Park Avenue Presbyterian Church; Des Moines, Iowa
Texts: Malachi 3: 1-4 *
Luke 1: 68-79 *
Philippians 1: 3-11
Luke 3: 1-6 *
“A Prophetic Proclamation”
--} The problem with “Advent” is that it was never intended to be an extended celebration of Christmas. Yet for most of us, the so-called “Christmas Season” is the month-long holiday stretch from Thanksgiving to Christmas—oddly enough, the same time the church traditionally celebrates “Advent.” “Advent” is not Christmas. And part of our problem is the reality that the Church asks us to celebrate “Advent,” while the world is inviting us to celebrate “Christmas.” Too often, we either find ourselves struggling with the dissonance between the two “celebrations,” or defending our Christmas frivolity from those liturgical types who seem to want to take Christmas away from us. Perhaps, there is a better way.
Advent doesn’t have to mean the assassination of Santa Claus!
For “Christmas” the so-called “reason for the season” is the birth of Jesus Christ. But for “Advent,” the “reason for the season” is not just “Jesus’ birth”—and I know that sounds strange. “Advent” is a season of watching and anticipating God’s promised coming; it’s an invitation for us to begin thinking about what it means for Jesus to have come into the world, but also, to be identifying the ways that Jesus is already here. It’s a pointing toward God’s penultimate event in Christ that begins with the incarnation; but it’s also an identification with the ways we see and know God being present. Like “Lent,” Advent can be a time of admission that the world isn’t right and that God in Jesus Christ is doing something about it.
So if we turn our attention a little bit toward this season in the midst of our holiday rush—what should Advent mean for us as Christ-followers? Today’s scripture readings send us in the direction of a backward glance—turning us away from Jesus for a moment and pointing us to God’s ongoing work. The prophet Malachi speaks of a promised “prepar-er;” and Luke begins his gospel—not with Jesus, but—with the story of John the Baptist. And we’re looking not just at the characters or the promises, but the proclamation they offer for the world—proclamation that matters because it invites us to consider the contrasts we see with the world around us.
John the Baptist is a good place to start, announcing himself as Isaiah’s “voice of one crying in the wilderness—prepare the way of the Lord.” Because sometimes in this season we get caught up in the fact that there is one “miracle birth” and it belongs to Jesus. But we think that, only because we haven’t read the Bible very carefully. Luke begins the story of Jesus by telling us about the birth of John the Baptist. In Chapter 1 Luke tells us the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth, about their heritage in the House of Aaron, and about how Elizabeth was barren. Zechariah, who was serving in the temple, is visited by an Angel who tells him:
“Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John. You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. Even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit. He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
And then Zechariah is struck “mute” because he doubted the angel’s words—believing that he and Elizabeth were too old to bear children. Clearly another story about “life” out of “death” besides “Jesus”—birth out of barrenness—John’s story leads to OUR story, because people are wondering what will become of John because clearly the Lord’s hand was upon him.
This season is not just about anticipating the birth of Jesus, but of anticipating the fulfillment of God’s promises. And it isn’t just a backward look to the story from long ago, but an invitation to consider our own stories. Because the Bible teaches us that BEFORE Jesus comes, there is a time of preparation; before the SAVIOR can be received, the promises must be received. And that’s why BEFORE we unwrap the SAVIOR in our Christmas pageants, we ought to be unwrapping the promises of God for us in the here and now.
The “Christmas Season” wants to teach us that it’s all about Jesus’ birth—God’s gifts, our gifts, God’s love, our love. Christmas, in the familiar forms we often celebrate it in, can often clash with what we really do believe about God and about Jesus. Listen to one of my seminary classmates reflecting in his blog this past week:
“I have no desire to "Bah, humbug" our culture's celebration of Christmas. I love trees, presents, Santa, and the whole bit. But we in the Church should surely realize that good cheer, nostalgia, and a brief upswing in charity won't begin to deal with the brokenness of our world. Only God can do that. At Christmas, we celebrate the fact that in Christ, God has acted. And we draw comfort and hope from the promise that God will bring peace on earth in God's time. But for now, let us spend some of Advent contemplating the ways that we are a part of a broken world that needs saving.”
Notice the difference?
Christmas is the celebration that God has entered the world in Christ Jesus—in his birth. But God’s entering the world, isn’t about a birth-story—as wonderful as the one we tell always is. God’s entering the world is about peace and hope; about God’s promises of fixing the brokenness and saving the lost being made true—not just for a season, but forever. And the “beginning” of the Jesus story comes in the voice of the prophets who “prepare the way of the Lord.”
I believe that if we have a faithful ministry on Jesus’ behalf, we must become “prepar-ers” like John and Malachi represent. That WE must become people who work to prepare the world for the “something new and different” that Jesus and his life represent. And it’s hard, because it calls us to proclaim a different kind of message for the world. Not one of traditional “Christmas cheer,” but one that finds the realities of God in Christ.
Because the story of Jesus begins in the story of the prepar-ers. Those who are willing to go out on a limb and proclaim something different. And only when all is prepared—the paths straight, the valleys filled, the mountains made low, the crooked straight, the rough places smooth—shall everyone see the salvation of God. So while we celebrate Christ being “born,” the church proclaims a message beyond that one, too. We’re not just remembering a birth a long time ago in Bethlehem but that God entered the world purposefully—to save it. To save us from the brokenness of violence, hunger, homelessness, prejudice, sin—just to name a few. But we have to have courage enough to take up that mantle. We have to be willing to WORK toward that promised coming by straightening, filling, and smoothing. We don’t just have to take the world as it comes; we have the joy of proclaiming the realities of the kingdom of God that draw us beyond the difficulties we wrestle with.
In this season’s celebrations, it’s probably really easy to loose sight of the fact that:
- Our government just announced a huge increase in troops being sent to Afghanistan; they’re going “to make peace,” but we know they’ll have to use violence as a means to “make that peace.” In this season when the message is “peace,” how do we boldly offer Christ’s different way?
- Our government is supposedly “working” on “fixing” the brokenness that is “health-care in America”—so that more people can have basic medical care; but while the debate drags on, how many people will continue suffering because they don’t currently have proper medical care? How do we boldly offer God’s promises for a world where the measure of “care” is how well we tend to “the least of these?”
- And our city leaders are once again facing the challenges of meeting the needs of the homeless in our community; winter “camps” are visible again along the river. (Not only is it winter, when the trees leaves don’t hide this reality quite as well, but more and more people are joining in to help build shelters that some claim might be “unsafe.” But come on—how much more “unsafe” is a structure that might burn, versus the freezing cold that claims lives, too!) In this season of Christ’s birth, when we recognize more prominently that “foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head;” how do we dream of different human possibilities and proclaim God’s promises of safe-keeping for all?
In the midst of this season, the promises of God say something to us as Christ-Followers do they not, about who we are and whose we are—because of Jesus—and the kinds of things we ought to stand for or even “say” out loud. And like shouting “Advent” every time we hear “Christmas carols” this time of year, we’re invited to go against the grain—if for no other reason we believe that God has decisively entered the world in Jesus Christ to say something different to us about our way of life.
We believe in Jesus Christ. We believe that Jesus has come into the world—to save it. We believe that the kingdom ways of God are different from the ways of the world. And as a the people of God, where is our gumption to prophetically proclaim this different voice. One that not only celebrates Christ’s birth, but attempts to “prepare the way;” not just for the Christmas story as a familiar “theme,” but to prepare our hearts, our homes, and announce for others around us, God’s better way.
--+ AMEN.
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