December 4, 2005
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
Since the beginning of November, Chris Chin has had to endure listening everyday as he works, KOIT—96.5, the Bay Area’s Christmas channel. We can hear all our favorite Christmas songs: from the Beach Boys’ Little Saint Nick to Bing Crosby’s White Christmas and Jose Feliciano’s Feliz Navidad! It’s all there—24 hours a day—mushy Christmas music to chase the dark clouds away so we can shop until we drop!
On this Second Sunday of Advent, we are greeted with one of the oddest figures of Christmas. Mark introduces us to John the Baptist who noisily intrudes on our Christmas cheer, reminding us that Jesus comes to save sinners, sinners like us, and the road to Bethlehem goes through a wilderness. There are no Christmas songs about John the Baptist on KOIT—96.5, Light rock, Less talk.
You might think that with all of the happy Christmas songs playing on the radio or at the malls that Christmas is already here. But Mark tells us that if we want to encounter the Messiah, it will require us to Mapquest directions to Bethlehem that will take us first into the wilderness.
We have already experienced Black Friday when retailers hope that in one day of sales, they would end up in the black for the entire year. Some of us went on the internet on “cyber Monday” when we shop online at our workstations because the search engines are more powerful than what we might have at home. Union Square with its lighted Christmas tree is kicking Christmas into high gear. We are bathed in a forest of lights, sales, parties, and Christmas cards. In this season of giving and receiving, John the Baptist is nowhere to be found.
If you went to Macy’s Christmas Shop, you can find little figurines of angels, Mary and Joseph, the shepherds and their sheep, the wise men in their different fancy clothes. All of these characters are for sale. They are friendly and marketable. But we don’t have a hairy fire and brimstone preacher, whose breath wreaks locust and honey. John the Baptist is usually not a part of our Christmas pageant.
Unlike what the stores sell that we like, the only thing John is selling is the good news of repentance. Repentance does not sell well in the days before Christmas at the local shopping mall. Well, for that matter, repentance doesn’t sell that well at the First Chinese Baptist Church either.
Directions to Jerusalem
Sometimes I would give directions to visitors of our fair city to Union Square. Go up the hill on Sacramento, turn left on Stockton Street, walk through the Stockton Tunnel and when you get to the end of the tunnel, Union Square is right there. You can’t miss it.
My guess is that Jerusalem was like Union Square. You can’t miss it. It’s the holy city—everybody would know where it is. Perhaps like Rome, all roads lead to Jerusalem. My guess is that in Jerusalem, you would find all of the things that people long for—all of the things and new products that anyone wants to buy.
But in this passage in Mark, John is not selling in Jerusalem. He is out in the wilderness away from the modern conveniences of life where he is not well-groomed and making a hard sell of repentance to us. No wonder Union Square doesn’t put John the Baptist on Christmas coffee mugs. Most people would prefer to let John’s cup pass by.
But John refuses to go away. From the wilderness, in his husky voice, he calls us to repent. He motions his finger our way waving us over to hear him. Perhaps John knows what we are like in this early December better than we know ourselves. Our lives aren’t as clean as we think we are. We aren’t as good as we would like others to believe. We may need to join John for a cold bath in the river Jordan, to wash away our pretensions and to remind ourselves that the cuddly baby Jesus came into the world to save sinners, sinners like us.
God’s difficult way to salvation won’t be discovered in the busyness of our daily lives—shopping for just the right gifts for all of the right people or throwing a holiday party that tops everyone else’s or decorating Christmas cookies. God’s salvation can’t be found in Union Square or Stonestown or at the Great Mall. God’s way is being prepared out in the wilderness, and God has Mapquest directions to us that we better follow. Amazingly, according to Mark, the people came. Along the highways and byways of the countryside and Jerusalem town, they came to hear the good news of God’s way.
Wilderness Travel
To get to Bethlehem, we first need to go through the wilderness. We all know that if we are going to survive in the wilderness, we would need to anticipate what conditions might exist and prepare for survival. Advent is a season in the Christian year in which we anticipate the coming of God’s anointed one to prepare our lives. We may need to change them if we must, for a new world is dawning. But it begins in the wilderness.
