The true plan of God, the revelation of which has begun at Christmas, is incredibly risky, and with our chaos and tumult and desire for other ways, we might miss it.  But it is the only way to true peace on earth.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Eve of the Nativity of Our Lord; text: Luke 2:1-20

Sisters and brothers, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

There has been much conversation and concern among Christian clergy in the past weeks over how to welcome Christmas into a world which also carries within it the death of innocent children, not just in Connecticut but daily all over this planet, though the events of the past weeks have pushed the concern to the forefront.  This world seems as brutal as it always has been, and though we claim “peace on earth” tonight and for the next weeks, we find precious little peace in our world or in our hearts.

It is one of the deepest challenges to the Christmas proclamation, and not just this year.  If this celebration is merely a denial of the world’s reality, a chance for us to come inside and be mesmerized by beautiful things and sing wistfully of peace, while the war and pain rages on outside, if our Christmas joy is not capable of addressing the real world problems that were in our newspapers this morning and most certainly will be in them again tomorrow morning, we really ought to stop doing it.  How we face that challenge, that 2,000 years of time have come and gone since the birth of the One we call Prince of Peace, and still it seems to be the same as it always has been, that’s our concern.

There is a carol which powerfully addresses this concern, but not if we sing it from our worship book.  Or even from the former green book.  Only if we open the old, red book does it help us.  Because the last two editions of Lutheran worship books from our tradition have omitted a key stanza.

This carol is actually one Lutherans have struggled with somewhat, because it never mentions Jesus’ birth.  It was written by an American Unitarian, Edmund Sears, and though it is immensely popular in the culture, many older Lutheran books omitted it.  The carol is “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear,” and all it talks about is the angels’ song, not Jesus.  But not every hymn needs to speak every truth we believe, and there is something powerful going on in this carol which spoke to me a great deal in these past weeks.  That is, if you sing all five stanzas.

It’s powerful, because this is the angels’ song the carol keeps mentioning: “Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth.”  That’s what the angels sang.  Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth.  That’s what the coming of the Son of God is to bring.  There is little else we could hope for from God more needed, more desperately wanted, than that peace on earth.  And that, the carol sings about.

But listen to the missing words:
   Yet with the woes of sin and strife the world has suffered long;
   Beneath the angel-strain have rolled two thousand years of wrong;
   And man, at war with man, hears not the love song which they bring . . .

For 2,000 years the world has suffered with sin and strife, in spite of the angels’ song of peace, that’s what that stanza sings.  And that is the struggle we have with Christmas.  No matter how much peace we find in here tonight, the real world rages on.  As if nothing has happened, or will happen.

Tonight we need more than ever to know the truth about what God is really giving us, a truth that is strong enough to carry us through all the bleak midwinters of this world, not just one night a year of the magic of a baby in a manger.

A point to start is the question that need implies:  What is it that you want from God at Christmas?

We often pin so many hopes and dreams on Christmas.  We hope that our families will all be together, that we all get along, that we find peace in our lives, peace in our hearts, rest for our spirits.

And we hope for more than just ourselves.  We hope that the pain we see in the world will lessen, that we will find real peace on this earth.  That God’s coming is making a difference.

There is reason for us to expect that.  We hear such promises of what we will receive that we can’t help believing them.  Listen to Isaiah tonight: endless peace will come, with justice and righteousness.  Listen to the angels tonight: peace on earth, good will to all.

But for us, we who will open newspapers tomorrow or watch the news again, we who go back to our own lives, it’s hard to maintain hope in these being fulfilled.  We face massacres here and abroad, and wars here and abroad, all on top of our own difficulties and struggles.  And we thought that Christmas meant God was doing something about that.  That’s what we sing and say, anyway.

But here’s the question: what if God is doing something different than we wanted or expected?  What if Christmas tells us that God’s answer to the evil and pain of this world is not what we thought it would be, but something else?  If that’s true, that’s something we ought to know.

