Preparing For Christmas, John's Style

I have done it, and I cannot undo it. I have equated social media with that/this wild-eyed picture of John the Baptist. “You brood of vipers.” Polarizing. Negative. Scary, even. I hear some of you giggling, and I see you smiling. You know what I’m talking about. There’s a lot of speaking (more like pronouncements) and not much listening. John the Baptist looked and sounded out of place as he stepped out of the wilderness, and sometimes we feel that way, too. We want to stop the scrolling newsfeed, stop the journalists making small talk about things that are not small. We want to shout, “You’re not paying attention. You don’t have the whole story. You’re not giving anyone the benefit of the doubt. You’re not seeing the big picture.” I sounded a little like John the Baptist just now.

The Eighth Commandment keeps bouncing around in my head. In our numbering of the Commandments, that’s the one about not bearing false witness. I’ve broken this Commandment a lot in my lifetime – sometimes quite unintentionally – but I am striving to take Martin Luther’s words in the Small Catechism to heart. He wrote that we should, “interpret everything [our neighbor does] in the best possible light.” That means that calling other people or groups of people “stupid” or other derogatory names is out, even when I personally don’t like their choices or agree with their priorities. In our societal polarization, we’ve lost some of our civility. And that’s not OK.

I have been listening to John the Baptist for a lot of years. When I was younger, I understood that he commanded attention because of his manner and appearance. If he came out of the wilderness today, would people just take out their phones and start filming? Would they post the footage to social media and start a caption contest? How sad that would be because “You brood of vipers” isn’t John’s main theme.

He goes on to urge the people to use their possessions kindly and justly, telling the crowds to share their clothing with those in need, advising hated tax collectors simply to be honest in collecting taxes, and soldiers not to exploit people and to be content with their wages. People forget that John said those things because they don’t have the same shock value.

But I think you all would remember because of what happened in this place this week. Family Promise was here. We welcomed homeless families into this building, into the comforts we take for granted, and into our hearts. We had been preparing the way for a year, and still there were some hiccups, but we did it, and we’ll do it again in March. And, in the meantime, there have been posts of a different genre on social media – posts about how it felt to serve dinner or stay overnight to help, posts about donating to Family Promise. And people asked questions about how to get involved in this program or getting their churches involved. And I think John the Baptist might actually smile about that.

He may have come out of the wilderness looking like an Old Testament prophet with unkempt hair and maybe even locusts in his teeth, but he came to proclaim good news. That is what we’re told in the last verse of our Gospel lesson today, “So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.”

John the Baptist was trying to get the people of his day to do all they could to prepare for the coming of the Messiah. There had been about 400 years of God’s silence, so it took some motivation. People had stopped listening for God. Likewise, with all the voices we hear and read these days, it takes some motivation now. Too often, we’re not listening for God either.

As Pastor Kristin told us last weekend, we spend a lot of time and energy preparing for the celebration of Christmas, but it’s a lot more difficult to prepare to celebrate Christ’s first coming and anticipate his second coming.

Last weekend, Gary and I were in Arizona. And there were so many people we wanted to see that Gary and I went our separate ways last Sunday afternoon, each of us visiting special friends to make sure we got to see everyone. One of my visits was with a young widow with a disabled son. I had been there when her husband had been diagnosed with cancer and when he had died. She has had a very difficult time of things since he died. Money is tight. Her health is not good. Because of her son, I knew that we would need to meet at her home, but I also knew that she would be self-conscious about the condition of her home so I gave her a lot of warning that I was coming so that she could prepare. And I know that she worked many hours to be ready for my arrival. Most people in the church have no idea of her struggle because she comes to worship with a smile on her face every week and helps with ushering and altar guild. Her public façade is lovely, but her private struggles are very real.