This Week's Sermon:

       Third Advent, Year C

                 December 17, 2006:

     The doctor returned to the examination room to report the results of the lab work.

     “Mrs. Brown,” he said, “I have some good news for you.”

     The woman said, “I’m glad of that doctor, but I’m not Mrs. Brown, I am Miss Brown.”

     “Miss Brown,” said the doctor, without changing expression, “I have some bad news for you.”

      Our situation in life does have some effect on whether news is good or bad, doesn’t it?  Not only that, but some news might be heard as good by some and bad by others.

     That might have been true of the crowd that came out to hear John the baptizer and to be baptized by him.  It didn’t sound much like good news and I don’t know that we would have heard it as such.  “You brood of vipers!  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Even 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.”

     The people in attendance didn’t interpret that message as particularly good news.  What they asked was how to turn that awful message into one of good news.  “What then should we do?”  And John tells them.  If you have more than you need, give half of it to those who don’t have.  Be fare in dealing with others.  Don’t price-gouge or collect debts others may owe you by threat or intimidation. 

     Now John the Baptist does not give those instructions because it earns a person anything.  Doing those things does not earn any eternal brownie- points.  God doesn’t see those positive behaviors as a sign of some innate goodness, but as a sign that people have heard God’s Word.  John gives those instructions as a way of helping the people of God remember that the very best indication of our love from God is to love God’s people.  It is to help people rediscover their purpose in life.

     Advent, marking the beginning of a new year in the Christian calendar, is a time to look purposefully at one’s life.  What is our purpose?  Where can we find it?  What should we be about in this span of time between our non-existence and our passing from time to eternity?  In the seemingly endless round of monotony we call daily living, what is our purpose?  We get out of bed, dress, eat, go to work or study or catch up on home projects, loaf around, gossip a bit with friends or on the internet, shop, watch television, read the paper or a favorite novel, and go back to bed. 

          Where is the purpose?  We experience pleasure, pain, sorrows, loneliness, elation, emptiness, futility, fulfillment, and finally death.  What is it all for?

     Carl Jung, the renowned Swiss psychiatrist, once observed that emptiness is the number one neurosis of our time.  Perhaps at no time of the year is that emptiness felt more than at the “holiday season.”  People get the “blahs,” try to drown them in drink, choke them with food, or rout them out with party after party.  We seem to be uncomfortable in our own skin, so prescription drug abuse has become a major health concern, alongside diabetes. 

     Such does not need to be the case.  Advent is a designed pilgrimage, intended to help us answer the question about the purpose of our life.  This is a journey, winding about a bit, fraught with some dangers, filled with much excitement, intended to help us arrive at Bethlehem and there behold a human being who can lead and direct us from that point on in this trip we are designed to take.  It is not easy.  We will have some good news and some bad news along the way.  The one thing we cannot do is give up.

     It is fairly obvious that some have given up.  Many have abandoned any thought of life’s purpose beyond the “eat, drink, and be merry” compromise.  We surely do see a lot of that.  It was a bit disturbing to hear the report, based on 2005 figures that indicated a decline in the number of people who volunteered for important and needed ministries in churches, synagogues, and mosques and for community service organizations.  Gratefully, that attitude has not reached St. John’s or the Bedford community.  In consumer-driven societies, the consumer needs to be reminded from time to time that they are in control.  Every TV has an “on and off” button, every car has a steering wheel that can drive passed every fast-food joint, and community and neighborhood has something a volunteer needs to be doing.  Local, state, and federal governments should not be expected to do what folk can go for themselves and in service to their neighbors.  That’s what John the Baptist was talking about when the question came, “What then should we do?”  Get involved!  That’s what John answered.

     We really can find antidotes to emptiness, loneliness, estrangement, and those “holiday blahs.”  We truly can find a renewed purpose in life, we can find out what it’s all about, and we can know what we are to be about.

     For those who will take seriously the Advent season this can be a time when the searched can be resumed.  Those who wish to know the purpose of it all, what it all means, and what they might have to offer may well reach a manger in Bethlehem and find a hay bin that holds a new birth of purpose.

          So, John’s exhortations really are good news.  The warnings he pronounced mean we count for something, we matter to God, and God’s people have a claim upon us precisely because they, like each one of us, has been created in the image of God.  John points beyond himself to the one who will baptize with water and the Holy Spirit.  Having received that baptism is good news indeed!  Amen.