We should pay attention, because it’s clear that what we think we want is not what we get.

The Messiah we get at Christmas isn’t the Messiah we thought we wanted.

We often talk about how Jesus was not the Messiah everyone wanted or expected in his day.  Some expected an earthly king.  Others a revolutionary.  Others a priest-like person who didn’t associate with the kinds of people Jesus did.  In the end, Jesus was rejected by the leaders of his people as not being the Anointed of God.  He wasn’t what they wanted.

The truth is, we’re in the same boat.  We love the Christmas story.   We’re amazed that the people of Jesus’ day couldn’t see he was truly God’s Son, the Messiah.

But we don’t love the implications of what Jesus’ birth as a human child means for how the world works.   What we get in the baby in the manger isn’t what we want for our everyday lives, or for the world.  We think we’d rather have a God who intervened a little more often.  It turns out, we still think that God’s Messiah ought to be and act like the people of Jesus’ day thought.  We’re in full agreement with them.

The real truth about Christmas is this: it is a foolish, risky plan of God.  That’s what is so hard for us, why we can’t see the hope in what God did in that manger 2,000 years ago.  When we think about the problems of the world that are so huge, and ask, “Why doesn’t God do something about that?” we are saying that we don’t like what God did at Christmas.

Listen:  when Jesus was born in a manger in Bethlehem, the amazing thing was not the star.  Not the angels.  Not the shepherds.  Not the beautiful music, if there was any.  No, the amazing, risky, foolish thing is that God risked the salvation of the entire world on becoming one of us in this child, who would grow not to take over the world and fix it by force, but grow to lead the world back into obedience to God and love of God and neighbor.

This world is incredibly dangerous for children, we know that all too well.  So from the start, God’s plan was a gamble.  But even when Jesus grew up, the plan was a tremendous risk, this plan to lead us back to God instead of forcing us.

Do you see it?  God, the creator of the universe, decided not to force us to be good, but to lead us to be good.  The stakes are high: God is hoping that it will work, but it’s entirely possible that we’ll all keep being evil, and the world never gets better.

And for 2,000 years that has seemed to have happened.  But as the hymnwriter said, the problem is not that the angels’ song is wrong, or that the promise is false.

It is that “man, at war with man” (not the language we use for humanity anymore, and probably the reason the stanza was omitted from our books, since there’s no way to poetically re-write it using five syllables and still have such a powerful and succinct summary of the truth), the problem is that we are at war with ourselves, with each other, with our own kind so much, that we cannot hear the song of peace and love God is giving us.  The noise of our chaos, our fighting, our self-centeredness overwhelms the song of the angels.  Our need for God to be what we want God to be closes our ears to hearing what God is actually doing.

But here is also the truth: for 2,000 years, God’s plan has been working, as well, slowly but surely.

Peace has spread, as promised, but not by force.  Through love of one person for another, through the Spirit that the risen Messiah gives us.  Exactly as God hoped would happen when he came in person to live with us, teach us, love us, lead us.

And frankly, from a human view, it is inefficient, it’s costly, it’s risky, and it’s just plain crazy.  It would have been cleaner and neater for God to just take over the world and bring peace by force.  And some days, in the real world, we wish God would do that.  Only that wouldn’t bring about the peace God truly hopes for and wants.

God actually wants people to willingly follow, willingly obey, willingly love.  And so God’s Son was born to us.  To teach us, to show us God’s love, and a way to live.  To die and rise to break sin and death’s power over us.

Our Christmas gift from God is not that this is a beautiful story.  It is that it is life for us.  The true beauty of this Christmas Eve is not in the sweet story or sweet music.  It is that God has come to be in our hearts, to live with us and change us.  To bring peace to our lives and our world through you and through me.

And that is a reality that lasts far beyond this night.  That is a gift of love and peace, of transformation, that will carry us through the rest of our lives, until we can sing with the angels ourselves.  A gift that has the strength to face the suffering and evil of this world and transform it into the peace on earth God has always intended.

