Who Invited Him?

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
The First Presbyterian Church
Washingtonville, New York
December 5, 2004

Who Invited Him?
Mark 1:1-8
Isaiah 42:1-9

We are in the room called December,
the room filled with food, and family and fun.
The room filled with presents, and people, and parties.
The room filled with brightness, joy, and laughter.
It is also a room filled with stress, exhaustion,
disappointment and discouragement.
It is a room filled with emotions that run from the high to the low.
It is the room we struggle to enter
as much as we struggle to stay out of it.

But here we are, into it, our Advent calendars counting down the days
as we busy ourselves with lists, lists, and more lists:
lists of presents to buy;
lists of decorations to get and put up inside and out;
lists of food and drinks to go with lists of guests who will visit;
lists of people to send cards to;
lists of people not to send to cards to
because they didn’t send cards to you last year.

With all this, is it any wonder that we pay no attention to the corners of the room,
the corners we talked about last week?
The corner off to the left,
where we find the father, the mother
and that radiant baby,
And the other corner, over to the right, with the ordinary looking young man,
the present Jesus, the Jesus who is part of our life.
even as he waits to come again in glory.
It is his birthday we celebrate;
his very spirit should infuse our every word
and our every deed throughout the Season.
But both these corners sit in the gauzy dimness,
overshadowed by all the other commotion and excitement that fills the room.

If it was hard last week for us to turn our attention
to either of those corners,
it is even more difficult this week.
At least last week we could pretend that the season hadn’t quite arrived.
But now the stores are decorated, the carols are played nonstop,
“The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” and “It’s a Wonderful Life”
have already been shown on television.

It is so much easier simply to give in to the season,
give in to the lights and the tinsel and the commercialism,
give in and give up and sing Rudolph one more time.
But there is a person in the room who won’t let us.
A person who is not in the corner.
A person who has inserted himself right in the middle of the festivities.
His voice fills the room; it seems to come from every corner.
It isn’t the voice of God,
No, this is a shrill voice, an insistent voice.
This voice is more like fingernails on a chalkboard,
more like heavy metal music blasting from a boombox at 4:00 am.

This voice rails at us, saying
“Don’t think just because you go to church on Sunday,
you’ve got it made.”.
“Brood of vipers” he spits at us.
“Bear fruit worthy of repentance” he shouts,
His voice doesn’t sound like that of a man of God;
his tone is more like that of a football coach
yelling at his players who are behind by two touchdowns
with only three minutes left on the clock,
in a game they were expected to win,

John the Baptizer;
not John the Baptist – that makes him sound denominational;
no, John the Baptizer, as Mark rightly refers to him.
He makes his appearance each year on this Second Sunday of Advent.
The prophet born to be the herald,
to proclaim the coming of the Lord,
to prepare us for our Lord and our Savior.

John’s father, the priest Zechariah, tells his newborn son what awaits him,
what his job will be:
“You will go before the Lord to prepare his ways
and you will give knowledge of salvation to his people
by the forgiveness of their sins.” (Luke 1:76-78)

And that is just what John does.
But John isn’t like the religious leaders of his time.
He doesn’t follow the path of his father.
He doesn’t spend time in the temple learning the laws;
He isn’t called rabbi, he doesn’t wear an elaborate ephod;
he never take his turn standing behind the great altar;
all as his father did.

No, he is sent off into the wilderness and is prepared for his ministry
by God out in the desert.
In the same place that God created his people from the rabble
he freed from bondage in Egypt,
in the same place those people became the nation of Israel,
in the same place that God covenanted with our ancestors in faith,
and said to them,
“I will be your God and you will be my people…:”
John became the herald,
the prophet born to fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy,
born to tell the world, “Make way, Make ready”.

And every Advent, he appears in the room called December,
wild-eyed, electric, insistent, unrelenting, demanding.
His very appearance causing anyone with a bit of sense
to wonder,….who invited him?

And the answer is, of course, God.
God invited him in, for God sent him.
Sent him as the herald, to proclaim the coming of the Lord.
Sent him in the same way God sent the herald angels
some thirty years earlier to announce the birth of the Christ child
to the shepherds tending their flocks in the field.

John is saying, “Prepare, prepare for the future,
the future that belongs to our Lord Jesus Christ.
The future that is ours in our lives as disciples of Christ,
faithful disciples.
The future that began with Christ’s birth
the future that will be complete when Christ comes again in glory.

That’s why John is so insistent on our seeking repentance.
He doesn’t want us to miss out on the future.
He knows what we heard Peter say last week in his letter,
that God doesn’t want to lose even a single one of his children.

And so John comes preaching hellfire and brimstone:
“Repent, repent, prepare yourself and repent.”
He doesn’t want us lost like chaff blown away in the wind.
But even with John’s theatrics, what he says isn’t that hard.
In Luke’s version of John’s story, he makes it almost sound easy:
Share what you have; don’t lie,
don’t steal don’t cheat;
Follow God’s laws and commandments.
Seek peace, seek justice for all, especially the poor the sick,
and the outcasts.
Seek righteousness in your own life,
so you will be ready when the Lord comes,
comes to bring justice and mercy and righteousness to all the nations.

Can you hear the voice of the one called by God to prepare us
for the coming of the Lord?
He is there, right there in the middle of the din,
in the middle of each of our rooms called December.
He is there louder than any gathering,
louder than any party,
insistent, unrelenting,
wanting us to be prepared, prepared for the
one who is coming, the one greater than he.
prepared for the coming of our Lord and King.

Amen