"Signposts for Advent Travelers (Advent 2)"
Pastor Susan Langhauser
Sunday, December 05, 2010
Matthew 3:1-12
I was recently privileged to hear a devotion given by Pastor Melody Eastman of Wheaton, Illinois, who had recently returned from sabbatical time in northern Spain. There, she had undertaken a spiritual (and very physical) journey on an ancient pilgrim route called the Camino. This route to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, (the traditional site of the remains of St. James,) is a convergence of feeder routes from all across Europe, and it is very important for the many pilgrims on this journey to be able to find their way, which they do by means of signposts along the trails. The difficulty is that from country to country, region to region and even town to town, these signposts appear in a variety of forms, thus that when you start to look for one kind of sign, you find that the signs have changed. Just when you expect them to look one way, they look different. But the wonderful reality of this pilgrim hike, is that even though these directional markers change, they are always there.
Once again this Advent season we travel together, not along a real road, but along a journey in time and memory. The way to Bethlehem shifts each time we take it, as our experiences and situations change, but there is still only one itinerary to get us there, and that roadmap takes us right through the wilderness where we will meet (again) a very strange Preacher Man named John.
John the Baptist is our first directional signpost. Every year, on the second Sunday of Advent we encounter him. He appears in all four Gospels, sometimes more fully-formed than others. Matthew brings him on the scene all grown up, with no background, no “back-story.” He simply appears in the wilderness, which we are to understand is a place of encounters with God. It is a place of deliverance for Israel, who escaped from Egypt and sojourned there for 40 years on the way to the Promised Land. It is a place of testing and proving, and as Jesus discovered, it is also a place where angels minister. It is even a place of escape, which seems to be John’s reason for being there – far from the institutional church – far from the expected profile of preachers of the day.
But, this preacher is strange! He has no building, he is unconventional, non-traditional. He even dresses oddly, reminiscent of those old-fashioned prophets like Elijah, a scraggly rag-tag preacher in camel’s hair and leather. And yet, his costume echoes part of the promise - that Elijah would be seen before the Messiah finally arrived. But John is not talking about that. He
is shouting “Repent!” like so many prophets before him – speaking the words we, the people, do NOT want to hear about ourselves.
So why was he so attractive to so many? Well, for one thing, he was not telling them what to do. In John there was none of the ever-present and mostly out of reach “law.” John was saying something like, “I don’t want anything from you – I’m just a voice! However, I believe that the Kingdom of God is near, and because I believe that, I’m baptizing everybody I can. That’s what I’m doing, but you will have to make up your own mind.” Baptizing with water, “for repentance” is what he said. Eugene Peterson’s The Message helpfully translates repent as “change your life,” because a mightier baptism awaits: a baptism with the Holy Spirit and fire.
And there’s the second signpost. In Scripture, fire is the one reliable sign of the presence of God. Recall that God appeared to Moses in a burning bush; there was a pillar of fire that guided Israel through wilderness to the Promised Land; when the Ten Commandments were given on Mount Sinai there was “fire on the mountain.” Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were thrown into a fiery furnace for proclaiming their faith in God, but were not consumed by it, and on the Day of Pentecost, tongues of fire rained down on the disciples. It is no wonder we use fire in our worship - we light candles on the altar every week to remind us that God is here, we capture fire and use it to count the days until Christmas – just as our Jewish neighbors count the days of Hanukkah. And, we use it to mark the day that our little ones are claimed by God for eternity in the waters of their baptism.
The third signpost points the way to “who.” “One who is more powerful than I is coming after me…” Mightier! More controversial! Radical! You want NEW? He’ll give you new. You want POWER? He’ll give you power. You want LIFE? Wherever he shows up Death cannot exist. Almost 100 years ago, (1928 - The Coming of Jesus in Our Midst) Christian martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer preached in an Advent sermon:
“We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love
and of God’s coming at Christmas, that we no longer feel the shiver of fear
that God’s coming should arouse in us…
The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news
for everyone who has a conscience…”
(Kind of makes you want to crawl back into the warm comfort of Luke’s story, doesn’t it?)
But what Bonhoeffer understood is that it is only when we have touched the deepest of our fears that allows us to really feel the joy of what we have. Only those who have spent a night in the emergency room with chest pains, or who have waited to hear the results of medical biopsies, or sat beside a loved one who is dying and wondered for the briefest moment if there really is a heaven, know this fear…until there is no sign of heart disease, or the doctor affirms that there is no cancer, or we are reassured that the communion of saints does indeed cheer us on into the church triumphant.
Those are the times we get a tiny glimpse of how good God is and how powerfully that presence meets our fear with God’s love. That is a moment of judgment – and it is how we are cleansed and renewed and given life again. You know, our signposts don’t say what they used to say anymore. We look different even to ourselves this year, different than we did last year, and this generation no longer uses phrases to mark our faith like, “dead in Sin.” But we know the feeling. Our modern word for our sickness unto death is probably more often described as despair:
A man who sits day after day in his home,
waiting for the phone to ring with an offer of employment
A teen who finds no one to talk to
about how incredibly confusing growing up can be
A woman abused decades ago,
who cannot shake the hands of the abuser long dead
A single person who, no matter how hard they pray for a life companion,
continues to find themselves alone.
Oh, yes, it would be easy to live the death of despair…
IF we had not been baptized into a changed life …
IF we had not committed to believing in God’s goodness more than we believe in
what we ourselves are capable of…
IF Jesus had not come into this world at Bethlehem.
Advent is a journey of HOPE – one that is marked differently in each life. And just when you start to look for one kind of signpost, they change. Just when you expect the markers to look one way, they are different. But, they are always there. O, come, o, come Emmanuel – God with us. Amen.