Advent 2 - Word of God, Come to Us

I was sitting on a city bus in downtown Saskatoon when I first met John the Baptizer.  I’m serious.  And, if you’ve gone to downtown Edmonton, maybe spent some time at a shelter, I’d imagine that you’ve met him, too.

I was riding downtown to go to St. Paul’s hospital on the West side, when a man came on the bus and sat down next to me.  He was wearing several years of coats, and more than a few days had passed since he last had a bath; his smell preceded him by a substantial amount.  He sat down, and proceeded to preach to those around him about…something.  I’m unclear what, exactly, was his point.  But Jesus was in there, and Satan, and George W. Bush, and the Middle East…if everyone had walked into a bar at the punchline, it would have been a good joke. 

But as I was sitting beside him he’d turn occasionally to look at me, and I’d look at him; and as it happened it was indeed close to this time of year.  Close enough to Advent that as I looked at this man I realized that I was likely looking at John the Baptizer.  Not that I believed this man to be the reincarnation of John (a Buddhist belief that would be a neat trick for a Hebrew to manage), but I realized that those people on the bus with me beheld a vision from two thousand years before: a man driven ragged by a vision before his eyes, without care of his appearance, only a burning desire to share his message of repentance and deliverance with all those who could hear.

If I’d have been anywhere but Saskatoon in the middle of winter I may have stayed longer to catch more of his message; maybe I could’ve gleaned out some of his personal story, found a hint of what propelled him to share such a message with strangers in such a strange land.  But I bundled my coat around me and stepped out into the dark morning.  For the rest of the day I thought about what I’d heard that morning; thought about deliverance and repentance, and what I would do if I ever felt a compunction to preach so fiercely that it swallowed my entire life.

That is what happened to the cousin of Jesus, beloved: the word of God came to John…in the wilderness…[and] he went out into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  John became the last vessel for the word of God; in the old prophetic formula that Israel knew so well: “the Word of God came to [name] and said [subject]”.  John proclaimed that which Isaiah had seen: a straight path in the wilderness, no detours, no valleys, no mountains; nowhere to hide and nowhere to run, so that all of creation would see the salvation of God. 

And his family, friends, and people around him looked at him the way the people on the city bus in Saskatoon looked at the man in our midst: confused, weirded-out, but still almost compelled to listen (granted, on a city bus, in Saskatoon, in winter, there really is no place to go).  But John proclaimed deliverance, he talked – shouted – yelled about a covenant in which the people would delight: a promise of hope, of peace, of joy, of love that would level mountains and fill valleys. 

That kind of covenant – of promise – has been the believer’s hope for ages.  That God would come down and be with us; that we would see God and know God, and know that God is truly with us.  But God does more that fulfill that hope: God’s terms are generous, but dangerous; because we have invited God to be with us, God brings his presence to us and, like the prophets of old, we find that God’s purity can cause pain, and his holiness can cause hurt.  As the prophet Malachi said, he is like a refiner’s fire and like fuller’s soap, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver.  We don’t make ourselves holy or pleasing to God (we can’t,) beloved; it turns out that God makes us holy, and pleasing – but that may not always be a gift that we want, or desire.

I was flipping through TV channels a little while ago when something caught my attention.  A religious program.  A well-dressed young man, energetic, enthusiastic, was preaching like he believed in what he was saying.  So, I did something that I hadn’t not done before: I listened for a bit.  We don’t make ourselves holy, he said, and we don’t work to be better for God.  Well, that was a bit enheartening, beloved.  It was like coming up on a whole mess of flashing lights on the highway, getting that sinking feeling that says “oh no, not an accident,” and realizing the whole thing is a training operation.  A bit of relief, a bit of “oh, well, that’s not bad, then.”

I should have changed the channel.  What followed was when we ask Jesus into our hearts, we’re telling Jesus what we want.  We’re telling Jesus that we want his blessing, and when we command those blessings, they’ll come.  The heart of the preacher’s argument was that Jesus won’t come into your heart unless you have a strong enough character to command him to do what you want.

I nearly put an axe through the TV.  Because beloved, that way isn’t going to bring you peace.  It’s going to cause you to do a lot of hurt to people around you.  

What God is going to do, Malachi says, is going to feel a lot like being melted down, shaped, and reformed, into a purer product.  Salvation comes not when you are finished, but when the Master takes you into his hands; you are formed not because you are lacking and God hates what is not perfect in you; but rather that God loves you too much to let you remain the same.  Salvation, it turns out, isn’t fire insurance or a doctrine to learn in confirmation class, but a relational experience with God and others through faith in Christ.  We become rooted, and grow in Christ.

John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance, turning from self-centred living to a life of self-giving.  If you live your life centred on yourself, on your own this-or-other-worldly success, you will only turn yourself into a hollow excuse of a human being.  When you learn self-giving, when your self is given to God, you let the voice of the Lord speak into your depths to renew and restore your souls.

In the old prophetic witness, the word of God came to those individuals who were called and made to proclaim the coming kingdom of God.  The word of God was how God worked in the world: speaking over the waters, calling out to Noah, and Moses to lead his people.  The word moved over the prophets of old and they proclaimed God’s promise: that into darkness, God would pour out light, and life, and peace.

The word advent means ‘coming,’ and throughout this season we prepare for the Word of God to come to.  That same word through which God created the world, spoke through the prophets, and promised salvation, took frail human flesh and lived with us.  The Word of God has come to you, beloved of God: you don’t need a prophet to tell you what to do.  You have a Saviour, that God promised you before the foundation of the world.

God made good on that promise.  The word became flesh, and dwelt amongst us.  But there was a catch: the peace that Jesus brought was not the absence of suffering or hardship, but purely the presence of God’s love and forgiveness.  In Christ, God’s love meets you when and where you least expect it; in your valleys low, or on your own high mountaintops – God’s Word came to and filled those valleys, levelled those mountains, made those rough places a plain, so that wherever we are, Christ may find us.  Beloved, God’s word comes to you; you may be in the wilderness, or right at home.  You may be in church, or you may be in despair: but the word still comes.

Through advent, you are called to listen to the prophet speaking in the wilderness; to listen to God’s promise of salvation and deliverance; to live in ways that bring about justice and peace.  For many people, this time of year is hard, as you remember those you’ve loved and lost.  But God is with you; holds you, moulds you, loves you.  Your darkness is shared by those around you.  Take heart, and look for the light beloved, because the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.

Let the people of God say amen.