Second Sunday of Advent

Let me set the scene:

You're ready for Christmas. Your lights are on outside. The presents are bought and wrapped, the cookies are baked, the Family Christmas Letter is written, copied, stuffed, sealed and mailed. Best of all, your tree is up. If you’ve got a real tree, it’s actually straight this year. And if it’s an artificial tree, this year it looks great—better than ever. It is decorated to absolute perfection.

You sit down in your most comfortable chair with a mug of hot chocolate with a little something extra in it. You look around and start to congratulate yourself on getting ready for the holidays, when suddenly, you hear a knock at the door. You get up, go to door, open it---and almost get knocked over.

Barging into your home is this scruffy-looking guy clothed in a hair shirt. His breath smells like the grasshoppers he had for lunch and his beard is sticky with....is that honey? And what is this? He has an ax??

This, your first Christmas visitor, pushes his way past you and heads right over to your perfect Christmas tree. He takes the ax off his shoulder and, laying the blade to its base, he measures the distance for his first swing.

You may be ready for Christmas. But nobody is ready for John the Baptist.

John the Baptist, who stands out in the season, and not really in a good way. John the Baptist who can’t seem to say anything else except “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near! Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees.” Here’s a guy who can really ruin a party! Talk about wrecking the vibe! Repent? Just when we were having fun in a nice holiday season -- repent?

I know. A call to repentance is not what we want to hear right now. Not any time. To recognize our sin; not just that we are vaguely sinful--like "oh well, nobody's perfect"-- but to note some of the particulars. To see how you, personally, sin. Then, recognizing your sin, committing yourselves to do something about it. To repent is to turn away from admitted sins. Take that favorite bit of lust or greed or jealousy or pride or indignation or gossip and say no – I don’t want to do that or be this anymore. I don’t want to rebel against God. I want to repent of that, from now on and for all time. We don’t like to do that. I don't, and neither do you. We definitely don’t do it very often. Certainly much less during the Christmas season.

On the one hand, Christmas is joy and beauty and nostalgia and sentimental music and family time. Why do we have to talk about something so depressing at such a nice and festive season? Or, you might say--why do we have to talk about this when so many people are already stressed, feeling sad, and struggling with huge problems?

I get how people might think that, but this message of repentance is exactly what we need. We need it amidst all the festivity, and in the middle of the stress and darkness. Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near!

But why do we only think of repentance as a trial and a bummer? There is good news in what John says, because repentance is also a gift. Repentance—turning away from sin-- is part of the good news of Christ for us.

God’s mercy draws forth repentance. God is eager to be merciful to sinners. Christ comes to do away with our sin, to create in us new hearts. Like a doctor, God is working on and in us to cut out what is bad, what is poisoning us, what can eventually destroy us. God hates sin. Hates what it does to us and to our world. But he loves us—and so he sends his Son, Jesus, to be born as one of us, and to take away our sin forever on the cross.

Yeah, that mercy is often uncomfortable, because it forces us to confront what is killing us and realize the only thing that will make us well is the Lord’s healing. It shakes us up out of our self-satisfied ways, and makes us confront the way we are living. And how we are living is too often pagan, with a thin coating of Christian on the outside.

As an example: we want our kids to love Jesus, and yet literally everything else takes precedence over Sunday morning worship: sports, family time, trips, sleep, whatever. We hope that dropping the grandkids off at Sunday School or confirmation will somehow turn them into Christians and are surprised when it doesn’t.

We live our lives constantly conforming to the ways of the world, engaging in behaviors that are specifically forbidden in Scripture, shrug our shoulders at foul and immoral things, compromise with temptation, wink at sin, and arrive at Christmas surprised that there's once again been no renewal in our hearts and lives, and we're somehow disappointed.

John the Baptist is actually doing us a favor if he breaks into our plastic, pagan life and introduces us to the living Lord!

The options are clear. We can let the trappings be the season; and let them disappoint us. Or we can believe, hope, trust and eagerly await the coming of our Savior. We can rush around and try to do All The Christmas Things in an attempt to generate holiday cheer. Or we can take our sin seriously and seek holiness in our hearts and lives.

Why? Because Christ died for us. And he didn't die for us to be indistinguishable from the world around us, living as if his birth and death and resurrection are only historical fact and not life-changing events that make a difference now, today. Jesus is God’s mercy and love come right in the middle of your mess, to rescue you, to drag you out of it. To turn you from the sin that makes you so sick and leads to death.

And isn’t that what Christmas is about? Isn’t that what we eagerly long for at this time of year, in the middle of the darkest winter night -- that Christ would come, to us, to save? Is that what we are doing in Advent: proclaiming and celebrating his coming once long ago as a human man? Proclaiming and celebrating his coming today in the bread and wine and his preached word? Proclaiming and celebrating the day he will come again in glory? We are longing for our rescue, and looking forward to that time when everything, including us, will be made new.

It easy to look to the decorations and gifts and the family and all the stuff to make this time of year feel meaningful. To chase a vision of what we wish this time of year would be. Jesus came to rescue us from all that. To make us live free in him, not weighed down by our sins, or our desires, or our striving.. To make us forgiven people who are freed to live for others.

The call to “repent” is good news! Good news because while it means that we have to die to sin, it also means that Christ is in control. And he loves us with a crazy, unbelievable, unstoppable love. Amen.