumpets and cymbals. It will creep in among us like a baby born in the night. If you are quiet, you can even hear that baby breathing – soft baby breaths of God’s Spirit that will one day fill the hearts of everyone on this earth! God is coming to be with us! The one who created us – the one who created this whole world – is on the way to set it right! So don’t be afraid when chaos surrounds us! It’s not the sign of the end of the world! It’s the sign of the beginning!

Kingship Redefined

November 25 was Reign of Christ Sunday (sometimes called Christ the King Sunday). As the last Sunday in the church year, it anticipates the time when Christ will truly rule over everything. But what does that mean? What kind of king are we anticipating? This sermon uses John's vision of heaven from the book of Revelation to examine what the kingship of Christ really means. I hope that it both stirs your imagination and helps to deepen your faith!

I love a good story with a twist at the end, a twist that you never expected! The stories of O. Henry are like that. The Gift of the Magi is a great example. The story is about two young newlyweds who love one another deeply! Christmas is approaching, and neither one has enough money to buy the other a nice gift. So (spoiler alert!) the wife sells her long, beautiful hair so that she can buy an expensive watch fob for her husband’s heirloom watch; only to find that her husband has sold his watch to buy her an expensive set of combs for her hair. That twist holds a punch the first time that you read it. But after you reading it 6 or 7 times, you know it so well that the story loses its punch. This morning’s text from Revelation is a story like that (Revelation 5:1-14). It contains a twist that’s meant to hit us between the eyes and make us reconsider everything that we thought we knew. The only trouble is that we all know this text so well that it has lost its punch.

Let me set the scene. John, the author of Revelation, is in the midst of a vision of God’s heavenly throne. He has seen angels and archangels, 24 elders in white robes, and four fantastic creatures who praise God day and night. Just when we think the vision can’t get any better, John sees the scroll! Now, he doesn’t tell us exactly what the scroll contains, but it may well contain everything that we’ve ever wanted to know: interpretation of the past, understanding of the present, and knowledge of the future. We all want to get a look at that, don’t we? The only trouble is that it is sealed up tighter than a bank vault. Nobody can get it open; and that scroll is no use to anybody if we can’t see what it says! John cries like a three-year-old who has just dropped his chocolate ice cream cone on the sidewalk. He wants to get a glimpse into that scroll more than anything else in the world; but it doesn’t look like he’s going to get to do it.

And then, he feels a tap on his shoulder. One of the elders who is sitting next to God’s throne says, “Don’t cry! It’s all right. The Lion of Judah can open the scroll.” The Lion of Judah! That’s another name for the Messiah! When the elder points to the throne, John expects to see a mighty warrior with a flaming sword; a king crowned in gold, dressed for battle; maybe even a real lion, jaws dripping with blood. But that’s not what John sees at all! Instead, he sees a lamb, a little lamb, a lamb smeared with its own blood: a lamb that has been sacrificed. That’s the twist in this text that’s meant to carry a punch. That sacrificed lamb is the fearsome Lion of Judah. And just to make sure that we get the point, the chorus of praise to God swells to include the Lamb, as every creature in heaven and on earth joins in the song.

The Lion of Judah is a Lamb. That’s a real twist to the story of the Messiah; and it would have carried a punch to those folks who were expecting the Messiah to kick butt! I expect that it knocked the socks off the first Christians who heard it. That’s because this story completely redefines the Messiah! Everybody knew that the Messiah would be a King who would rule over Israel. Some people had even figured out that the Messiah would one day rule over not only Israel, but over everyone else as well. But nobody expected that the Messiah would be a King who didn’t behave like a king! Earthly kings behave like lions: they bluster and threaten and go to war. But Jesus behaves more like a lamb! He wants our allegiance. But if we don’t give it to him, he doesn’t execute us for treason. He follows us like a shepherd, trying to win us back through love instead of coercing us with violence. He brings peace to his kingdom. But that peace is not bought by denying us our freedom and dictating what we can do. No, he allows us to make our own decisions; decisions that are sometimes very foolish. The peace that our king offers is one that surrounds us despite the many tragic events that we bring on ourselves. And this king loves us – all of us. Every king loves his friends. Our king even loves his enemies! And here’s the critical difference between Jesus and every other ruler who ever lived. Jesus died for us. In the movie Patton, the title character says in the opening sequence, “No one has ever won a war by dying for his country. You win a war by making the other poor devil die for his country.” But Jesus won the war against sin and evil by doing exactly that: by offering himself up as a sacrifice and dying on a cross. What General Patton said may be true for earthly rulers; but it’s not true for Jesus. He’s a different kind of king. The Lion of Judah is the Lamb who was died for all of us sinners. Wow! Now that’s a twist to the story that even O. Henry never imagined!

Today is the Sunday when we celebrate the ultimate Reign of Christ. (Sometimes it is called Christ the King Sunday.) So what will his kingdom look like when it finally comes completely? What kind of kingdom is ruled by a king who never punishes, never dictates, and never makes war? The prophets give us glimpses of it. Isaiah tells us that the wolf will live with the lamb, the cow will feed with the bear, and the calf will live with the lion. (Isaiah 11:6-7) He tells us that not only will everyone have enough to eat, the food and drink will be the very finest! (Isaiah 25:6) And the very best thing about this kingdom is that there will be no more death (Isaiah 25:7-8); and all the weeping and mourning that goes with it will be gone, too. There won’t be any more mass shootings because the hate that causes them will have dissolved. There won’t be any more hurricanes or wildfires or earthquakes because all nature will work in harmony. And everyone will have enough, because the greed that causes some to have much more than others will have vanished!

Now, we can’t begin to imagine how all that could be possible! In the end, even the author of the book of Revelation can’t describe it. He simply says that everything will be new: both the heavens and the earth. The old way that things are done will be completely gone! (Revelation 21:1-4) Through Jesus, the world was made; and through Jesus, the world will be remade; because Jesus is the first and last, the Alpha and the Omega. In the end, on this Reign of Christ Sunday, all we can really do is to give thanks for the Christ who gave himself for us; to anticipate the peace and beauty of the kingdom that will someday be a reality; and to live as though that kingdom is already here. Come to think of it, that’s exactly what Jesus asks us to do every day of our lives. If we all really did live like his kingdom were already here… well, then that kingdom would be a reality! And what a wonderful day that would be!