What Should We Do?

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
December 13, 2009
Third Sunday in Advent

What Should We Do?
Luke 3:7-18
Isaiah 12:2-6

Here it is: the Christmas season,
a time that should be filled with warmth,
with hope, with light,
laughter, and joy.
We are busy making our lists,
and checking them twice;
our stockings are hung by the chimney with care,
presents are starting to appear under our trees.
Yes, even without snow
it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

And then – BAM -- along comes John the Baptist,
ranting, raving,
yelling at the people on the banks of the Jordan,
and, of course, yelling at every one of us,
for the Bible is our story,
and we can find ourselves in every page.

There’s no mistaking John the Baptist for Santa Clause.
They may both sport beards,
but the resemblance ends there.
John in his rough clothes,
wild hair;
There’s no “Ho Ho Ho”;
No twinkling eyes;
not even a smile on his face.
Merry Christmas, indeed!
But still we have always been entranced,
almost hypnotized by John,
drawn to him,
compelled to listen to him.

And so it was 2000 years ago,
as people flocked to the banks of the river.
It was no easy journey to get there:
The Jordan was more than 20 miles away from Jerusalem,
back in the day when the only way
to get anywhere was on foot.
Imagine walking from here
to the banks of the Potomac in Alexandria.

But still the people came,
they came to be baptized in the river,
and they came filled with hope,
hope that perhaps John was the Messiah,
the one they had been waiting for.

But of course we know now
what no one was sure of then:
that John was not the Messiah.
No, he was called by God to prepare the way for the Messiah,
to help the people get ready for coming of the Messiah.
He was the one whom the prophet Isaiah
had spoken of so many centuries before,
the one who would call out:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord.
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”
(Isaiah 40:3)

John was the one whom the angel Gabriel spoke of saying,
“He will turn many of the people of Israel
to the Lord their God.
With the spirit and power of Elijah,
he will go before him,
to turn…the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous,
to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
(Luke 1:16ff)

John had a job to do and he knew it.
He knew who had called him,
and he knew the work to which he had been called.
He had been called to serve the Lord,
and he did so with zeal,
with fire, with passion.

But he was appalled by what he saw as he looked around.
What he saw were people going through the motions of faithfulness,
convinced that just because they went through the rituals
they were living godly lives.
John understood why God had spoken so furiously centuries before
through the prophet Amos:
“I hate, I despise your festivals,
I take no delight in your solemn assemblies
…Take away from me the noise of your songs.”
(Amos 5:21)

So many empty words, empty rituals, empty acts.
John knew that what God wanted from his children
was for them to turn from their superficial living,
their talk with no walk.
What God wanted was for them to live righteously, justly,
for all his children to live,
as we talked about last week,
holy, godly lives,
lives focused on growing in spiritual maturity.
Lives focused on building a just community,
a just society,
a just world.
A world not split as Jerusalem was then,
between those who were wealthy and comfortable
and those who struggled even for a scrap of food.
Is our world all that different?
Did you see the article in the paper the other day
that hunger in this country has increased almost every year
the past 10 years,
in this, the wealthiest country
and not enough food.

John saw God’s children walking in darkness,
And so he shouted, spitting in anger:
“you brood of vipers…
Don’t think just because you offer your sacrifices,
and sing a song of praise when you worship
that that satisfies God.
If that’s all God wanted,
he would have created worshipers
from the stones and rocks all around us.
No, God wants you to live righteous lives,
to seek righteousness,
to seek justice,
to reach out to the poor, the outcasts,
the sick, the weak,
the hungry, the homeless.

“My job is to prepare you for the coming of the Lord,
and whether you like it or not,
I am telling you: you are not ready.
And if you are not ready,
you are not going to like that day when it comes.
for while you think you are important now,
while you think everything is just fine
because you are comfortable and content,
when the Lord comes it is very probable
that you will be winnowed out,
tossed aside,
like so much chaff.”

John is blunt,
John is brutally honest.
But John is also faithful to his call
as he spoke to the people on the riverbank,
as he speaks now to us.

