THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11

Psalm 126 or Luke 1:46b-55

1 Thessalonians 5:16-24

John 1:6-8, 19-28

Prayer of the Day: Stir up the wills of your faithful people, Lord God, and open our ears to the words of your prophets, that, anointed by your Spirit, we may testify to your light; through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.” John 1:6-7.

Who was John the Baptizer? Numerous trees have been felled to accommodate production of scholarly tomes aimed at answering that question. Sadly, this ruthless deforestation has given us little in the way of understanding. For a brief, but thorough discussion of the various theories concerning the origin and message of John the Baptizer and his significance for the early church, see Brown, Raymond E., The Gospel According to John 1-X11, (Anchor Bible Commentary, Vol. 29; c. 1966 by Doubleday). Brown’s commentary remains, in my view, the best overall treatment of the subject in brief. Yet whatever the Baptizer’s message, motive and ministry might actually have been, it is clear that, for John the Evangelist, his role is simply that of testifying to Jesus, the light of the world. As Jesus’ mission and ministry gain momentum, John’s must necessarily wane.

It strikes me that John the Baptizer’s mission as depicted in John the Evangelist’s gospel is a good parable for that of the church. The great pastor, theologian and teacher Karl Barth once said that the church is but the crater left by Jesus’s life, death and resurrection. Or I suppose one could say that, without Jesus, the church is nothing more than a hole in the ground. I think the church is prone to forget that. It seems to me that a lot of what passes for evangelism involves selling the church rather than proclaiming Jesus. Pick up any local periodical, turn to the section advertising religious services and chances are you will find a plethora of ads trumpeting the virtues of the churches placing them. They tout their programs, activism within the community, their heritage and pedigree, their worship styles, their warm and welcoming atmosphere, their progressivism/traditionalism, etc. Very little mention is ever made of Jesus.

Sometimes it seems as though Jesus is largely irrelevant to the life of the church in the view of a good many believers. In the wake of the Trump election in 2016 when anti-immigrant sentiment and fear of undocumented residents was at a fever pitch, I posted on my church’s marquee Leviticus 19:33-34 which reads:

“When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”

A member of my church approached me following the Sunday service thereafter and asked if we could meet. I agreed, of course and we got together at a local diner. “I think you need to lay off the politics and stick to preaching the Bible,” he told me after an exchange of pleasantries. He regaled me with a long line of talking points which I gather he picked up from Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh. “The country is being overrun by thousands of Mexicans thronging across an open border on a daily basis,” “Illegal immigrants are responsible for most of the murders in our country” “Illegal immigrants are taking away our jobs,” etc. I replied that I did not think his information was accurate but that, even if it were, Jesus calls us, in accord with the biblical injunction, to welcome and treat kindly the alien. My exasperated parishioner fairly shouted back, “I don’t care what the Bible says, this is my country and I’m not letting a bunch of wet backs take it away from me!” Sometimes you find yourself at a loss for words-as was I as I asked myself how we got from “Pastor you need to stick to preaching the Bible” to “I don’t care what the Bible says.” When it comes to weighty issues like national security, it seems that Jesus does not even fit into the equation.

Lest anyone think I am singling out conservative Christians, let me share just one more anekdote. Toward the end of my ministry I was attending a workshop sponsored by my church focusing on ways toward spiritual renewal for our congregations. For an hour and a half we engaged in exercises designed to stimulate conversation, discussion and strategizing for church growth. Toward the end of the meeting, one of the facilitators asked if we had any questions or comments about this proposed program. I raised my hand and asked the facilitator whether she was aware that not once during the entire process did the name of Jesus come up and whether that was inadvertent or intentional. (I thought about adding that I was not sure which answer would be the more disturbing). She did not have much of an answer. Another facilitator finally spoke up and said in a decidedly irritated tone, “I don’t think it is necessary to invoke the Trinity after every single paragraph. (For the record, I do not recall any references to God the Father or the Holy Spirit either.)

I know some folks will object that, if the church is about what Jesus would have us do, you know, justice, peace, reconciliation, advocacy, etc., it should not matter whether we reference him by name. Not according the John’s gospel. “Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine,” says Jesus, “neither can you unless you abide in me.” John 15:4. If we are not grounded in Jesus, we are just dead wood. As it turns out, Jesus’ way into justice, righteousness and peace is radically different from typical human means for pursuing them. The way to overcoming evil and achieving the good passes through persistently returning compassion and forgiveness for violence and hatred. Following Jesus means refusing, as did Jesus, to resort to violence or coercion, even in self defense, to achieve some greater good. That is what differentiates Jesus’ way from that of so many others pursuing noble ends. For most of the world, the ends justify the means. According to Jesus, the ends are the means.