So, did you get what you wanted from God this Christmas?

Maybe not, if you wanted God to use power to bring peace to your life and to the world.  But you got what you needed: God’s power in you, God’s love in your life, God’s will to guide you.  And that is what is most important.

Listen again to the missing stanza, this time with the last line included:
   Yet with the woes of sin and strife the world has suffered long;
   Beneath the angel-strain have rolled two thousand years of wrong;
   And man, at war with man, hears not the love song which they bring:
   O hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing.

What is Mr. Sears’ answer for us tonight?  Hush the noise, all you in strife, and hear the angels sing.  Hush the noise of our complaining that God doesn’t come and listen to the joy that God is already here.  Hush the noise of our struggling with our own selves and with others, the noise of our self-centeredness, the noise of our shouting at each other, the noise of our hatred, the noise of our wars, the noise of our fears, hush all that noise, and listen to the peace that God is giving us.

We didn’t get what we thought we wanted.  But we got what we needed.  So let’s hush our noise, and hear the angels sing.  They have something very important to say.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Mary sings of the coming of God’s reign as if it is a complete overturning of the world and our lives, which frightens us at times, but we are reminded that, like times of pregnancy, we wait for God’s coming and healing with fear but ultimately joy.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Fourth Sunday of Advent, year C; text: Luke 1:39-55

Sisters and brothers, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

On the First Sunday of Advent I preached that we should be careful what we pray for when we pray, “Come, Lord Jesus,” because we just might get it.  If we’re asking God to come and change the world, God will also change us, something for which we might not be ready.  At one point that week I thought the sermon would go further down that path, and get into some specific concerns I personally had with the coming of God as promised, bringing justice and peace.  As it turned out, the sermon didn’t go fully in the direction I expected.  But now, as this Gospel reading came into our Advent this year, those concerns moved back to the front of my mind.

It’s because of Mary’s song, the Magnificat, which we sang and now just heard read.

I love Mary’s song.  I just don’t know if I can or should sing it anymore.  I’ve always loved this canticle, and the many beautiful musical settings of it.  But this week it occurred to me that maybe I shouldn’t sing it.  Not if I want to have integrity.  Not if I value honesty.  Because there is at least a part of me that isn’t sure I want these things to happen, these things Mary sings about so boldly, so beautifully.

And it also seems to me that I can only speak for myself here.  There are parts of this song that appear to strike me very close to home.  But for me to take that and assume you all share those concerns or sins, or worse, to turn it into a harangue against all of us, feels unfair.  So this is going to be an odd sermon, in that what I think I need to do is invite you into my thoughts to hear them as you will, and then you all can see if they’re helpful or instructive for you, if the Holy Spirit has words for you in all this.

Because I really would like to sing Mary’s song again.  And my hope this Advent truly is that God will make that possible for me, and also for you, even if I think I’m resistant to that.

My first problem is this: I’m not certain that I want Mary to be right in what she says.

Listen to her sing:  “God has scattered the proud in their conceit; God has cast down the mighty from their thrones; and lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”

And as I think about those words, I begin to wonder if I really want that to happen.  Mary’s describing something that sounds very much like a revolution, the world turned upside down.  The whole social order will be transformed: rulers will be thrown down, people in the lowest places lifted up.  The rich will have nothing and the poor will be fed.  The proud will have their thoughts scattered in the wind, for they will have nothing to be proud of.

This is the language of almost every revolution.  There was an English song from the mid-1600s called “The World Turned Upside Down,” and tradition says that the British army played it a century later at Yorktown when Cornwallis surrendered to Washington.  They couldn’t believe they’d lost; it felt as if literally everything was upside down, the whole world overturned.

