John 1:6-9, 19-28
December 11, 2005
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
For those of us who live north of the equator, the days have become quite short now, and the nights long. The shortest day of the year is only 10 days away. I know this because I have had to adjust my automatic timers that turn on and off our outside lights to start earlier and stay on longer.
People who live in the upper-most parts of the globe see no light at all during winter. There’s darkness around them all the time. They would need a flashlight to point their way in the darkness. For people who live in Canada or Alaska, they have an advantage during Advent. Since darkness is around them all the time, any light is a rare and is appreciated as a great gift.
On this third week of Advent, we are reintroduced to John the Baptist. Unlike last Sunday’s John from Mark who was a fire and brimstone preacher calling for repentance and the need to travel in the wilderness of our lives, the Gospel of John’s John the baptizer is mellower and more evasive. This John the Baptist is sent to give testimony, a witness to the light. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. John is pointing to the light.
Waiting for the Light
There are some towns located in mountainous areas that wish they had more sunlight. The nearby mountains shade their neighborhoods more than they like. So they have come up with this scheme of installing giant mirrors to reflect the sun in order to point the sunlight down into their town square. So if this experiment works, at certain locations, people who want more sunlight would come to the center of town to catch the rays. We are people who need light to feel good.
The people around John the Baptist have been waiting for this light to come to their town square. They have waited for so long that they appeared to be angry or frustrated from the voices of the interrogators. With fingers pointing, they questioned John, “Who are you? If you are not the Messiah, then are you Elijah? Are you the prophet? Let us have an answer so that we can tell those who sent us?”
They have been waiting for the Messiah, the one who would come and redeem the people of Israel. If it is John, they want to know, or if John knows who it is, they will take that answer as well. Perhaps they’re despair over the crushing poverty around them, the aggressive violence of the Roman Empire, or all the brokenhearted people who show up in their workplaces day after day, week after week. If the light is to come, they want John to point it out to them now.
Enlightens Everyone
Not only is Advent lengthy and dark, we look outside and see that our world is dark too—longing for light. The reason why we put up lights and candles on our windows and string lights on our tree is to bring more light into the darkened world. We put lights outside on the bushes and doorways. We wrap our gifts in brightly color paper. Some of us wear bright red clothes. That’s why PG&E is causing harm to injury when it is raising gas and electric prices during Advent!
Besides physically lighting our darkened world, we become more attuned and enlighten to the world around us during these long days of December. When the world appears more fragile than usual and more delicate and broken than we like, we want to enlighten the world with hope and joy. Human service organizations report record numbers of volunteers and donations in the days leading up to Christmas.
We know this is silly, of course, the homeless are still homeless in July, the cold are even colder in January, the elderly won’t be any younger when March arrives and the hospitals are filled with the sick every month of the year. But at Christmas, we who are normally hard-edged become more tender and our hearts bleed more for the pains of others. We see the light. We redirect what little light that we have and point our energies to help our broken and darkened world.
Emotionally, it would be far easier to isolate ourselves from the problems of the world, to stay in denial, to remain full of good cheer, and walk down on the sunnier side of the street. Yet, a bright disposition can only take us so far.
Psychological research has shown that the single biggest key to living a healthy life is staying optimistic. Optimists have less stress, better marriages, and healthier diets. They tend to have a sunnier outlook on the world, which translates to positive self-esteem and self-confidence. Optimists generally believe things are getting better, humanity is improving, the world’s problems are being solved. And the best news is that optimists tend to live longer than other people.
But John the Baptist and Jesus could not have been optimists. Both were dead before 30.
A pastor was counseling a woman after her sister’s suicide. The dead sister had been hooked on drugs throughout her adult life. Completely exasperated and at the end of her rope, feelings as if everything had been tried and done, the woman had cut off all communication with her drug-addicted sister, hoping beyond hope that a tough-handed silent treatment would get through. There would be no communication between the two until the addictions were broken. And now the living sister was weeping in the pastor’s office.
“Two and a half years ago I stopped talking to my sister because I thought it would help her get better. It didn’t work. She’s dead. I was told that the drug addiction was a matter of the will. I no longer believe in willpower. If there is any hope at all, it can’t come from us.”
John the Baptist said that the “true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.” It’s not the optimism or perhaps the tough love that we think can come from us that can help us. Hope comes from outside of us. It comes from Christ.
Christian Hope
Christian hope is fundamentally different from optimism. Christian hope locks its steely eyes on the dark devastation of the world around us, and readily acknowledges that things may not get better yet. Christian hope does not bury its head in yuletide cheer and artificial lights, but like our Advent wreath glowing stronger and brighter every week, Christian hope makes us stronger. This hope pushes its way into the brokenness of the world, clearing a path in the wilderness so the true light might burst into the darkness. Christian hope has the courage to work for justice, healing, and liberation, trusting that such work is a testimony, a witness to the light, Jesus Christ.
There’s a story about Rabbi Hugo Grynn who was sent to Auschwitz as a little boy. In the midst of the concentration camp, in the midst of the death and horror all around them, many Jews held onto whatever shreds of their religious observance they could without drawing the ire of the guards.
One cold winter’s evening, Hugo’s father gathered the family in the barracks. It was the first night of Chanukah, the Feast of Lights. The young child watched with horror as his father took the family’s last pad of butter and made a makeshift candle using a string from his ragged clothes. He took a match and lit the candle.
“Father, no!” Hugo cried. “That butter is our last bit of food! How will we survive!”
“We can live many days without food,” his father said. “We cannot live for a single minute without hope. This is the fire of hope. Never let it go out. Not here. Not everywhere.”
God’s Gossipers
I want you to gossip. Not the kind of gossip where you share the latest dirt about your neighbors or where you pass on juicy rumors you hear about your co-workers. Rather, now that you know that Christian hope is not being optimistic or that it comes from within us but the hope that we can point to is the light that is coming into the world. I want you to tell others about that. I want you to gossip.
The word, “gossip” is actually a combination of two words: “God,” and “sibb,” as in sibling. Originally a gossip was a God sibling, a God family member—or what we would call today a godparent. A gossip was someone who stood with you at your baptism and spoke for you and assured the church that you would be raised up in the Christian faith. Then as the years went by, the gossip would then have the special job of helping to point you to Jesus and telling you the good news of the gospel.
In a way you could say that John the Baptist was the first person to gossip about Jesus. What would it be like if we also learned to gossip like that, pointing people to Jesus and telling the news about what it means for all of our lives?
We don’t have a problem talking about the weather, our favorite football team, or hundreds of other matters that, when you get down to it, really aren’t important. But when it comes to the most important subject of all—what God has done for us in Jesus Christ—all too often we have little to say.
During this Christmas season, I want you to get out there and gossip. Engage in some gossip about Jesus. Through your actions and through your words, point others to Jesus, and help them come to see what Jesus means to them and for all of creation.
Pointing to Christ
We can’t point others to Christ when we are so consumed with ourselves. Our own need for being in the center of everything can prevent us from pointing to Christ.
There’s a story of a young boy and his older brother riding on BART. Both of them were peering into the mirror made of two-way glass that separated them from the engineer’s compartment. Soon the older boy told his mother that he could see the tracks that lay ahead. But the younger brother was too busy admiring himself in the mirror that he could not see what his brother was talking about.
“Where?” he asked, “I don’t see anything.”
Finally their mother spoke up. “Look beyond yourself and you’ll see it.” When he did, he suddenly saw what he had been missing.
In the same sort of way, only when we look beyond ourselves and redirect our attention to Jesus do we suddenly become aware of the future that lies before us.
John the Baptist told the religious interrogators that he was not Elijah or one of the old prophets. He was not the light that was coming. John’s calling was to prepare the way for the one who is coming. He was pointing the way. John was pointing to Jesus, the Light of the world.
This year I want to give you another gift for Christmas. Actually, it’s an Advent gift. When you leave the sanctuary, you will be given a little package of Post-It pointers. The pointers symbolize that you are to point the way for others to know Christ. Like John the Baptist who pointed to Jesus Christ, you are called to point to Jesus Christ too.
On your calendar, I want you to point to next Sunday as we baptize five young people to the Christian faith. May this pointer serve as a reminder for you to pray about your own life and commitment to Christ as your Savior.
I want you to affix a pointer on Christmas Eve in your calendar to remind you to invite your family and friends to come to our worship of Christmas lessons and carols. Maybe this is the year that they will come to know Jesus Christ.
Put another pointer on Sunday, December 25 to remind you what is the true meaning of Christmas—the birth of the Christ Child and not only a season of shopping, parties, and eating.
I want you to carry your pointers with you to remind yourself that you have a job as Christian gossipers telling others about God and pointing them to Christ. The nights may be longer than we like. The darkened world may threaten us and frustrate us as we wait for answers. But as we point to Jesus Christ, the light of the world, we believe with Christian hope that in God’s time, light will come. And this light, the coming of Christ, will never be put out.
Let us pray.
O Lord, the world is so dark and the light is so dim. Everywhere we turn, people are sick and grieving, homeless and hungry. We ache and long for healing and wholeness for your light to cast out the shadows of life. Give us the precious gift of hope during this dark Advent season to point the world to the coming of your Son, Jesus the Christ, the light of the world. Amen.