Sermon, 12/5/21: Filtering out the Background Noise

2 Advent
Baruch 5.1-9; Canticle 16: Luke 1:68-79; Philippians 1.3-1 1; Luke 3.1-6

The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord. (Luke 3:4b)

How often have you heard from us preachers: ‘Advent is a time for spiritual reflection, as we prepare to receive Christ as a little child’? However, what we do not often hear is that our long-expected Jesus will not return as a little child. Our spiritual reflections and preparation in Advent for the return of God’s Messiah demand serious thought to the matter that Advent seeks to address, namely, that we bring our presents—that of ourselves—but not as to a little child.. Therefore, it is important that we people of faith, pause occasionally and ask ourselves some hard questions. One such hard question I pose to this morning is this: How do we weigh, or eliminate, false information or irrelevant narrative, which I call background noise, so that the essence of the message shines through? This is my challenge this morning, and I begin with a summary of two recent news accounts.

Account One: In a newspaper the following can be read: ‘As Congressman X, 45, an imposing ex-Marine at 6 feet 3 inches, stepped up to the microphone to announce his candidacy for the U.S. Senate, his hair showed the same buzz cut of his marine days. He was wearing a conservative dark blue pinstriped suit, tailored by a renowned Paris design house. He was flanked on his right by his lovely wife of 21 years who was wearing a fashionably tailored matching blue dress. She wore a string of discreet pearls and matching earrings. His two teenage daughters, one a sophomore at university and the other a junior at preparatory school stood to his left.

Account Two: A TV news anchor shared this concerning Congress Woman T, 42, from XXX. Said the news anchor: “Congresswoman T, whose hair fell in long fashionable dreads about the shoulders of her form-fitting beltway power suit whose skirt was cut slightly above the knee, and who was wearing a pair of $400.00 designer shoes from Hammond’s, introduced today on the floor of the House a bill to curb juvenile on juvenile violence.” “I recall,” continued the anchor, “when she first came to Washington, she had to stay with friends, because she could not afford to rent an apartment. She has come a long way in such short time.” I have two questions. First, what is the issue at the heart of each of these announcements? And Question Two is: what does that have to do with today’s message on this Second Sunday in Advent, a message with John the Baptist as its center, a man who seems to prefer the wilderness to villages, towns, and cities?

You have probably already discerned the problem in the examples that I have given. These are true descriptions, containing little exaggeration, but which I have repeated here generically. In each instance, the message gets buried beneath the noise of much irrelevant information. There is the announcement of a candidacy for an important federal elective office. And, there is the announcement that teenage crime is rampant and that the government should investigate the issue, with the hope of arriving at a solution.

Blended together, is this not the story of John the Baptist? Advent is a reminder that we should, always and at all times, so live for the appearance of Jesus of Nazareth in our lives. The story of John’s role is that as a human trumpet. Although that should not be problematic, it is. Consider this: John comes with an impeccable pedigree. His father, Zachariah—if the account in our Book of Records, the Bible, be true—was a priest at the Temple in the division of Abijah. He, Zachariah, was married to Elizabeth, whose ancestry could be traced back to Aaron. “And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.” (Luke 1:6) Thus, John comes from good stock. John was from a Brahmin family. John surely grew up, becoming thoroughly familiar with the attempts of his parents and their associates to honor the commandments of the God of Biblical Israel. Their devotion was not questionable, and nor should that of John. And thus, it should not surprise anyone of John’s zeal for truth and ethics in relationships, both among the people, but also what was expected of the populace towards God. It should not come as a surprise to see the direction, into which John’s own devotion takes him. For John, something is amiss in Biblical Israel, and John feels driven to expose the problem and to offer solutions. We may take issue with his message, but we cannot question his qualifications, his pedigree.

Yet, what did the media do to John? And what do we do? We look at his appearance, his attire, his dietary habits. Luke’s gospel is less concerned about John’s outerwear than is Mark’s gospel. It is with Mark that we preachers fall guilty, too often, to the easy way out. We are beguiled by John’s description. And admittedly, there is something bizarre, something eccentric about traveling around clothed in a garment made from camel’s hair, which is held in place around the waist with a leather girdle. (Mk. 1.6) We preachers extol John the Baptist’s self-sacrifice, the vow of poverty, the vow of renunciation of worldly goods and the comforts in life. Oh, we hear John’s message. However, we are often prone to preach about everything except the message itself.

And, John, a prophet with sterling credentials, came and comes with a simple message. It is a positive one, a dynamic one, one of hope and promise. The God who created us, John tells us, longs for us. And John sees his role as a prophet as one to explain to all who would listen how to take advantage of this great promise. No sun and moons, and likewise no earthquakes, does John the Baptist conjure up. Rather, he uses the image of engineering, of building and of improving roads, in order to help his hearers understand what they must do, so that they may “cash in on this good thing,” if you so will. John the Baptist notes that we must do something; we must be active; we must live life, while asking always how. For John, this road is not a literal one, one of concrete or macadam, just as it was not a literal one of gravel for the Prophet Isaiah, whom John cites.

Why build a road? The answer is self-evident, namely, to facilitate our journey and to make it likely that an individual coming to us will reach us safely, and with fewer difficulties. And to build a road is to acknowledge another simple truth, that to build a road is not a one-person project, but one achieved through communal efforts, and that to work communally, the individual must assess his/her strengths, commitment and willingness to sacrifice. John’s message, then, is clear: People’s lives must change, if they are to be fit to receive the Wonderful Counselor, the Prince of Peace. A new kind of king was coming, one whose kingdom would be built on a purity of the heart, as illustrated in the interaction of people with one another.

“Prepare the way of the Lord,” proclaims John. That simple message removes the traditionally held notion that Advent is a sacred season only of watching and waiting. One cannot prepare anything, least of all a means of access, by sitting by passively. In another era and in a different circumstance, I would say often to my students, gathering books and articles, or consulting the web for information for the term paper is but one step. The next is to read and digest what is read. And as the paper will not write itself, a third step would be to write the paper a paragraph, a page, at a time over a period of time. A fourth step is to go back and revise, revise, revise. And, by no means, I would say, should one allow the crispness of a computer generated page to be confused with the finished, polished product. Both reflection and effort are required.
So, the message from John the Baptist is: To meet the Messiah, God’s Anointed, halfway, a quarter way, or any way, we have to make a decision, for God will not force the Divine Will on us. The Good News of Christianity is not law, even as there are those who would describe that relationship with God by means of dicta and regulations and declare them as immutable, as uncontested. To be sure, the Ten Commandments are incorporated into the Christian theology—through Christ’s Summary of the Law—but Christianity is gospel. It is not a series of rules and regulations that we must follow. Rather, it is a living relationship with Jesus the Christ, and that relationship is one which challenges us to be better than we already are.

If we are created by God, if the divine image is planted within us, if it is accurate that we “come from God and to God we shall return,” then Saint Augustine is correct in his contention when he writes “we are restless until we find our rest in God.” (St. Augustine’s Confessions Bk 1., Ch. 1, transl. J.G. Pilkington, Basic Writings of St. Augustine, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1980)

John’s message fills us with a participatory promise, a promise where we are not allowed to sit quietly by, waiting for a better relationship between God and us, and of us to one another. We must filter out the background noise. We must eliminate those items that would distract from or discredit the message and marginalize the messenger. And on this Second Sunday of Advent 2921, I am bold to say: Let us not forget that, even as we engage in straightening the road, God is chief engineer and foreman of our personal and communal road-building crew.
“All flesh shall see the salvation of God.” (Lk 3.6)

In my estimation, not a bad road to be on! These are tremendously comforting words, as we engage in all our Advent preparations.

AMEN