How To Prepare For Christmas
Sermon
A God For This World
Gospel Sermons For Advent/Christmas/Epiphany
To tell you the truth, it doesn't look much like Christmas at all. In fact, if you were to go there, you would have difficulty associating the scene with Advent or Christmas. It is stark, barren, very hot in summer and warm in winter, with no ice or snow. There would be no evidence of the reds and greens we associate with this season. Christmas trees would be absent, as would mistletoe.
Not only would it not look like Christmas, it would not sound like Christmas. Bing Crosby wouldn't be crooning through shopping mall loudspeakers in his silken 1950s voice that he was "dreaming of a white Christmas." Santa Claus, reindeer, and jingle bells would be as foreign to this place as space travel. And presents brightly wrapped and ribboned would not be found piled high beneath Christmas trees waiting for the uncontrolled Christmas morning glee of excited, wide-eyed children.
And this place wouldn't taste like Christmas either. You would find no boar's head festival, no partridge in a pear tree for roasting, and no plum pudding. There would be no cherry pie even for good boys, no turkey, no beef or ham or Christmas wine.
And yet this strange place was the setting for preparing for the first coming of the Christ. It is a place some have visited -- a wild and desolate place eleven or twelve hundred feet below sea level, by the Jordan River, just north of Jericho, where John the Baptist was preaching. Poor John, attired in the rough camel's hair coat like that worn by prophets Elijah and Elisha nine centuries earlier, would be amazed at the Christmas finery displayed with abundance in our elegant clothing stores.
Poor John, living in caves in the wilderness of Judea and eating only roasted locusts and the honey from wild bees, would be astounded at our Christmas preparations of burgeoning supermarkets, sumptuous office parties, open houses, and holiday dinner parties of gourmet elegance.
And yet it is this famous John the Baptist, so poor, so alone, so disciplined and devoted, so piercing and powerful, who teaches us best how to prepare for Christmas. If nearly twenty centuries ago he worked to prepare his people to receive the coming Christ, so too in these latter days he would help make us ready to receive the Christ anew.
And what is his advice? It is ever old and ever new. We are to confess our sins, repent, and get ready for judgment.
I
Let us consider first the matter of judgment.
This word "judgment" does not sit well with us today. We are not sympathetic toward those who are critical and judgmental toward us. If we sense they are judging us, we quickly look for ways to judge them. If they are ready always to point out our faults, we are just as ready to point out their faults.
If the idea of judgment does not sit well with respect to other people, neither does it sit well with respect to God. We have come to believe in a God who is kindly, tolerant, benevolent, and just a regular, nice guy. He's sort of like a personal valet who jumps up to help us with our problems, but who discreetly waits on the sidelines when we are able to do our own thing. Although our God is not senile, he is conveniently forgetful of any of our wrongdoings. And we are confident God will, as one writer puts it, "always forgive because it is his business to forgive."
But not without true judgment, thunders John the Baptist to the crowds assembled to hear him in the Jordan River valley. Drawing on autumn-harvest metaphors, John affirms that God sifts the good from the bad and burns the bad with unquenchable fire, just as the farmer burns the bad chaff separated from the good wheat. And once the fields are harvested and set ablaze to flush out the snakes and rats, so God's judgment fires will flush out the snakes and rats hiding in the holes and crevices of human society. You prepare for the coming Christ by accepting God's judgment, says John.
To say it in a similar way for our own time, M. Scott Peck, in his best-selling book The Road Less Traveled, says that it is one thing to believe in a nice old God who will take good care of us from his lofty position. But, says psychiatrist Peck, it is quite another to believe in a God who wants us to attain his position, his power, his wisdom, his identity. Peck then adds that most of us do not want to work that hard (p. 280ff). We don't want the responsibility for changing and growing.
Judgment, divine judgment, is essential for our spiritual growth. If the master musician critiques his student, it is for her good. If the master artist critiques his student, it is for his good. If the master teacher critiques his students, it is for their good. If parents critique their children, it can be for their good. And if God critiques us, he means it for our good, for our growth, for our development, for our maturity. Acceptance of God's judgment is one way to prepare for Christmas.
II
Another way to prepare for Christmas is confession.
While Roman Catholics continue the confessional and while Orthodox, Catholic, and many Protestant liturgies contain regular prayers of confession, many Protestants have shunned the notion of confession. If our theological forefather John Calvin, following Saint Augustine, suggested all human beings were totally depraved and capable of no human good, later theologians tended to follow the Enlightenment idea of the potential goodness of all human beings.
And while Neo-orthodoxy, overwhelmed with the evils and atrocities of this century, reintroduced the tragic dimension of sin, the various pop-psychology and self-help movements have reasserted the potential goodness of all humans which should be realized and actualized.
Consequently, it is popular in our time not to confess any sin whatsoever. If in his popular novel Love Story Erich Segal could define love as never having to say, "I'm sorry," Ogden Nash could whimsically write matrimonial advice which advocated confession for husbands but not for wives:
To keep your marriage brimming,
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you're wrong, admit it;
Whenever you're right, shut up.
-- I Wouldn't Have Missed It, p. 334
In a more serious vein, Dr. Scott Peck observes that much of our psychological and spiritual illness is related to our defense mechanisms and denials of any faults or wrongdoing. When we do that we limit our self-awareness, says Peck. "If in our laziness and fear of suffering we massively defend our awareness, then it will come to pass that our understanding of the world will bear little or no relation to reality," says Peck (op. cit., p. 290).
If Dr. Peck advocates self-awareness and confession, so does another prominent psychiatrist, Dr. Karl Menninger. In his well-known and oft-quoted book, Whatever Became of Sin? Dr. Menninger notes that most everyone agrees that the world is in terrible shape, but at the same time no one admits to doing anything wrong. And, of course, one reason many of us fear admitting to any wrong is our fear we will be scapegoated for all the wrongs of the world or the workplace or the family. Many people are willing to confess, "He did it," or "She's responsible."
Nevertheless, John the Baptist urges us to prepare for the coming of the Christ by confessing our wrongs, our sins, to Almighty God. How can we receive the Christ in a wholesome way if we are self-deceptive and self-defensive? If we are quick to condemn our neighbor's wrong and ready always to rationalize our own, how can we receive him who is the embodiment of truth and authenticity?
And then, once confession is made to God, we may have the grace and courage to confess our sins to one another, at least in the family, where we should, as Paul says, be tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God for Christ's sake forgives us. Confession is good preparation for Christmas.
III
Lastly, to prepare for Christmas we should be willing to repent.
You will notice that none of these Christmas preparations is as popular as food and presents and parties. You may even find these ideas repugnant, except possibly for other people. Most all of us can think of people who need judgment, who really need to be told off.
And can we not think of people who need to confess their wrongs, especially their wrongs to us? And we can all think of people who need to repent, to change their ways of thinking and acting. Many of us have left church saying to ourselves, I sure hope that sermon hit home with those who needed it.
And yet John the Baptist did not call for repentance for just the other guy or gal. He demanded visible and invisible change from each of his hearers. He was not advocating some simple and sentimental acts of penitence. He did not prescribe some simple good deeds. Instead, he demanded metanoia, a complete change of mind and thought patterns and activity.
Or as Scott Peck puts it, when people refuse to repent, "they choose rather to be sick and have the gods to blame than to be well with no one ever to blame again" (ibid., p. 296). He says that those who have faced their problems, accepting responsibility for making the necessary changes, "find themselves not only cured and free from the curses of their childhood and ancestry but also find themselves living in a new and different world" (ibid.). These are they who have used their problems as opportunities to repent, to change, to begin a new way of life. These are they who have learned to use even depression and anxiety attacks as a means for change.
Repentance is a way of accepting God's grace for a new way of life. After all, John the Baptist was preaching his message of judgment, confession, and repentance, not because he hated people, but because he cared about people. John was not presenting a God concerned essentially about destroying people, but about saving people. It was not John's intent to thwart our humanity, but to release it for the larger purposes of God's kingdom.
Scott Peck puts it well when he affirms the power of God's love and grace to enable us to accept judgment, to confess our wrongs, and to change our ways. Says Peck, "It is because of grace that it is possible for people to transcend the traumas of loveless parenting and become themselves loving individuals who have risen far above their parents ..." (ibid., p. 300). Or as one young wife and mother put it, "I decided to stop being angry with my dad, blaming him for all my wrongs, and to forgive him and accept him. And now we have a beautiful relationship."
There could hardly be any better preparation for Christmas than that -- a time of reconciliation and love in families. But John would remind us amid all the tinsel and toys that the best way to prepare for Christ's coming is to accept his judgment, confess our sins, and repent -- make a real change for the better.
Prayer
Eternal Lord God, in this season when the mysteries of life blow about us again like a gentle night breeze on the beach; in this time when our minds are aroused again to wonder and awe, and our hearts softened by the tenderness of the newborn babe; we draw aside to this place holy with memory and aspiration to praise you.
We confess how easily we are caught up in obsession with moneymaking. We acknowledge how readily we ignore our finer human impulses to keep our too-hectic schedules. Time keeps flying by and we too late realize how much of life we are missing, how many opportunities for loving have eluded us, how we have put off those special family times, how easily we have ignored our children or parents, how readily we sacrifice the important, lasting human things for the ephemeral, the fleeting. By your mercy and grace, Lord God, forgive us these missed opportunities. And by your gracious Spirit embolden us to begin anew the adventures of faith and hope and love.
In the Advent season, we beseech you, Lord of the universe, come to us again, as you have come to your people of the past. How often we have wondered about life and death. How perplexed we have become with disease and evil. Violence and brutality abound, injustices, deceit, and hypocrisy seem so prevalent. The tragedies of life, the suffering, the reverses sometimes overwhelm us, and we wonder about life's meaning, looking for answers.
We pray then for your coming, Lord -- your coming to those who are suffering and bowed down with the burdens of life, to those bruised, broken, and defeated. We pray for your coming to the seekers of wisdom and truth, and your presence to all hearts in need of love. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Not only would it not look like Christmas, it would not sound like Christmas. Bing Crosby wouldn't be crooning through shopping mall loudspeakers in his silken 1950s voice that he was "dreaming of a white Christmas." Santa Claus, reindeer, and jingle bells would be as foreign to this place as space travel. And presents brightly wrapped and ribboned would not be found piled high beneath Christmas trees waiting for the uncontrolled Christmas morning glee of excited, wide-eyed children.
And this place wouldn't taste like Christmas either. You would find no boar's head festival, no partridge in a pear tree for roasting, and no plum pudding. There would be no cherry pie even for good boys, no turkey, no beef or ham or Christmas wine.
And yet this strange place was the setting for preparing for the first coming of the Christ. It is a place some have visited -- a wild and desolate place eleven or twelve hundred feet below sea level, by the Jordan River, just north of Jericho, where John the Baptist was preaching. Poor John, attired in the rough camel's hair coat like that worn by prophets Elijah and Elisha nine centuries earlier, would be amazed at the Christmas finery displayed with abundance in our elegant clothing stores.
Poor John, living in caves in the wilderness of Judea and eating only roasted locusts and the honey from wild bees, would be astounded at our Christmas preparations of burgeoning supermarkets, sumptuous office parties, open houses, and holiday dinner parties of gourmet elegance.
And yet it is this famous John the Baptist, so poor, so alone, so disciplined and devoted, so piercing and powerful, who teaches us best how to prepare for Christmas. If nearly twenty centuries ago he worked to prepare his people to receive the coming Christ, so too in these latter days he would help make us ready to receive the Christ anew.
And what is his advice? It is ever old and ever new. We are to confess our sins, repent, and get ready for judgment.
I
Let us consider first the matter of judgment.
