The Rev'd Jane Bearden
For Children:
Christmas is coming:
Need to get ready - What are some things you do to get ready?? Clean house, buy presents, cook, decorate, trying hard to be nice and not naughty so that Santa will bring lots of gifts?
Today we hear about a man named John the Baptist who taught us something about getting ready for God’s coming – he told us to repent. What he meant was that we should spend some time being aware of the hurts we have done and those done to us and ask God to forgive us for those things. But we don’t just ask for forgiveness – we also try really hard not to do the bad things again. That is what repent means. To recognize the bad parts of our lives and to try to do better. Bible tells us that God loves us and forgives us. That means that we can depend on God to help us be nice even though it is hard sometimes.
In the name of God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, Amen
John the Baptist makes me think about squirrels. There is a country western singer, Ray Stevens, who recorded a song a few years back called the Mississippi Squirrel Revival. It is about a young man who went to visit his grandmother in Pascagoula MS every summer. Each summer he would run barefoot, and climb trees and enjoy the slow life of his grandmother’s antebellum world. Then one day he captured a squirrel and put him in a shoe box with holes in the sides. He took the box to the First Self-righteous Church of Pascagoula. The name tells it all! When he lifted the top to show the squirrel to his friends, the squirrel got loose. The song gets pretty funny then as the squirrel runs up some hapless man’s overalls and causes him to jump up and yell out in fright in the middle of the service. The man who is named Harv, thinks that he has a weed-eater loose in his pants but the other church goers think he has gone beserk. Now there is a woman sitting over in the Amen corner named Bertha Better than you and the squirrel proceeds to run up her skirt and do laps around her middle. So Bertha jumps up and yells "Lord have mercy on me!". Then the verse goes like this…
As the squirrel made laps inside her dress,
she began to cry and then to confess
to sins that would make a sailor blush with shame.
She told of gossip and church dissention,
but the thing that got the most attention
is when she talked about her love life
then she started naming names!
The day the squirrel went berserk.
In the First Self-Righteous Church
in that sleepy little town of Pascagoula.
It was a fight for survival,
that broke out in revival.
They were jumpin pews and shouting Hallelujah!
Well seven deacons and then the pastor got saved
and 25,000 dollars got raised.
And 50 volunteered for missions in the Congo
on the spot.
and even without an invitaion
there were at least 500 rededications.
And we all got rebaptised whether we needed it or not.
Now you've heard the Bible stories I guess
of how He parted the waters for Moses to pass.
All the miracles God has brought to this ol' world.
But the one I'll remember to my dyin day
is how he put that church back on the narrow way
with a half crazed Mississippi Squirrel
What John the Baptist needed was a half-crazed Mississippi squirrel to call all of those people to repentance. Exactly what John is talking about in a baptism of repentance will not be fully revealed until next week’s Gospel reading, but what we do know from this reading is that John is not talking about baptism as we know it within the context of Christ’s resurrection into new life – rather it is more akin to the repentance of Malachi in our first lesson where God’s messenger is purification by fire so to speak. Repent, turn away from the evil ways and do what is right. These passages carry a heavy message of God’s wrath in the face of humankind’s inability to stay away from sin. They carry a message of judgment. Now I don’t want to minimize the importance of John’s message, but I don’t think the impact of what he is saying is entirely clear from this passage. Making all of the paths straight for God is a tall order and it begs the question I think about what happens when we fall short of the goal. One of my biggest objections to the soapbox preacher is the notion that what that preacher believes is right and what I believe is wrong and I am damned to hell if I don’t do what he or she says. That kind of rhetoric either makes me feel completely inadequate and unworthy because I can’t meet the target or it makes me angry, resentful and rebellious. Rarely does fear of eternal damnation change my behavior. But what does change my behavior is compassion and love. I want to talk a little about that today.
Sometimes I fantasize about what our world might be like if guilt and blame and judgment were less important words in our vocabulary. One of the key teachings on how to work with others in small groups is to learn not to shame or blame another person for their thoughts or feelings as spoken in the group. But that does not mean that we are not supposed to hold others accountable for what they say or do – rather it means that we don’t set up a hierarchy of good versus bad when it comes to offering feelings and opinions in a group. The reasoning for this caution is that to shame a person for their opinion could have the effect of causing the person to hesitate to speak out and then the group would not have the benefit of the person’s wisdom and experience.
When my children really want to get my goat they tell me that I have an uncanny ability to lay a guilt trip on them – They say that I can do it with just a look or a raised eyebrow, or by saying I love you but…. My displeasure at their actions literally oozes from me – or so they perceive it to be. In reality that is not the message that I want to send at all. Do I want them to be strong, loving, kind, and generous – of course. Is it my place or my desire to judge them when they are not? Of course not – the difference here has to do with love – I mean, is calling my child to account done out of a desire to make them feel as though they are less than I or is it done out of true love for the person and a desire for them to be filled with the joy of life. And that brings me to the crux of the message today.
Paul’s letter to the church at Phillipi is full of superlatives. Paul admires the Phillipians and he expresses a strong fondness for them. He also has high hopes for them. He wants them to be “pure and blameless” at the day of Christ’s coming. Now that is a tall order. I do not know very many people who I consider to be “pure and blameless” including myself. But then there I go falling into that old habit of shame and blame again. Blaming someone else for the troubles of the world is pretty ubiquitous in history from Adam and Eve on… I gave birth to three children but in our house there seemed to be a fourth child who was a real trouble maker – responsible for everything that happened. That child’s name was “not me”. All three of my children when confronted with the spilled milk, would look up in all innocence when I asked who the culprit was and say “Not me!”
When Paul wrote the letter to Philippi he was in prison. The church there had been faithful to Paul and to his ministry both with their prayers and with financial gifts to support the ministry. As in other letters Paul writes to warn them about false teachers who would pervert the message of love that Paul hears in Jesus Christ. Paul’s hope for salvation, unlike the false teachers who put their hope in adherence to the Law – especially the law of circumcision – Paul’s hope for salvation lies in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. And it is precisely because of the struggles that both he and the church in Philippi have endured, that Paul is able to express his hopes and his confidence in their faith.
Paul says that he is sure that God who instilled in them the desire for Christ’s love will not abandon them in times of hardship. Rather than a day of judgment for all of the wrong they have done, the day of Christ’s coming will be a day of completion, a day of increasing knowledge of God and insight into the power of love in their lives. Paul tells the Philippians that because God has acted in them, they will be held pure and blameless at the coming of Christ. This kind of blamelessness is less about finding fault or being disappointed and more about being aware of our shortcomings and allowing God to heal the wounds and to give us strength to go forward. It is about being self-aware and recognizing our limitations without condemning ourselves for them. It is about taking responsibility and being open to God’s redeeming action in our lives rather than beating ourselves up and remaining mired in guilt. When blame moves from condemnation to taking responsibility for actions, it can be seen in the context of healing love and then real change in the way we live becomes possible.
Going back to the First Self-righteous Church in Pascagoula, the squirrel may have gotten the people in the amen corner to confess to their sin and to raise money for mission, but they did so from a place of fear rather than love for others. The Love we wait for in Advent, coming in the heart of Jesus, has the capacity to fill us to overflowing and to heal the wounds of anger, fear, and pride. We have only to watch and wait, to be ready to open our lives to receive the bounty. When we do we will be made pure and blameless, because we will be transformed to offer that same bountiful love to others. The miracle of Christmas? - it is to look not to ourselves but to God for Love and to be the window through which others may see God’s love also.
Amen
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