In our current political climate, there are some groups in our society who would scream “socialism” or “communism” to hear Mary’s hopes laid out in modern terms.  They might be the most honest of all, because she is describing a world turned upside down, a revolution led by God.  There’s no other way to see her words, her hopes.

Now, if you are poor, or lowly, or humble, or hungry, this probably sounds like really good news.  But I don’t know if I want it to happen fully.  Or, at least I know I’m a little afraid of it.

Because, and I know I’ve said this before, I think that I’m one whom Mary would call rich.  Mind you, I don’t usually think of myself as rich.  But I can’t escape the facts.

A couple weeks ago – and be prepared, this is shocking – a couple weeks ago there was a day when I didn’t get to have lunch until about 2:00 in the afternoon.  And as I left the office I thought to myself, “I’m starving to death.”  Now, that’s kind of funny.  But it’s also pathetic and ridiculous, if you take the time to think about it.  I’ve never been forced to miss a meal in my life, never had a day where I worried about what I would eat.

I’ve always had at least two or more good pairs of shoes, a good coat, warm clothes, shelter.  I have a house, a stereo, TVs, several cars, a healthy family with a good medical plan and good life insurance.  I live better than 99% of the world.  Of course I’m rich.  And for that matter, Mary would probably also count me among the proud and the mighty.

So if Mary’s hope is that God’s going to overturn it all, I stand to lose.  Now, there are millions starving to death who will gain considerably.  Millions of suffering people, poor people, oppressed people.  And that’s good.  But we know that our lifestyle in the U.S. cannot be sustained world-wide.  It’s inevitable that my lifestyle will decrease in a new divine order, so that others might simply have life.

Now, I know this, too: I give to Lutheran World Relief, to ELCA World Hunger.  I give a tithe of 10% to God’s work here at Mount Olive, and more beyond.  I recycle and try not to waste.  I turn off lights.  I’m doing things.  It’s just that I really don’t know if I want to lose everything about the style of life to which I am accustomed.

So I’m torn between wanting God to do what Mary says, and not wanting God to do it.  It’s one of those common things in life, that we vacillate between what we know to be good and holy and what our human nature would prefer.  Paul talks about that a lot in Romans 7, of course.

So I know that this is good, what Mary promises, and that in the long run it’s crucial to the life of this world.  But there’s that sinful part of me that wants to resist.

But there’s a second problem I have with her song:  I wonder if God will ever do it anyway.

Has there been any progress toward this kind of vision?  Ever?  Not if tens of thousands still die of hunger each day.  And they do.

Hannah, the prophet Samuel’s mother, sang virtually the same song 1,100 years before Mary.  Look it up: 1 Samuel 2.  And nothing changed.  Then Mary sang it.  And now 3,100 years after Hannah and 2,000 years after Mary, still nothing.

Still there are rich and poor.  Still people like me watching their weight while others starve to death.  Still proud oppressors and beaten-down oppressed.

After awhile, maybe I should get the hint, and realize it’s not happening.  The inevitable question I ask is: were these just nice, beautiful songs, or did these articulate, musical women actually believe they would come to pass?

So I don’t know if I can sing her song anymore if I don’t think it’s any more than hyperbole of joy over the birth of a child, the catalyst for both Hannah’s and Mary’s songs.  I don’t know if I can sing their songs if I don’t actually expect God will do this thing.  It doesn’t feel any more honest than singing it if I don’t want God to do these things.

And then, thinking about all this, I realized something interesting: there is a thread that connects Hannah and Mary beyond their songs, and also connects to today’s other wonderful woman, Elizabeth.  Pregnancy.  Mary and Elizabeth in our Gospel today are pregnant, and Hannah had finally given birth to a child after years of waiting.

And that image of pregnancy, an experience I have only ever lived second hand (except, I suppose, for my own birth) seemed to give me an answer.

It is for me, and perhaps for you, too, as if I am, we are, pregnant.

My fears and struggles with Mary’s song are very much like the fears and struggles of pregnancy. Even with the most wanted birth, pregnancy is frightening.

There is fear of the outcome: Will this be a healthy baby, a happy baby?  Just as I fear the outcome of God’s transformation: will it be a good place, a place of joy even for me?

There is fear of the change in life: Even if the baby is healthy, wanted, hoped for, there is this reality that the parents’ lives will irrevocably change.  Their lifestyle will move from self-centered to other-centered.  They will sacrifice many things for their child, and that’s frightening.  Just as I fear that if God does bring about this change, my life will irrevocably change as well.  I will sacrifice, I will not have the same lifestyle.

And there is fear of the delay: Every pregnant mother I have known, including the mother of my children, has had impatience at some point, or some variation of the fear at least once during the pregnancy that this birth will never happen, that she will be the first woman in history to carry a child for years.  Just as I fear that God may never bring about this age of equality, of peace, of shared wealth.  The difference is one of time, nine months versus several millennia.  But in God’s eyes, is that such a temporal difference?

And as in pregnancy, all these fears subside when one considers the end result: a miraculous gift of life.  Whether you are old like Elizabeth, long-suffering like Hannah, or barely out of childhood like Mary.

And so my fears begin to subside when I realize that I really do want God’s new kingdom, regardless of the cost to me.  That the alternative is much worse than any fears I might have.

And there is one more thing to remember.  Something has changed, with this baby of 2,000 years ago.  The baby of whom Mary sang, her son Jesus, did in fact live a life that revealed that transformed kingdom of God his mother envisioned.  He died for it, as a matter of fact.

But his resurrection began the process of transformation for us all.  It has already turned the world upside down.  In his life, and ever since, whoever met Jesus and followed began to live transformed lives, and changed the world.

Zacchaeus spontaneously returned all he had cheated, and more.

Matthew left his tax booth, Peter his fishing, and both brought the Good News to the world.

Mary Magdalene lost her demons and began to be a disciple, and was the first apostle, the first one sent to proclaim the resurrection.

Martin Luther King started a revolution.  Mother Teresa cared for thousands in one of the worst places in the world.  And millions more lesser-known disciples were shaped by the sacrificial love of Jesus which enfolded them and made a difference in this world, began working Mary’s vision in the world.

And so God works this change now.  As we each meet Jesus in his Word, in this Meal, in our lives, Jesus changes us.  We begin to live lives that reflect Mary’s vision.

More and more we do not fear losing our lifestyle because we have gained so much more: the peace of a heart that trusts in God alone, and sees the pain of the world with God’s loving, compassionate eyes.  A peace that longs for the world to be turned upside down, even if that means I who am on the top am also turned over.

So as it turns out, I not only can sing with Mary, I really want to.

And I invite you to sing with her as often as you can.  Share her pregnancy as an image of our life here, waiting, afraid, expectant, hopeful, nervous.

For God has come to make things new.  In our pregnant lives, this is already happening.  The gift the Church gives in Advent each year is to remind us of what we already know but sometimes forget, and to help us find our desire for it anew.  God give us faith to hold this hope, and live changed lives, until the day of the birth of this new thing God is making in us and in the world.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Life in the kingdom of God, living as Jesus in the world, is joy for us, even if repentance and giving up of our sinful ways is the pathway to that joy, that new life Jesus gives.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Third Sunday of Advent, year C; texts: Luke 3:7-18; Zephaniah 3:14-20; Isaiah 12:2-6; Philippians 4:4-7

Sisters and brothers, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

I don’t much care for cauliflower, especially when it’s cooked.  Or split-pea soup, for that matter.  In this, my wife and I agree to disagree.  In fact, the smell of those two foods cooking makes me queasy, uncomfortable.  I lose my appetite.  Yet I am told by people who should know that both these foods are good for me, healthy for me.  They tell me that though this seems like a bad thing, it is a good thing.

