Sermon Archive

“John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, ‘You bunch of snakes! Who warned you to slither away from the wrath to come?’” (Luke 3:7)

Now, pointing out people’s sins and demanding that they change is no way to win a popularity contest. John the Baptist did it. And Jesus did it. And they were both … put to death.

But as Prof. John McGuckin has engagingly reminded us these past two Wednesday evenings, preachers in an earlier age spent Advent dwelling precisely on the themes of death and judgment, heaven and hell.

Hey, that’s an idea! Maybe we should have named our four Advent candles “death,” “judgment,” “heaven,” and “hell”! Do I have any volunteers to light next week’s Hell Candle? No?

Well, our modern tendency during Advent is, after all, to rush toward joy, to get as quickly as possible past the gloom of sin to the good news of a newborn baby and of angels singing in a glory-filled sky. So some of you may already have been muttering under your breath, “Two weeks spent on John the Baptist—that’s too much. Enough already of this wooly fire-breather in the wilderness and his outraged cries for repentance. Let’s get on to the Christmas carols!”

But, as I’ve been emphasizing these past several weeks, we need to prepare for Christmas properly by slowing down our rush to joy. For there still exists within us such a very great distance between God’s hope for our behavior and the reality of it. So most of us are not yet ready to give birth to Christ anew from the womb of our hearts and minds.

The philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote, some 200 years ago, that there are two focuses for human thought that produce wonder—the starry heavens above and the moral law within.

Well, if Christmas is a time for focusing on the starry heavens above, then Advent is a time for focusing on the moral law within. Advent is a time for us preachers to be joining with John the Baptist in proclaiming the social gospel, in calling upon us all to change our lives and to take on a renewed responsibility for the well-being of society.

So there’s old-time John, way out there in the wilderness, warning of a judgment to come, and the crowds are pleading with him, “What then should we be doing?” (Luke 3:10)

And John’s response to their pleading isn’t very modern-sounding at all. He doesn’t reply with one of those contemporary mantras, like “Follow your bliss” or “Do what seems right to you!” Instead, John replies with a clarion call to social responsibility: Do what seems right to God, and practice a selfless generosity toward others.

To be specific, what John commands the crowd to do is this: “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” (Luke 3:11)

Notice that attached to John’s command is no exception clause. One who has food and clothing to spare is to share them with anyone in need, whoever that may be.

John calls us to go beyond giving to sharing, and to go beyond sharing with just family and friends to sharing with absolutely anyone in need.

Now, does it seem to you, as it seems to me, that there are far too few politicians who are hearing and heeding John’s Advent message?

Let me see! It was just last Advent, last December, that Congress found it in their hearts to cut $300 million from the subsidies being given to provide heating fuel for our nation’s poorest families.

And then this Advent, this past week to be exact, the President and the Republican leaders of the House of Representatives delivered to people-in-need another Scrooge-like “Bah, humbug!”—this time to the approximately 80,000 persons who will be running out of unemployment benefits just before Christmas, on December 21st.

Now for the past year and a half, Congress has routinely been extending people’s unemployment benefits for an additional 13-week period, and the money for continuing that help has already been collected and is just sitting there in Washington, in a specially designated fund, ready to be given out. And yet the leaders of the House have now, right before Christmas, refused to continue this extension of unemployment benefits. And by the time Congress reconvenes at the end of January, not only the original 80,000 but also about 500,000 more unemployed will have been denied the extension of this already funded benefit, bringing the total number of scrooged American Cratchit families to nearly 600,000.

Still, you’ve got to hand it to the House! Even though they were rushing to get out of town for Christmas, they did somehow find the time to enact spending resolutions that set a new record for “pork,” a new record for funds appropriated for legislators’ pet projects back home—like the $2 million found to fund a Florida program that seeks to give local residents affordable access to … golf.

Well, that’s Congress! But how are we doing on hearing and heeding John’s Advent message? How are we doing on responding to the moral and ethical challenge with which his message confronts us?

For you see, as we today come to sit at the table of Christ, God is calling us, through the preaching of John the Baptist, to take with extraordinary seriousness our responsibility to share our abundance.

So let me place before us all this morning the John-the-Baptist challenge to moral and ethical earnestness, the challenge to go beyond giving to sharing, and to go beyond sharing with just family and friends to sharing with anyone in need.

Now this morning, like every Sunday morning, we will be receiving in the special wicker baskets our weekly offering of food and cash for the Food Pantry and Soup Kitchen operated by Broadway Community, Inc., a pantry and kitchen that provide nourishing food for the destitute.

And during the worship services next Sunday and on Christmas Eve we will be receiving our annual Christmas Joy Offering to support our denomination’s racial/ethnic schools and colleges and also to support those church workers whose retirement pensions are not adequate for maintaining even a modest standard of living.

So here’s our John-the-Baptist Advent-challenge to moral and ethical earnestness: this Sunday and next Sunday and Christmas Eve, let’s not just give causally. Let’s share abundantly.

If there’s food to spare on our shelves at home, then let’s not just put a dollar or two in the Food Pantry basket. Let’s share with those who have little or no food on their shelves an amount that equals our own food expenses for an entire week. That would be sharing abundantly.

And if our salary or pension provides us with a comfortable standard of living, then let’s put more than just a $5-bill or a $10-bill in the Christmas Joy Offering. Let’s share with retired church workers who have so little income and with students who have such meager resources a gift that represents a significant portion of our own pay checks or pension checks. That would be sharing abundantly.

Yes, Advent is a time for repentance and for transforming our lives. It’s a time for increasing the level of our moral and ethical earnestness. It’s a time for heeding John’s call to the crowds to take responsibility for the well-being of society, to go beyond giving to sharing, and to go beyond sharing with just family and friends to sharing with anyone in need.

Advent is a time to shake up and shape up our selves, so that this Christmas Eve the Christ child can indeed be born anew from the womb of our hearts and minds.

Some words from a contemporary poem have been haunting my Advent thoughts and preparations, and I hope they will now haunt yours! They are words addressed to each and every follower of Christ by any person-in-need. Listen! (from Tim Celek and Dieter Zander, Inside the Soul of a New Generation [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996], pp. 106–107, as quoted in Homiletics, Oct.-Dec. 1997, p. 61.)

“Do you know,
do you understand
that you represent
Jesus to me?…

“If you care,
I think maybe he cares—
and then there’s this flame of hope
that burns inside of me,
and for a while,
I am afraid to breathe
because [the flame] might go out.

“Do you know,
do you understand
that your words are his words?
[Your acts, his acts?]
Your face,
his face
to someone like me?

“Please be who you say you are.
Please, God, don’t let this be another trick.
Please let this be real.
Please.

“Do you know,
do you understand
that you represent
Jesus to me?”

Let us pray: