The First United Methodist Church of Napa, CA
December 13, 2009
Third Sunday of Advent

Scripture Readings:

Hebrew Scriptures – Isaiah 12: 2-6¹

²Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid, for the Lord God is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation. ³With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.

⁴And you will say in that day: Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name; make known his deeds among the nations; proclaim that his name is exalted. ⁵Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously; let this be known in all the earth. ⁶Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.

Epistle – Philippians 4: 4-9²

⁴Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. ⁵Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. ⁶Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. ⁷And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. ⁸Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. ⁹Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.

Gospel Lesson – Luke 3: 7-18³

⁷John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? ⁸Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. ⁹Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” ¹⁰And the crowds asked him, “What then should we do?” ¹¹In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” ¹²Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” ¹³He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” ¹⁴Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?” He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.”

¹⁵As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, ¹⁶John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. ¹⁷His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” ¹⁸So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.

“Now that You Don’t Have to Do Anything,
What Are You Going to Do?”

I haven’t heard any “bad news/good news” jokes lately, have you? You know, ones like:

Art Gallery Owner: I have some good news and some bad news.
Artist: What's the good news?
Gallery Owner: The good news is that a man came in here today asking if the price of your paintings would go up after you die; and when I told him they would he bought every one of your paintings.
Artist: That's great!  So, what's the bad news?
Gallery Owner: That man was your doctor.

…and this one might be told to a pastor:

Good News: Church attendance his risen dramatically in the last three weeks!
Bad News: You were on vacation.

Then there’s the series which goes from bad to worse:

…the one about the man who decided to jump out of an airplane and was immediately confronted by both good and bad news:
Good news: He did have a parachute.
Bad News: It didn’t work.
Good News: He was falling toward a huge haystack down below.
Bad news: There was a pitchfork sticking up right in the middle of the haystack.
Good News: He missed the pitchfork!
Bad News: He also missed the haystack.

Curiously enough, these kinds of jokes do recognize an underlying reality of our world: that everything has a price, and that most situations have a down side as well as an up side. We use these kinds of jokes to lighten the news about the car-repair bill, the burned dinner, the unwelcome visitor, but life is full of very serious good news/bad news situations. We find it hard to laugh at many of them because we’re afraid we may end up weeping.

Someone just received the news that her cancer had spread to an alarming number of her lymph nodes. That was the bad news. But because it had only spread to the lymph nodes, her oncologist is going to be able to treat it aggressively with some of the newest techniques. That was the “good” news. This particular patient felt like she was expected to be grateful, but gratitude was the farthest thing from her mind. Both kinds of news seemed equally hard to hear – and no wonder.

A son announces to his parents that he’s finally realized that he’s an alcoholic. This is bad news and good news wrapped up in the same package. To be an alcoholic (as members of our Faith Partners ministry know) is to face a lifelong struggle of difficult choices; and yet just for a person to acknowledge the condition alone is the first step to recovery. Once again, either way, the news is still hard to hear.

In our gospel lesson for today, John the Baptizer tells people some hard truths about themselves, and we’re supposed to believe that this is good news? How must his listeners have heard it? Did they get angry and deny that any of John’s accusations applied to them personally? Did they try to defend themselves in any way? It doesn’t say. There were all kinds of people who came to hear a word from this charismatic wild man, John – even Jesus followed him around for a time – but we’re never quite sure what motivated his followers. It must’ve been hard either way, because some of the things that they heard, demanded a complete reversal of their lives and the ways in which they’d been doing things – something almost all of us don’t want to hear.

But, again, the author of this gospel claims that very situation to be one of good news. The bad news is you’re going to have to give up some things that have become very dear to you. Where’s the good in that? Well, the reality is that all too often our lifestyles have turned us away from worshiping God to the point that we’ve begun to worship “things” that we’ve turned into our gods. And it isn’t always wealth; it might be prestige, personal power, or recognition by our peers, a concern for our own needs at the expense of others – some we may never even have met.

In the midst of our collective wilderness the message of this prophet named John is not pretty. He is not reassuring. The choice between lullabies over a baby in a manger, and the blunt message of having to transform one’s life, is a very uncomfortable one. But John is a necessary part of the Advent story and of our Advent preparation. Because we can get very sloppy about Christmas and miss the earthy ordinariness of it all, the power and the politics and the economics of it all. Into just such a situation came the voice of the Baptizer – a voice of challenge and protest. And he offered the people who lived under the shadow of Rome and the twin burdens of Herod’s crushing taxation and absolute control over their lives, an extraordinary new way to end the pain and uncertainty that plagued their daily lives. The good news that John announces, and Jesus delivers, offers us so much more; but the price that we have to pay is often the pain of having to face ourselves as we really are.

This “good news,” then, that’s at the heart of the message that Jesus brings to us, carries with it the very real potential of offending us – and that feels like bad news. A professor teaching at Duke, the seminary that I attended, was fond of saying that if the gospel of Jesus were ever really preached in our churches, they’d be empty in two weeks! We were cautioned about the consequences of preaching just how radical the nature of the gospel was. Well, guess what, the real truth is even harder to believe. At the center of this good news/bad news is the truth that there’s absolutely nothing that any of us can do to earn the love of God that has been presented to us in the life and witness of Jesus. We can’t earn it – what’s more, we probably don’t deserve it – and yet, still, it is a free gift, requiring nothing of us. That’s what makes grace so “amazing.” It’s the real star of Christmas.

But, surely, we object, all of those good things that we’ve done, all of those kind thoughts and helpful things that we’ve done on behalf of others, should count for something! It’s human nature that we want to deserve the good things that we get – particularly when they’re given to us by God. We’d rather live with the uncertainty of not knowing whether we’ve done enough, than to admit to ourselves that we just haven’t been able to find enough ways to be good, kind, compassionate and forgiving to deserve the gift.

So the idea that “salvation” – which I understand as wholeness before God, being as fully as possible the person you were created to be – is simply a gift, comes as bad news to a lot of people. So they ignore the paradoxical truth of it and just keep busy – in and out of the church – being helpful and kind, saying sweet things, hoping all the while that it will be enough. Sadly, though, in the doing of it all, the concept of gift is lost.

Can’t we get started, or can’t we get turned around, finally, this year as we sing yet again about “Love, the Star” that’s on its way? The journey begins with only a first step. As the poet put it:

One said:
The world widens
By starlight,
The mind reaches:
Stars beget journeys.⁴

So listen up, here’s the news about our first step on this journey: the good news is that we don’t have to do anything. The “bad news” is, now what are we going to do? There is nothing more, nor nothing less, important than that question that we have to ask ourselves: How are we going to spend the rest of our lives? Paul had his answer and shared it in his letter to the Philippians. What’s yours?

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