| "A man of ardor is John, a man of passion, and zeal, and fire, and fervor-dwelling in the wilderness, wearing a scratchy camel-hair tunic, living on locusts and wild honey, baptizing common folk who confess and repent their sins while fulminating against those of their leaders who take the trek out to see him. "You brood of vipers!" he shouts at these. "Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?"" Yes, John is a firebrand, a man whose fervid zeal, were it transferred to our modern context, would turn off most of us. I mean, if most of us can't even deal with the Salvation Army guy stolidly ringing his bell beside the kettle, how could we ever relate to a fellow bellowing at us across the mall, "Repent, you bunch of sinners!" Notice I said "most of us would be turned off," not "all of us." For you see, my brother-in-law just sent me as a birthday present a nicely matted New Yorker cartoon that portrays a congregation lined up to shake the hand of the pastor on their way out of church. It's the turn of a perky young woman-thirtysomething-to speak to the dour, balding Calvinist minister as she leaves, and with a really big grin on her face she says to him, while pumping his hand enthusiastically, "I really liked that stuff you were saying about all of us being sinners and, you know, how we're damned for eternity." Well, this case aside, John the Baptist certainly does not exemplify the breed of polite, witty, urbane preachers that populates much of modern Presbyterianism. No, he's cut from coarser stuff than us! Yet, year in and year out, on every Second Sunday of Advent, the lectionary makes sure that we don't reach the baby Jesus without first confronting John the Baptist. For we need to be reminded that the coming of Christmas is for a greater purpose than just celebrating the birth of a child. The coming of Christmas is to launch in our lives an unsettling chain of events, beginning with our repenting of sin, and continuing far beyond that to nothing less than the turning of our world topsy-turvy and the transforming of human existence. Thus it is, proclaims John, that the One-to-Come will baptize with more than just the water of repentance alone. He will come with other earthshaking things as well. Says John, I'm just a preview of coming attractions. When the Messiah comes, he will baptize you also with the Holy Spirit, and with fire-with the Holy Spirit to rekindle your ardor of Love and with fire to purify and refine your deeds of justice! It's a Messiah like this, one who'll come to shake up and remake the earth, that is promised by the prophet Isaiah in today's First Lesson. Few texts in all of biblical literature are better known or more beloved than this one. Promises Isaiah, into our ever-so-troubled world, filled as it is with violence, injustice, and despair, God will send one who's imbued with God's Spirit, with God's life-giving, despair-ending, future-creating, ardor-bestowing, world-transforming Spirit. Into our world, God will send one who's able to infuse new life into even a stump, one who's able to inaugurate the establishing of justice and peace both in society, between the rich and the poor, and in nature, between wild animals and cattle-such that none shall any longer hurt or destroy. Isaiah does not name this One-Who-Is-to-Come, but Christians inevitably fill in that blank with the name "Jesus!" And it is the rough-hewn, hair-shirted John, John the Baptist, who sounds for us the Advent alert that the coming of this Messiah, in fulfillment of ancient prophetic longing, is soon. Yes, it is the stump-uprooting, wilderness-clamoring, justice-demanding John, John the Baptist, who's sent to us to prepare the way of the Lord. So if we want Christ to come afresh into our lives this Christmas, then we need first to heed John's call and to prepare ourselves for Christ's coming by using Advent as our time for repentance, as the time for turning ourselves around, for shifting the focus of our lives Godward. The radio humorist Garrison Keillor has said, "I'm not sure I'm in favor of repentance. Sinners are the ones who get the work done. A strong sense of personal guilt is what makes people willing to serve on committees." Well, by being confronted by John the Baptist we are reminded that God favors repentance, even if Mr. Keillor doesn't! We are reminded that during Advent, we are to look beneath the surface level of our individual and particular sins, to uncover and let God heal the basic state of sin that exists within us-the confusion that leads us in the first instance to doubt our origin as a child of God, to doubt that our life and our very being is rooted and grounded in God; to uncover and let God heal the basic state of sin that exists within us-the confusion that leads us in the second instance to deny that our purpose in life is to serve others, to deny that they, too, are children of God on whose behalf we are to work to create and sustain well-being. As we prepare to receive Christ anew this Christmas, we are invited to rediscover, through repentance, what it is to be Christlike, what it is to experience deep within ourselves that state in which we know our origin to be God and we know our God-given end to be the well-being of others. So if we want Christ to come afresh into our lives this Christmas, we need first to heed John's call and to prepare ourselves for Christ's coming by using Advent as our time for repentance, as the time for turning ourselves around, for shifting the focus of our lives Godward. And if we want Christ to come afresh into our lives this Christmas, we need second to let Christ's baptism of Spirit and fire, the baptism which John foretells and Jesus comes to fulfill-we must allow Christ's baptism of Spirit and fire, given to us along with our baptism of water, to settle deeply inside of us and to spark aglow in us the ardor of Christ-like Love. The Christ-child born on Christmas is our paradigm for one who is aglow with the fire of God's Spirit, with the ardor of Love that God wills for all people to possess. The 19th-century English poet and Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins is renowned for the piercing intensity and complexity of his language. In his poem "The Wreck of the Deutschland," Hopkins reflects on the fire of God's Spirit-what I would call the ardor of Love-that was born in Jesus on Christmas Day, the fire of God's Spirit, the ardor of Love, that wants to be born anew in us this Christmas Day. Writes Hopkins: "Now burn, new born to the world, Double-natured name, The heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furled Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame, Mid-numbered He in three of the thunder-throne! Not a dooms-day dazzle in his coming Nor dark as he came; Kind, but royally reclaiming his own; A released shower, let flash to the shire, not a Lightning of fire hard-hurled." Christ's grace and kindness, come to earth to set us aglow with the ardor of Love. Christ's ardor of Love, communicated to us at Jesus's birth, further communicated to us in our baptism of water, Spirit, and fire, and still further communicated to us at this, the Table of "The heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furled, Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame." Christ's ardor of Love, communicated to us not like John's ardor, as "a dooms-day dazzle," or "a Lightning of fire hard-hurled," but rather come to us as "A released shower, let flash to the shire." Christ's ardor of Love, aglow in countless anonymous women teaching children in inner city schools; Christ's ardor of Love, aglow in countless humble men serving the homeless in church soup kitchens; Christ's ardor of Love, aglow in countless newborn infants nursing at their mother's breast. With the coming of Christmas Day, at the conclusion of this Advent season, may each of us be found penitent and with ardor glowing, ready to help transform our world and human existence. Let us pray: Amen |
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