Every Advent
2, we remember John the Baptist
announcing the coming
of the Christ
who is going to overturn the ways of
the world
with the ways of
God.
John shouted
that something was about to happen
that would change everything.
God’s
promise was about to be fulfilled,
the promise in today’s Old Testament lesson.
“The wolf
shall live with the lamb
the
leopard shall lie down with the kid
the calf and
the lion and the fatling together
and a little child shall lead them.”
That’s what
we’re praying for when we say
“Thy Kingdom come, they will be done.”
We are
praying for that peaceable kingdom of diversity
celebrated in innocent harmony.
Every day, I
pray for an end to war, terrorism, violence, and oppression.
Then I sum
up my petitions with “thy Kingdom come”
because God’s Kingdom means an end
to all that is ungodly.
In God’s
Kingdom, money doesn’t make the world go round;
love does that.
In God’s
Kingdom, our success doesn’t come
at the expense of
someone else’s failure.
But I fear
we have reduced the Christian vision
to something rather smaller than
God’s Kingdom.
For many
Christians, the spiritual project is just to be forgiven for our sins
and go to heaven when we die.
We have the
church to provide spiritual support along the way.
Those are
not small things.
They are
important and wonderful and gracious.
I need my
sins forgiven, I hope to go to heaven,
and I need your support and
encouragement
until I get there.
But John
prophesied something far bigger.
Jesus taught
about something far bigger.
He lived,
died, and rose again
to usher in something far bigger –
the Kingdom of God.
John’s
Kingdom vision is just the Jewish vision taken all the way.
What makes
John so angry at the Pharisees and Sadducees
is that they have lost sight of the Kingdom vision.
They have
reduced their religion to a way to get through life,
instead of a way to change the world
and have their own hearts broken
open in the process.
We need to
read John the Baptist each Advent
because we do the same thing.
We make our
faith smaller than the vision Jesus showed us.
We downsize the mission to something easier to
manage.
But it isn’t
entirely our fault.
There’s a
reason we’ve lowered our expectations.
John the
Baptist expected Jesus to make the Kingdom of God
happen right then and there.
Instead,
Jesus taught about a Kingdom that comes
in unexpected ways at unpredictable
times.
Instead of a
political revolution, we got the crucifixion
and the resurrection.
The
world kept right on turning.
And it kept
being a mixed bag of good and evil.
The first
Christians hoped Jesus would come again right away
to finish what he had started.
But
centuries passed and the world kept turning.
It looked
like nothing had changed after all.
Eventually,
we began to do what the Pharisees and Sadducees did.
We reduced
our religion to a way of getting through life
instead of overturning to world’s
ways with God’s ways.
The problem
is that doesn’t work so well.
We come to
Church, we come to God,
when life throws us more than we can
handle.
We need help
with our guilt, our shame, our loneliness, our anxiety.
We need some
grace so we ask God for it.
That is
right and good. I do it everyday.
And God
helps us. The Church helps us.
Our faith
holds us up.
That’s good.
It’s where we all start on the path.
It’s the
first step.
But there’s
a second step that makes all the difference.
The first
step doesn’t get to the basic source of our unhappiness
because the first step is still all about me.
It’s about
my guilt, my shame, my loneliness, my anxiety.
The basic
problem in all of that is the “my.”
The fact
that I am so stuck in myself
makes me vulnerable to all that bad
stuff again and again.
The real
liberation and healing comes in step two.
Step two is
when I give myself away to God’s Kingdom mission.
I can’t make
the Kingdom happen anymore than John the Baptist could.
But, like
John, I can help to prepare the way of the Lord,
I can help to make straight the way.
So how do we
take that second step?
How do we
move past the smaller vision,
the Pharisee and Sadducee religion
of just getting through life?
How do we
lay our lives on the altar for the Kingdom mission?
How do we
take up our cross and follow Jesus?
We start by
trusting something
that we can’t rationally understand,
something that is so big we can’t get our heads around
it.
Our heads
aren’t big enough to take in what has happened.
The life,
death, and resurrection of Jesus shifted the foundation of the universe.
The power of
innocence won out over cynical politics
when God was born not as wealthy
monarch
but as a poor baby in a
stable.
The power of
love won out over the power of violence
when Jesus forgave his persecutors.
The power of
life won out over death
when the angel rolled the stone
away.
At the basic
level of reality, the foundation we call heaven,
the victory is already won.
But Jesus
left us the mission of helping the material world
catch up with its spiritual
foundation.
We pray,
“thy Kingdom come, thy will be done,
on earth as it is in
heaven.”
Our task,
the job Jesus gave us in the Great Commission,
is aligning earth with
heaven.
Jesus gave
us that mission to accomplish in partnership with him,
Because that mission liberates us
from our focus on self
and deepens our relationship with
him.
The Kingdom
mission is part and parcel of our salvation.
So how do we
embark on the mission?
We do that
first by faith, trusting how things now
stand in heaven.
Then we
follow through with prayer and action.
Whenever we
pray the Our Father,
we invite the Kingdom into this world.
And every
time we act out of God’s ways
instead of the world’s ways,
we push the gate open a little wider.
Joining in
justice movements led by saints like
Nelson Mandela,
Martin Luther King, and Dorothy Day would be part of it.
But we can
open the gate in small ways every day
by the way we treat other people.
We live in a
cynical world of arms length transactions
and horn-honking lane cutting
relationships.
It’s a harsh
world where people act out of anger and greed
more often than kindness and
generosity.
But we can
usher in the Kingdom with bold stands for justice
or with small acts of fairness and
mercy.
This week I
hit a curb and ruined the wheel of my car.
But the man
at the repair shop found a way
to fix my car inexpensively and
quickly.
He could
have done it slower and charged a lot more.
But he
treated me with courtesy and generosity.
I thanked
him but also said, “God is good.”
God doesn’t
call most of us to leave our daily lives
of family obligation and duties at
our jobs.
But God calls each of us to do everything we do
a little differently because we are
Christians.
The thousand
little acts of mercy, the thousand little stands for justice,
the thousand little repetitions of
the Lord’s Prayer,
all these things are opening the
gate for the ultimate Christmas,
when heaven and nature will sing --
together,
the lion will lays down with the
lamb -- together,
and the Lord will wipe away the
tears from every eye.