What is easy to miss in all this noise and temper and fury
is that John is not against the people on the riverbank;
John is not against us.
John is for the people; he is for us.
John wants us to be ready.
John understood what Peter would later say
in his letter,
that God does not want anyone to perish,
but all to come to repentance.
(2 Peter 3:9)

And that’s just what John urges us to do:
repent,
acknowledge the superficiality of our faith,
and seek to live lives of deeper,
richer spirituality and faithfulness,
seek our own spiritual transformation,
from the breezy and easy,
to the deep and truly divine.

John calls us to acknowledge and repent of our waywardness,
so we can bear the fruit God created us to bear,
fruit for God’s world,
not for our own world and our own lives.
Karl Barth, the 20th century Swiss theologian
imagined God speaking to us saying,
“Your eyes, your minds, your hearts,
are always on yourselves,
on what you want.
“But things are based not on you, but on me!
Based on you there is sin;
Based on me, there is forgiveness.
Based on you there is distress and affliction;
based on me there is help and salvation.
Based on you there is opposition, one against the other;
based on me there is togetherness, one for the other.
Based on you there is violence, coarseness, severity;
based on me there is what is fine, quiet,…
Based on you there is death;
based on me there is life.”

“Advent is a time when we ought to be shaken
and brought to a realization of ourselves.”
(A. Delp, Watch for the Light, 86)
And that is just what John is doing:
shaking us up,
calling us out of our complacency,
our comfort,
calling us to stop defining our faith lives
by what suits us,
what fits our lifestyles
and schedules
and temperaments.

John is calling us to turn from our idol worship,
our worship of all that is false:
money, prestige
comfort, celebrity, possessions.
Here in Washington he has to all but drag us
from worshiping at the altar of politics,
looking at our faith
through the lens of political beliefs and ideology.

Is it any wonder that John says to us,
we are not ready for the coming of the Lord?
So what should we do?
It’s the question the people asked of John
and it is the question we still ask today.

And John’s responses were so simple so straightforward:
If you have two coats, and you see a person who has no coat,
then share your extra coat.
When was the last time you went through your closet?
Do you really need everything that’s in there?
Just because the contractor built a walk-in closet
doesn’t mean it should be full.
And this Christmas perhaps more than
any Christmas in recent years,
there are so many who need coats,
sweaters, gloves, pants, shoes.

His response to the tax collector and the soldiers
can be summed up:
live your lives honestly, with integrity.
We live in a world in which dishonesty abounds:
businesses in this country, even the most prominent,
built on disingenuousness, deception,
that famous word, “spin”,
which is itself a disingenuous word for “lie”.

A few years ago, in response to the last group
of corporate scandals –
Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Arthur Anderson,
two authors who were themselves longtime consultants
to numerous Fortune 500 companies wondered
whether we had entered a whole new era in business,
a time of “managed mendacity” .
Mendacity: lying, deception,
deliberately distorting the truth
The title of their book said it all,
“How Companies Lie”
(A. Larry Elliott and Richard J. Schroth)

Corporate executives have been quick to respond
in much the same way Ebenezer Scrooge did:
“it’s just business.”
But you recall how the ghost of Jacob Marley responded
“Business??!!
Mankind is our business,
humanity is our business.”
It is a response that I think John would have approved of.

What can we do, though,
since none of us runs a Fortune 500 corporation?
We can seek out and do business with companies
that are socially responsible,
that operate ethically, fairly, honestly.
Going to Wal-mart and saving money is always a good thing,
especially in tough economy times.
but not if we are buying clothing and other goods
made by child labor,
made in unsafe conditions in developing countries.

“Oh, that’s too much work”,
is how the people standing along the bank of the Jordan River
might have responded.
“That is the life we are called to”,
is what John would have said.
No one ever said this was going to be easy.
There are a growing number of websites
that can help us find out which businesses
operate ethically and with integrity,
and which businesses have poor reputations.

John is calling us to nothing less than new life,
shaking us, awakening us,
to a new way, not just for the holidays,
but every day, in all parts of our lives,
all so we can be ready,
ready for the coming of our Lord.

John calls us: “Repent!
Turn from yourself and your selfishness;
Turn disobedience to wisdom and righteousness;
Seek justice;
work for righteousness.
Don’t just feed the hungry; eliminate hunger!
Walk the talk.
Bear fruit, the fruit God calls you to bear,
the fruit God created you to bear.
For the Lord is coming.
Are you ready?
Are you?
AMEN