When we are in the wilderness, it requires some radical changes. We can’t take the treacherous wilderness for granted or we might put ourselves in danger. The normal, comfortable life we have in the city won’t help us to exist in the wilderness. John is calling us to come out of the cities of Jerusalem and San Francisco and Union Square and put ourselves in the wilderness so that you may turn your life around.
Repentance is living in a different way, a more honest way, a more hopeful way. When we are in the wilderness, like John, we are stripped from our glitter and colorful wrapping papers down to the bare bones, trimmed down, like John who only had sandals, a camel hair, and good news to tell.
God likes it this way. Leave the glitz and glamour to the retail stores. The Advent way of God is about basics, the essentials, our sin and the need for Christmas grace. As long as we resist leaving Union Square, we won’t be able to hear the message of repentance—it will only fall on deaf ears. But out in the wilderness, when so much of life is left behind, the message doesn’t have as many barriers to burrow through. Since we can’t haul all of our material possessions out into the wilderness, we are then only left with listening ears to hear John proclaim God’s good news. It’s not the songs and music that are coming off KOIT 96.5.
The wise men had to face the same problem when they traveled to see the Christ Child; they had to leave their old lives behind and take only what was important with them. When they encountered Mary’s boy in that crossroads called Bethlehem surrounded by the Judean wilderness, they went home changed, different, traveling by another path.
In an old basilica in Criseni, Romania, the doorway into the sanctuary is only about four and a half feet high. This means that you have to bow down in order to get in. Father Florin, the Romanian Orthodox priest explained that that was the point. The door was built intentionally low so that you would have to humble yourself before coming inside to commune with Christ. It is the only way you can enter to worship at Christmas. John told his listeners, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
Did you notice that the parament colors changed from green to purple last Sunday? We don’t have department store green and red, thinking that these are Christmas colors. Purple is used both during the 7-weeks of Lent as well as the 4-weeks of Advent to symbolize God’s invitation to us to repent from our sins and to take a different path in life. The reason why we invite you to consider becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ during Advent culminating with the service of Baptism and Church Membership is the recognition that our lives aren’t as clean as we think we are. We aren’t as good as we would like others to believe. Later this afternoon, you’ll have an opportunity to meet five of our young people who are proceeding with joining our church.
Directions to Bethlehem
If you want to prepare for Christmas this year, stay away from the shopping malls, get your nose out of the Christmas cards, leave all the stuff of mainstream life behind and set your sights on the wilderness, the wilderness of our broken world, the wilderness of broken dreams, the wilderness of your own soul that can only be filled by the Christ-child’s grace. After all, Jesus didn’t come to the fast-moving lanes of Jerusalem, at least not at first. He came to a broken-down out of the way sort of place; so far away that there were no maps, no street signs, only the light of a star to give direction in the dark night.
If we are going to find God this Advent season, we have to get away from the crowds, get away from our old lives, and go some place off in the wilderness where life and death is at stake. It requires being really honest with ourselves. Such a path calls for repentance, turning away from an old life, and embracing a new one.
There’s been quite a fury about whether the decorated evergreen in the public square is a Holiday Tree or a Christmas Tree. Just because we call a tree, a “Christmas Tree” doesn’t make either the tree a spiritual symbol or our preparation and anticipation of the Christ Child anymore honest. If the beautifully decorated Christmas Tree in Union Square only leads us to do more shopping then it is not the directions that we need to follow to get to Bethlehem. Going by the Christmas Tree is nothing like going through the wilderness of our broken lives and become honest about ourselves. In the wilderness, we can recognize the need for our repentance from our sins in order to be forgiven and be saved by the grace of the Christ-child.
If you were to Mapquest directions to Bethlehem, the search engine will take you on a well-paved, straight path to Bethlehem. It’ll get you there in the shortest distance. But if you truly want to meet the Christ Child this Christmas, don’t go by Mapquest. Go through the wilderness when you have to put aside all of your comforts, protective gear, survival skills and become fully open to God’s love, peace, joy, and the hope that when we confess our sins, God will give us Christmas grace.
Let us pray.
God of comfort, hope, and peace as December days grow shorter and the nights grow longer, come quickly to our aching souls. Prepare a new path in our tattered lives to go through the wilderness so that we may come to truly know you, O Lord as our Savior who brings us forgiveness. Turn us away from the mundane and the meaningless. Open our ears that we may hear your word, that with humble and repentant hearts we might look with joy to your advent among us. Amen.