A number years ago, I found some unusual Christmas wrapping paper. It was white with bold red lettering that said “Bah Humbug.” I got it especially to wrap my Dad’s gifts. Dad who, though he loved the Christmas season, enjoyed echoing grumpy old Ebenezer Scrooge: “Bah humbug” whenever things would get too sentimental or mushy.
I’ve often thought that old John the Baptist seems to play a similar role for us in this annual pageant of the Christmas season. In the midst of all the twinkling lights and sugar-plum fairies and jolly carols and all, there he is. Year after year. Barging onto the scene bristling with fire and brimstone. A crazed fanatic, ascetic and intense. Growling at us again about wrath and repentance. Who let this crazy man into our family-friendly version of Christmas? Bah humbug! Even Ebenezer Scrooge looks loveable next to this guy!
John the Baptist. Every year he shows up on this, the second Sunday of Advent. But you know, he’s not really just a Scrooge, is he? John the Baptist has an important role to play in all this. He’s here to remind us that the coming of the Christ may well begin with a baby in a manger and a star in the sky and beautiful angelic voices, but by golly, the implications of this birth will carry us forward to the day when the whole earth is transformed into something resembling the kingdom of God. And to get from here to there on this amazing trajectory of love and righteousness we will all need to be changed.
“Prepare the way of the Lord,” he trumpets. “Prepare the way of the Lord.”
In his time, people were quite ready for change. They badly wanted the messiah to come and make things right. It was a time, much like ours, really, which United Methodist bishop, Ruben Job, recently described this way. He said: “Our world is deeply divided, highly cynical about its leadership, greatly disappointed in its structures and systems that seem so flawed, broken and corrupt, broadly conflicted and gravely afraid of tomorrow.”
The people were eager for God to send the Messiah to save them and to transform the world. You heard it in the words of the prophet Isaiah that Mary/Bee read for us: the Messiah--one who will come with counsel and might, who will judge the poor with righteousness and decide with equity for the meek of the earth. One who will be faithful and usher in a time when even mortal enemies will coexist in peace and the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord.
Do we not also long for such a time? A time when we could lay down our fear. A time when none would suffer. A time, as the Psalmist put it, when righteousness and peace kiss?
”Well, it’s coming!” says John the Baptist. “Prepare the way.” Wow. John the Baptist was like a one-man advance team, getting everything ready. You know, in this political season with all these debates and appearances by the candidates and so forth, advance teams are really busy. I don’t know if any of you have ever been in a venue that was to be visited by an important personage, but it can be a traumatic experience. These guys swoop in and check out security and routes of access and egress and sight-lines. In the old days, they would lay down dozens of additional phone lines although I suppose now in the days of cell phones that’s no longer necessary. It’s quite an operation for an appearance that may just last a few minutes.
John the Baptist was a one-man advance team when he appeared in the wilderness of Judea. And some people got so excited that something was finally happening that they got mixed up and thought he was the guy. He had his own set of disciples, some of whom continue today in the country we now call Iraq. This is the little-known group of Sabaean Mandeans, some 10,000 of them, have worshipped John the Baptist since the first or second century AD, blending Gnostic, Jewish and Christian beliefs.
But John himself had tried to be clear. “One who is more powerful than I is coming,” he said, “to baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire!” The Messiah is coming. Prepare the way. John is saying to us that he needs more people on his advance team. He needs all of us to help prepare the way.
When we come right down to it, you see, that’s our role, the role of the church in the world. It’s our bottom-line vision and mission statement. And it’s about as straightforward as it could possibly be: “Prepare the way of the Lord.” God is always working on our behalf to bring peace and love and righteousness to this crazy, violent, fearful world and to our hearts—so our job is to clear out the brush, make the paths straight, open the doors, set the stage, ready our hearts—for God, even now, is coming into the world.
I lived in the Midwest for several years, as I know many of you have, where preparing for winter is a big deal because winter is a big deal. You have to rake up all those leaves out of the yard and bring some things inside and take down the screens and put up your double windows to keep out the cold. And you’ve got to get all that done before the first snow comes and stays for months. Like advance teams, those folks know about preparing.
But how in the world are we to prepare for the coming of the Lord? What does that really mean? John the Baptist says we must repent, turn our minds around and head in a new direction. We have to change—our thinking, our priorities, how we live. And as anyone who’s ever tried to change anything about anything knows, it’s never easy. Who here has battled an addiction? Who here has tried to change a relationship? Who here has made New Year’s resolutions about diet and losing weight only to break them all a week or two into it? Who here has vowed to live more simply or more faithfully, and fallen short? Not easy, any of it. But all of that and more is what we must do to prepare the way.
It’s a big task and we wonder where even to begin. One starting place is found in John Wesley’s teachings about how the Methodist people are to live day in and day out. Bishop Job, whom I referred to earlier, has written a new little book on this called Three Simple Rules: A Wesleyan Way of Living. Were we to take these three simple rules to heart and begin to incorporate them more and more into our everyday living, we would gradually form a powerful force preparing the way of the Lord.
Three deceptively simple rules—do no harm. Do good. Stay in love with God. I hope you’ll commit these to memory. Do no harm. Do good. Stay in love with God.
Do no harm. Reminds us of the Hippocratic oath that doctors take, doesn’t it? I reflected on this one last week when I needed to have some blood taken for the annual battery of tests necessary for persons of my advancing age. I go up to UCLA and so I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised when this kid who looked about 15 came in and introduced himself and said: “I’m a student. Is that OK?” I wanted to ask him if he was old enough to drive. I wanted to ask if he’d ever done this before. But I thought we’d both be better off if I could just stay calm and help him to do the same. “Sure,” I said, feigning complete confidence in him. He did fine. We both survived. And I’m sure he’s on his way to a long career of “doing no harm.”
As Christians, Wesley meant that we are to do no harm in what we do, in what we say and in what we feel about others in our heart of hearts. Harder than it looks, but essential to preparing the way of the Lord of love. Do no harm.
Second. Do good. On Thanksgiving day, in the Arizona desert, good was done in an amazing way. An undocumented bricklayer seeking work, Manuel Jesus Cordova, was in the second day of his walk from Mexico into the US. He came across a little 9-year old boy, wandering alone, wearing shorts in spite of the cold weather, his legs scraped badly. Though neither spoke the other’s language, they managed to communicate enough for the boy to lead Cordova to the isolated site where his mother had crashed their van. She had died in the accident. Cordova found some food in the van. He gave the boy the sweater he was wearing. While the little boy slept through the night, Cordova tended the fire to keep them both warm. He said later: “I didn’t know how to console him, so I just sat next to him.” In so doing, he saved the boy’s life.
In the morning, the pair was discovered by hunters in the area. The boy was taken to the hospital and is recovering. US Border Patrol agents took Cordova into custody and returned him to Mexico. The Mexican consul general for Nogales observed that “the desert has a way rearranging priorities, and for [him] the priority was standing right in front of him that day. And this man, this hero, did what men of honor do in all nations and in all cultures.” Cordova simply explained: “I am a father of four children. For that, I stayed. I never could have left him. Never.”
As John the Baptist knew, in the Judean wilderness so long ago, the desert has a way of rearranging priorities—whether it be the real deserts of this world or the desert and deserted places of our soul. In the desert, the complex becomes clear, the issues straightforward. Regardless of where you might think you’re going, the truth of God can sometimes stop you in your tracks and turn you around. Do no harm. Do good. Stay in love with God.
At the heart of this third simple rule, Bishop Job says, is always to remember that God loves us each and all. “God is with us. God continues to seek us out, love us, speak to us, enable us and lead us into the future.” God is love—and our only job is to respond in kind. To love God just as much. To keep in close relationship with God. To talk with God in prayer. To praise God in worship. To serve God in service to God’s people. To live the kingdom now. Stay in love with God.
Our bishops are telling us that Wesley’s three simple rules lead to transformed lives and a transformed world. Do no harm. Do good. Stay in love with God.
They are calling us to "live the United Methodist way" in our daily lives and public witness and be a community of believers who offer hope to the world. Bishop Job says that in this fast-paced and complex world, we are ready for a more faithful way of living and discipleship. "And now it is up to us to see if we will take it, teach it and practice it until it becomes our natural way of living — a way of living that will mark our life together and our lives as individual Christians," he said.
May everything about who we are and how we live and what we value and what we protect and what we risk and what we dare help prepare the way of the Lord.
The kingdom of God is come near.
©Patricia
Farris, 2007. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution.
All other rights reserved.
"Preparing the Way of the Lord"