That important distinction has never been more crucial than today, when we find Orthodox Christian Ukrainians and Orthodox Christian Russians killing each other over their respective national claims of justice. Today it is not uncommon to see churches flying Israeli flags while Christian students sport Palestinian flags-as though justice depends on the side taken in these homicidal conflicts. Noticeably absent from the heated arguments among Christians over who did what to whom, who is in the right, and how, if at all, the United States should be involved is any reference to Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount or the “new” commandment to love without restraint. When I attempt to bring Jesus into such arguments, I get the usual response, “So are you saying the Ukrainians should just let Russia walk over them? Do you think Israel should just ignore brutal terrorist attacks on its citizens? Should the Palestinians passively submit to the brutal occupation of the Israeli government?” My response is always the same. I am not telling any country or people what to do about anything. But I believe Jesus tells his disciples how they ought to conduct themselves. Quite simply, they must be outspoken against injustice, tirelessly advocating and caring for the oppressed and, in the face of violent opposition, accept that justice, truth and peace are worth dying for-but nothing is worth killing for.  

Professor Stanley Hauerwas has said that Christians are those people whose lives make no rational sense apart from Jesus’ resurrection. Therein lies my defense of pacifism. Christians worship a messiah whose life mirrored what he preached in the Sermon on the Mount. That life ended, quite predictably, in his being persecuted, rejected and put to death. That much confirms what most the rest of the world believes: “Nice guys finish last.” Jesus was, to use the words of a certain former president who shall remain nameless, “a loser” and anyone following him must be doubly so. But God raised Jesus from death and that changed everything. Turns out, the losers are those on the wrong side of history. Those who imagine that it does not matter how you treat the illegal immigrant, the prisoner, the uninsured, the homeless, the victims of the all powerful market, the refugees seeking relief in our country and all the rest of the “least” among us find themselves at the end struggling to explain their conduct. So, if asked how I can maintain a position of unqualified non-violence in the face of aggressive evil, why I can hold my home country wide open to all seeking refuge there, where I get the idea that all people are owed by their governments food, shelter and medical care, my answer is “because Jesus-not Caesar, not General Patton, not Ronald Regan, not anyone of power, fame or influence-was raised from the dead.” At the end of the day, that is the only answer I have and the only one I really need.

Maybe I go a bit overboard by saying that the church without Jesus is just a hole in the ground. Churches do perform a lot of socially useful and beneficial services. But so do a lot of other civic organizations. Moreover, truth be told, there is not much churches do that governments, schools, hospitals and international aid organizations cannot do even better-and should be doing. There is just one exception: we are the people who witness to Jesus. No other organization does that. We are the people who embody, however imperfectly, the new way of being human to which Jesus calls us. The way of Jesus is a long one. It calls for patience. As Saint Peter reminds us, it is not God’s will that any should perish, but that all should come to eternal life. II Peter 3:9. We often lack the kind of patience required to wait with Advent anticipation for a day when all people (and I do mean all) are reconciled. Wars spring from lack of patience. Destroying our enemies seems a much quicker and easier way to peace and security than trying to reconcile with them-and perhaps losing our lives in the process. But the way in which Jesus leads us is the slow, difficult, painful and frustrating way of reconciliation. It is the way of the cross. We are here to warn the world that the violent, dishonest and unjust means it would employ to achieve a quick and easy peace, meet just objectives and establish a longed for security lead only to death and destruction. As counterintuitive as it may seem, only the slow way of the cross leads to life.  

Advent
 
They say the hour’s getting late
The day of judgment will not wait.
Soon the dawn of doom will come
And darkness swallow up the sun.
So turn from earth your wandering eye
And fix your gaze upon the sky;
So when the Son of Man comes again,
He’ll find among us faith in men.

Yet if the end does not come soon,
We might yet colonize the moon,
Set our flags in the sands of Mars,
From there set sail for distant stars.
Given ten thousand years or more,
We might break down the last closed door,
And with your great machines transverse
The breadth of this whole universe.

Still, however far we roam,
No matter where we make our home,
We’ll meet again at each new shore
The Galilean troubadour
Whose troubling song will hound our race
In every coming time and place.
If God the end of time should save
For people in this distant age,
Will the Son of Man e’en then
Find among us faith in men?

Source: Anonymous