This word "judgment" does not sit well with us today. We are not sympathetic toward those who are critical and judgmental toward us. If we sense they are judging us, we quickly look for ways to judge them. If they are ready always to point out our faults, we are just as ready to point out their faults.
If the idea of judgment does not sit well with respect to other people, neither does it sit well with respect to God. We have come to believe in a God who is kindly, tolerant, benevolent, and just a regular, nice guy. He's sort of like a personal valet who jumps up to help us with our problems, but who discreetly waits on the sidelines when we are able to do our own thing. Although our God is not senile, he is conveniently forgetful of any of our wrongdoings. And we are confident God will, as one writer puts it, "always forgive because it is his business to forgive."
But not without true judgment, thunders John the Baptist to the crowds assembled to hear him in the Jordan River valley. Drawing on autumn-harvest metaphors, John affirms that God sifts the good from the bad and burns the bad with unquenchable fire, just as the farmer burns the bad chaff separated from the good wheat. And once the fields are harvested and set ablaze to flush out the snakes and rats, so God's judgment fires will flush out the snakes and rats hiding in the holes and crevices of human society. You prepare for the coming Christ by accepting God's judgment, says John.
To say it in a similar way for our own time, M. Scott Peck, in his best-selling book The Road Less Traveled, says that it is one thing to believe in a nice old God who will take good care of us from his lofty position. But, says psychiatrist Peck, it is quite another to believe in a God who wants us to attain his position, his power, his wisdom, his identity. Peck then adds that most of us do not want to work that hard (p. 280ff). We don't want the responsibility for changing and growing.
Judgment, divine judgment, is essential for our spiritual growth. If the master musician critiques his student, it is for her good. If the master artist critiques his student, it is for his good. If the master teacher critiques his students, it is for their good. If parents critique their children, it can be for their good. And if God critiques us, he means it for our good, for our growth, for our development, for our maturity. Acceptance of God's judgment is one way to prepare for Christmas.
II
Another way to prepare for Christmas is confession.
While Roman Catholics continue the confessional and while Orthodox, Catholic, and many Protestant liturgies contain regular prayers of confession, many Protestants have shunned the notion of confession. If our theological forefather John Calvin, following Saint Augustine, suggested all human beings were totally depraved and capable of no human good, later theologians tended to follow the Enlightenment idea of the potential goodness of all human beings.
And while Neo-orthodoxy, overwhelmed with the evils and atrocities of this century, reintroduced the tragic dimension of sin, the various pop-psychology and self-help movements have reasserted the potential goodness of all humans which should be realized and actualized.
Consequently, it is popular in our time not to confess any sin whatsoever. If in his popular novel Love Story Erich Segal could define love as never having to say, "I'm sorry," Ogden Nash could whimsically write matrimonial advice which advocated confession for husbands but not for wives:
To keep your marriage brimming,
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you're wrong, admit it;
Whenever you're right, shut up.
-- I Wouldn't Have Missed It, p. 334
In a more serious vein, Dr. Scott Peck observes that much of our psychological and spiritual illness is related to our defense mechanisms and denials of any faults or wrongdoing. When we do that we limit our self-awareness, says Peck. "If in our laziness and fear of suffering we massively defend our awareness, then it will come to pass that our understanding of the world will bear little or no relation to reality," says Peck (op. cit., p. 290).
If Dr. Peck advocates self-awareness and confession, so does another prominent psychiatrist, Dr. Karl Menninger. In his well-known and oft-quoted book, Whatever Became of Sin? Dr. Menninger notes that most everyone agrees that the world is in terrible shape, but at the same time no one admits to doing anything wrong. And, of course, one reason many of us fear admitting to any wrong is our fear we will be scapegoated for all the wrongs of the world or the workplace or the family. Many people are willing to confess, "He did it," or "She's responsible."
Nevertheless, John the Baptist urges us to prepare for the coming of the Christ by confessing our wrongs, our sins, to Almighty God. How can we receive the Christ in a wholesome way if we are self-deceptive and self-defensive? If we are quick to condemn our neighbor's wrong and ready always to rationalize our own, how can we receive him who is the embodiment of truth and authenticity?
And then, once confession is made to God, we may have the grace and courage to confess our sins to one another, at least in the family, where we should, as Paul says, be tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God for Christ's sake forgives us. Confession is good preparation for Christmas.
III
Lastly, to prepare for Christmas we should be willing to repent.
You will notice that none of these Christmas preparations is as popular as food and presents and parties. You may even find these ideas repugnant, except possibly for other people. Most all of us can think of people who need judgment, who really need to be told off.
And can we not think of people who need to confess their wrongs, especially their wrongs to us? And we can all think of people who need to repent, to change their ways of thinking and acting. Many of us have left church saying to ourselves, I sure hope that sermon hit home with those who needed it.
And yet John the Baptist did not call for repentance for just the other guy or gal. He demanded visible and invisible change from each of his hearers. He was not advocating some simple and sentimental acts of penitence. He did not prescribe some simple good deeds. Instead, he demanded metanoia, a complete change of mind and thought patterns and activity.
Or as Scott Peck puts it, when people refuse to repent, "they choose rather to be sick and have the gods to blame than to be well with no one ever to blame again" (ibid., p. 296). He says that those who have faced their problems, accepting responsibility for making the necessary changes, "find themselves not only cured and free from the curses of their childhood and ancestry but also find themselves living in a new and different world" (ibid.). These are they who have used their problems as opportunities to repent, to change, to begin a new way of life. These are they who have learned to use even depression and anxiety attacks as a means for change.
Repentance is a way of accepting God's grace for a new way of life. After all, John the Baptist was preaching his message of judgment, confession, and repentance, not because he hated people, but because he cared about people. John was not presenting a God concerned essentially about destroying people, but about saving people. It was not John's intent to thwart our humanity, but to release it for the larger purposes of God's kingdom.
Scott Peck puts it well when he affirms the power of God's love and grace to enable us to accept judgment, to confess our wrongs, and to change our ways. Says Peck, "It is because of grace that it is possible for people to transcend the traumas of loveless parenting and become themselves loving individuals who have risen far above their parents ..." (ibid., p. 300). Or as one young wife and mother put it, "I decided to stop being angry with my dad, blaming him for all my wrongs, and to forgive him and accept him. And now we have a beautiful relationship."
There could hardly be any better preparation for Christmas than that -- a time of reconciliation and love in families. But John would remind us amid all the tinsel and toys that the best way to prepare for Christ's coming is to accept his judgment, confess our sins, and repent -- make a real change for the better.
Prayer
Eternal Lord God, in this season when the mysteries of life blow about us again like a gentle night breeze on the beach; in this time when our minds are aroused again to wonder and awe, and our hearts softened by the tenderness of the newborn babe; we draw aside to this place holy with memory and aspiration to praise you.
We confess how easily we are caught up in obsession with moneymaking. We acknowledge how readily we ignore our finer human impulses to keep our too-hectic schedules. Time keeps flying by and we too late realize how much of life we are missing, how many opportunities for loving have eluded us, how we have put off those special family times, how easily we have ignored our children or parents, how readily we sacrifice the important, lasting human things for the ephemeral, the fleeting. By your mercy and grace, Lord God, forgive us these missed opportunities. And by your gracious Spirit embolden us to begin anew the adventures of faith and hope and love.
In the Advent season, we beseech you, Lord of the universe, come to us again, as you have come to your people of the past. How often we have wondered about life and death. How perplexed we have become with disease and evil. Violence and brutality abound, injustices, deceit, and hypocrisy seem so prevalent. The tragedies of life, the suffering, the reverses sometimes overwhelm us, and we wonder about life's meaning, looking for answers.
We pray then for your coming, Lord -- your coming to those who are suffering and bowed down with the burdens of life, to those bruised, broken, and defeated. We pray for your coming to the seekers of wisdom and truth, and your presence to all hearts in need of love. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