That’s Luke’s job for us today.  Did you hear what he said, after expounding at length the deeply angry rants of John the Baptist toward his hearers?  Luke adds a phrase the other evangelists do not.  He comments, “So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.”  Good news you say, Luke?  Must we go back and read those harsh words again?

Given my experience with foods I detest but which no doubt are good for me, I wonder if it might be possible that Luke is telling the truth.  Granted, this second Advent Sunday in a row of hearing from John the Baptist is always a difficult one for us.  Who wants to come to church and be called a “brood of vipers”?
But Luke says it’s good news.  So let’s give him the benefit of the doubt for a moment.

It may be important to do this, if only for the sake of the other readings from God’s Word today, all of which speak beautifully to us of joy.  And they don’t call sadness joy, they don’t do what Luke does.  These readings positively radiate with joy.  In a season of Advent which speaks of watching, preparing, being ready, the third Sunday of Advent is always about joy.  A burst of joy and grace in a more contemplative, serious season, that’s Advent 3.  But along with this, we get that John the Baptist.  What in the world are we to do with him?  His message of fire and axes and destruction sounds like an off-key screech in an otherwise exquisite choral song of joy.

He claims that the world is in dire need of repentance, that we each are in dire need.  He warns that there are so many things that are not of God, that need changing, that the only answer is an utter turning around.  And after the events of this past week in Connecticut, who among us would dare to contradict John’s evaluation?

So what in the world are we to do today?  Do we talk of joy, or do we face John and his view of a broken world, the reality we see ourselves?  Or do we consider that Luke might be right, that they’re the same thing?  Can we find good news for us and for the world here?

Now, Zephaniah and Paul (and really the song from Isaiah we sang today) call us to jubilation, to joy, in God’s grace for us.

Zephaniah spoke in the time of King Josiah of Judah, and called for reform of the worship and faithfulness of the people.  So much of his prophecy is warnings to the people to turn to God from their awful behavior and lives that in fact, it sounds a lot like John the Baptist.

But the section we hear today seems to come from later, from the time of exile, after the punishment.  God promises to take away the shame and the judgments against God’s people, and God is in their midst.  And the only thing to do is rejoice and exult at God’s grace and love.

Paul writes to perhaps his favorite congregation, his beloved Philippians, and urges them to rejoice always in all things, to give thanks even while they are making requests of God.  And this joy is in living in Christ, having faith that God’s grace is ours.

This is the letter where Paul says he considers all things rubbish compared to knowing Christ, and that to live is Christ and to die is gain.  For Paul, the joy comes from a life that models, as he says earlier in the letter, the life of Jesus, who gave up everything to be a servant to us.

So we notice this: even though Zephaniah and Paul speak of unadulterated joy which pervades our whole existence, they both come from a context where they understand our lives to have turned toward God and away from the things that draw us from God.  They assume a life lived in God’s way, with God’s priorities.

In short, they are describing a life of repentance, a life where God’s people have turned from their sin and selfishness and have given their lives to God.  And that actually sounds a lot like John the Baptist, doesn’t it?

Now, John sounds angry.  He sounds terrifying, in spite of Luke’s editorial comment.  Still, Luke says it: “So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.”

Good news, Luke calls it.  For Zephaniah, the fact that God is in the midst of the people is a reason to end their shame, a reason for hope and joy.

John also says the Lord is near, but that means people need to shape up and change.  He calls those who come for baptism “children of snakes” and asks who warned them to flee from God’s wrath which is coming.  He says the axe is laid to the root of the tree that will not bear fruit, and it will be cut down.

For this to be good news, we need to understand a few things.

First, John apparently thinks that some of the crowds who have come are there just for the show, just for a ritual perhaps, thinking the baptism will fix what’s wrong with them, and they can go back to their lives.  Sort of like coming to church week after week but not wanting to change anything about our lives or our choices.  And at that John levels his angry rhetoric.  So John wants the people to take this seriously and not look for easy ways out of their messy lives.

But another thing to remember is that John takes his role seriously, the preparer for the Messiah.  And he sees people who live and create injustice, folks whose lives oppress others, whose lives don’t show the fruits of people who are turned toward God and God’s way.  He sees a world that is out of balance, and a mess, one that needs serious cleansing.

And John’s only approach, the only thing he can think of, is to shock them out of complacency, to get them to take as seriously as he does the coming of the Messiah and their need to shape up.  Because their joy will be found in the repentance, in the new life.  Just as Zephaniah and Paul know, too.

The fruits of repentance John calls for are specific and concrete, each group gets a clear idea of what to do.  Only Luke tells us this part of John’s message, and it’s critical to his understanding of why John’s preaching was good news.

Note first, that the people aren’t turned off by John’s rhetoric.  They actually want to know what they can do to be different, to repent.

If you have two coats, and someone has none, give them one, John says.

If you have food, and others are hungry, share.

If you’re a tax collector and you’re charging extra to line your pockets, stop it.

If you’re a soldier and you’re extorting for money, stop that, too.

And the beauty of these examples is that it leaves us open to consider what John would say to us.  Since each group had specific things they were doing to contribute to injustice and oppression and suffering, each had specific things to change.  And so do we.

And the joy is found, the new life in Christ is found, when we discover those things and change them.  When we turn to God.  When we discover the joy of life lived for God and not ourselves.

Joy is found when people without coats have coats.  When hungry people get to eat.  When people who’ve been cheated are restored what is theirs.  When children can live safely without fear of death or hunger or abuse.  There’s the joy.

And there’s joy for us when we make that happen, when we are God’s agents for justice and peace.

This is the good news: true joy comes from facing the ugly truth about ourselves and finding God’s love healing us, restoring us.

We can be selfish people, and tend to care only for ourselves, and getting beyond ourselves, as John calls, turning to God and God’s way, is our way not only to joy but to life.  To get to God’s joy, we have to go through John the Baptist and his truth, which cleans us and returns us to God.

Think of our good friend Ebenezer Scrooge, whose story hovers over this month each year.  The spirits who visit him are his John the Baptist, helping him see the ugly truth that he had hurt others, shut off love from others, abused others, and wasted his life.

He starts to learn that he’d have been happier had he lived differently.  Certainly others would have.  So when he wakes on Christmas morning, he wakes to joy.  Joy that he is still alive.  Joy that he still has a chance.  Joy that he has been forgiven.  Joy that it is still Christmas Day, he hasn’t missed another opportunity to be gracious to others.  So he brought joy to others in his new life, and he is filled with it himself.

In a life of repentance, with the Lord in our midst, near at hand, we, too, find joy.

Joy in loving others, not for its reward, but because it makes our heart grow.

Joy in caring for the children of God who are in need of our help, because it makes us alive and real.

Joy in being changed into new people by God who have a mission and a purpose in this world.  And wonder of wonders, still enough time to do it.  There’s still a chance to do something.

“So with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.”

I’m grateful that Luke helps us see this as good news.  From here, we each might want to bring John the Baptist along into our day, our week ahead, and think what he might answer us when we say, “What should we do?”  What is it that he would say hinders us from the joy of following Jesus?  What is selfish in me, in you, that if we let it go we would find God’s joy?  What are we doing that is not of God, that needs forgiveness and turning?  What is God calling me, calling you, to be and to do?  What is our call to make this world a better place, a just place, as God would have it?  These are the questions we need to bring to John the Baptist, so that he can show us the path to joy.

This is the good news that Luke sees in John, the good news that belongs to all who hear these words from God’s servant: that though we are part of the problem of the world, and contribute in our selfishness to the very things Jesus came to remove and eliminate, we need not remain the problem.  Rather, by turning our lives to God we become part of God’s solution, God’s grace, God’s love.

And if that doesn’t bring us all a little joy, we’re just not paying attention.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen