Imagine traveling by foot into the Great Valley.  It is cold and wet.  Your body already feels sore but you make the sacrifice because you are looking for someone that friends say will change your life.  You hope his words will help to clarify who you are and what you should do.  Your heart longs for a connection to the Holy One and people say that the spirit is powerfully with him.  You wonder if you will be able to find him, and what he will say.

Advent is the season when Christians go out to meet John the Baptist.  What does he say right now?  It might help to begin by asking what he might say to people who travel with us.

Along the way you meet Bill Chalmers.  Just over forty, he is struggling to become a senior partner in his firm.  In the course of the conversation you see how constant email messages and cell phone calls are eroding the relationship he has with his wife and only son.  He can’t help himself and repeats his company’s motto a few times, “the maximum information in the minimum time.”  He tells you he is happy to take care of his family, he is proud to take care of them – as long as they appreciate him.  They have no idea of the burden he carries every day.  He doesn’t ask for much, just that they should do more little things for him, maybe compliment him more often.

I guess we all had the chance to walk for a while with Tiger Woods this week.  In 2008 he made $110 million and was the highest paid professional athlete in the world.  I read somewhere that during one of his previous absences from golf, tournament television audiences declined by 50%.  Now after the still-mysterious car accident and more women come forward claiming to have had recent affairs with Woods, he is withdrawing from golf to try to repair his life with his wife and two small children.  He’s made terrible decisions.  Still I can’t help but feel sorry for this man who has everything, but still tried to fill a kind of emptiness in such destructive ways.

What would John the Baptist tell Tiger Woods?

Another person we heard a lot from this week was President Obama.  In his Nobel Peace prize acceptance speech, the president went to great lengths to talk about the tension between war as both a necessity and an expression of human folly.  He alluded to the irony of hearing a lecture about peace from the commander-in-chief of a country currently engaged in two separate wars.

At the same time, representatives of the world’s governments met in Copenhagen to talk about a coordinated response to climate change.  This should be of special interest to us as Americans since we produce 20% of global emissions with only 5% of the world’s population.

Yes John the Baptist has a lot to say these days.  Like the people I know who take Advent seriously, he is out of step with the “Holly, jolly Christmas” we see in the shopping malls.  But he also speaks the truth about who we are and who God is calling us to be.

On Wednesday night our family played the ukulele and sang as we rang the bell for the Salvation Army.  Our 8 year-old daughter Melia started by wishing people “Merry Christmas” then changed to “Happy Holidays” to avoid offending non-Christians.  The next lady who came up to her said, “No, it’s Merry Christmas.”  I wanted to tell her that actually we probably should be wishing each other a “Holy Advent.”

During Advent we walk out to the desert places of our lives to work on who we are.  In this process John is a much more helpful figure than Rudolf or Santa or Frosty.  Our biggest problem is that we’ve been told his message so many times that we no longer really hear it.  So let’s listen again.  I believe the scriptures say three important things to us on this third Sunday of Advent.

1. First, John emphatically warns us that we do not have a special place in God’s heart because of any accidental condition of our birth.  God does not love us any more than his other children.  God does not give us a special break.  God is not biased in the way we are about our own actions.  In fact God does not care about our religion, race, nationality, family, or social status.  It is hard to avoid the feeling that we somehow magically deserve what we have because we were born on the north side of the Mexican border, or because we inherited a great education or work ethic from our parents.  There are no chosen people, if we mean by that people who God has a special obligation to over everyone else.

We were not created merely to be cared for.  The purpose of our life is not simply to survive.  John’s favorite image for the human condition is the fruit tree on a farm.  The tree’s value comes solely from the fruits that it produces.  A metaphorical axe lies at our roots to remind us that we only exist to produce the fruits of God’s kingdom.

So John says quite simply “Repent!”  I think for people in our time the meaning of this word has been worn out.  It doesn’t mean merely feeling guilty for bad things we’ve done in the past, or making a resolution to do better next time.  Instead repentance is the process of turning our life toward God.  It means to give all of our energy and passion into the hands of Jesus.  It means putting yourself at God’s disposal so that God can work through you to transform the world.

2. In case “repentance” still seems like an overly abstract idea, Luke provides us with very specific examples.  Whoever has two coats or more food than they can eat, share with the one who does not have enough.  If you are a tax collector, don’t collect more than you are supposed to.  If you are a soldier don’t make extra money by threatening civilians.  You don’t have to overthrow the Roman Empire or quit your job as a tax collector or soldier – you just need to share.  You need to know that you already have enough.

This is difficult for us isn’t it?  But it is the most important thing that John says to our Silicon Valley neighbors, our nation and the industrial world.  John says it to Tiger Woods, Larry Ellison, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to you and to me.  Turning your life toward God means beginning to live and act as people who have enough.

The Stanford professor Rene Girard says that the commandment that lies at the heart of all the others is “Thou shalt not covet,” you shall not desire what you think others have.  He is right.  When we don’t think God is enough, we make idols.  When we think our spouse is not enough, we commit adultery.  When we think that we don’t have enough we steal.  When we believe that the truth is not enough, we lie.  Turning our life toward God means changing our hearts.

This morning John calls all of us to consider what it is that we think we lack.  What do we think we do not have enough of?  Is it: love, respect, power, safety, spirituality, attention, authority, usefulness to the world?  How can we live more completely in thanksgiving for God’s generosity?

This seems like a crucial issue for us as a church right now.  People do not resist change; they resist loss.  I wonder if we have been getting into the habit of experiencing our life together as one of loss rather than as a gift that God gives us so that we can bear fruit.  Somewhere along the line we started believing the story that what we have is not enough.  Because of this we may also have gotten into the habit of regarding church as the place where our needs are met.

The healthiest part of our life together focuses not on what we don’t have but on what God gives us to reach out to the world in love.  The purpose of the church is not to serve us, but to help us to receive gifts as God’s children that will make it possible for us to bear fruit by serving the world.

3.  My last point concerns what might at first seem like the mixed message of this Sunday in Advent.  On the one hand John screams about the brood of vipers who need to turn their life toward God.  At the same time our other readings focus on rejoicing.  The prophet Zephaniah writes, “Rejoice and exult with all your heart… your God is in your midst… he will renew you with his love” (Zeph. 3).  While Paul writes, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice…  Do not worry about anything… with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God” (Phil. 4).

Being a person of faith means celebrating like a Boston Red Sox fan after the 2004 World Series, or like a South African after the 1995 Rugby World Cup.  The world doesn’t quite know what to make of us.  On the same Sunday that we’re talking about repentance, we’re also jumping around giving each other high fives.  We seem to be engulfed by the same darkness that is bringing despair to the world, but at the same time we are rejoicing.

The reason for this seemingly jarring contrast is that being in the process of turning our hearts toward God looks very different before and after one begins to repent.  Repenting naturally draws us into rejoicing in the divine life.  When we turn toward God, when we become people who have enough, we experience the joy of being what we were created to be.

Albert Einstein said that there are two ways of seeing the world: as if everything was a miracle and as if nothing was a miracle.  When our attention rests on what God has given us rather than on what we lack, we experience all life as a miracle.

The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber writes about how human beings long for closeness and intimacy.  People who know that they have enough are at home with the people in their lives, they are at home with the world because they have found their home in God.  They know that they do not simply act alone on the world, but that when they surrender their lives, God does miracles through them.

The sensitive man whose heart was breaking from all the pain and injustice of the world cried out, “Dear God, look at all the suffering and misery in your world.  Why don’t you send help?”  God responded, “I did send help.  I sent you.”

Let us pray:

Most loving God, help us to bear fruit by turning our lives toward you, to see beyond what we lack and to recognize what we have to share, so that we may rejoice as your children and be drawn more completely into the life of your son Jesus Christ.  Amen.

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Alan Lightman, The Diagnosis (NY: Vintage Books, 2000), 14, 154.

Rene Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, Tr. James G. Williams (Maryknoll, NY: 2001).

David J. Wolpe, Why Faith Matters, (NY: HarperOne, 2008), 18.

Ibid., 39.

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© Malcolm C. Young, 2009Zeph. 3:14-20

Christ Church, Los Altos, CA Sermon P27Cant. 9

3 Advent (Year C)Phil. 4:4-7

Sunday 13 December 2009Lk. 3:7-18

Living with Enough

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.  Let your gentleness be known to everyone” (Phil. 4).