Prepare

My sermon from 12/16. Back in The Bridge, therefore, video and images, galore.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

We are half-way through Advent. Today is the third Sunday of Advent. I don’t know how familiar you are with Advent. I grew up in the Methodist Church, but never heard of Advent until I was an adult. Advent consists of the four Sundays leading up to Christmas. The word advent means arrival. The season of Advent is a time of preparation and expectation as we await the arrival. The arrival of the Christ child. But Advent is more than just looking back and celebrating an event that took place two millennia ago. It is also a time of preparation for the return of Christ. And it is a time of expectation for the Holy Spirit, the presence of Christ among us now. We prepare for and we expect Emmanuel – God with us. Not just God who was with us as Jesus in the flesh. Not just God who will be with us when Jesus returns. God with us here and now.

This week and next week we’re going to look at Advent and what it means for us. It’s more than shopping and decorating and eating too much. Advent is a season of preparation and expectation. This week we prepare. Next week, we expect.

I want to pause for just a minute. I planned this series a few weeks ago. I had an outline of this sermon earlier this week, and I was in the process of fleshing some things out and working on a draft of the sermon on Friday when I started hearing news of the shooting in Newtown, CT. I followed the story on a couple of different websites as I continued to write. I watched the story develop and watched the tragedy grow, and I stopped writing. I sat as I’m sure many of you did and I prayed for, well I didn’t even know exactly what to pray for at that point, but I prayed. For peace, for comfort. For the grieving, for the people the victims, for the survivors. And I started to rethink this sermon. I started to think about it in terms of how to respond to such a senseless, confusing, horrific event. I know it is thousands of miles away. And very few, if any, of us were directly affected. But I also thought about the questions that were swirling through your minds. Through my mind.

Why? Why would something like this happen? How? How do we explain such evil? Especially in light of a God we say cares for us. Where was God in Newtown, CT on Friday? What now? Those are some big and important questions. 
Events like this leave us scared and angry and looking for someone to blame. Friday, I was all of those things. And working on a sermon about Advent. About preparing for Emmanuel.  

So, on Friday afternoon, I thought and I prayed about this sermon. Do I scrap it? Do I alter it? I’ll tell you, the bulk of this sermon is what was already written. Because as I thought and prayed about all of these questions, I realized that this season of Advent is an answer to many of those questions.

This morning we’re going to read about John the Baptist, or John the Baptizer if you prefer. John came, we are told, and as we’ll read today, to prepare the way for the coming Christ.

Luke 3:7-18

Common English Bible (CEB)

⁷ Then John said to the crowds who came to be baptized by him, “You children of snakes! Who warned you to escape from the angry judgment that is coming soon? ⁸ Produce fruit that shows you have changed your hearts and lives. And don’t even think about saying to yourselves, Abraham is our father. I tell you that God is able to raise up Abraham’s children from these stones. ⁹ The ax is already at the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit will be chopped down and tossed into the fire.”

¹⁰ The crowds asked him, “What then should we do?”

¹¹ He answered, “Whoever has two shirts must share with the one who has none, and whoever has food must do the same.”

¹² Even tax collectors came to be baptized. They said to him, “Teacher, what should we do?”

¹³ He replied, “Collect no more than you are authorized to collect.”

¹⁴ Soldiers asked, “What about us? What should we do?”

He answered, “Don’t cheat or harass anyone, and be satisfied with your pay.”

¹⁵ The people were filled with expectation, and everyone wondered whether John might be the Christ.¹⁶ John replied to them all, “I baptize you with water, but the one who is more powerful than me is coming. I’m not worthy to loosen the strap of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. ¹⁷ The shovel he uses to sift the wheat from the husks is in his hands. He will clean out his threshing area and bring the wheat into his barn. But he will burn the husks with a fire that can’t be put out.” ¹⁸ With many other words John appealed to them, proclaiming good news to the people.

Does anyone know what this Friday is? December 21^st. Anyone know what’s significant about December 21^st? Yeah, it’s the date that some people have marked as the end of the world. If you haven’t heard anything about it, just turn on Discovery or the History Channel or National Geographic channel and you’ll find out more than you’d ever want to know about speculation about the end of the world. As you can see from our scripture this morning, it’s nothing new. Speculation about the end of the world has been going on probably as long there has been a world.

And as long as there has been speculation about the end of the world, there have been those wondering what they should do to prepare. The crowd in our scripture asks John, “What do we do?”

And it’s still going on. Do any of you watch the TV show “Doomsday Preppers”? I’ve watched a little bit of it. This is a TV show about people who are preparing for…doomsday. Here’s a preview of the second season that premiered recently.  

Well, you can see from the video that these people are preparing for the end of society as we know it. They are preparing for nuclear war or an EMP that will destroy all of our electronics or terrorist attacks or natural disasters. Each episode follows an individual or a family and profiles what they are doing to prepare and then rates their preparations. Those preparations include collecting and storing food and water, building secure bunkers, collecting arsenals of weapons.  

The website for the show even has a survey you can take to determine your Prepper Score.  In this survey you enter how much food (image 2) you have stored and if you have renewable food sources. How much water do you have?  Do you live close to a water source and have a means of purifying it? What sort of area do you live in? The fewer people the more secure you are. Then it wants to know what kind of shelter you have. Do you have a “Bug Out” location? Which is a safe secure place that you can flee to following disaster. And you can see here it needs to be “Self-sufficient and easily defended”. What about security? Do you have any specialized training? This asks do you have experience defending and securing fortified areas? And then, of course, do you have any weapons? This says you should inventory your arsenal of weapons. Total all of that up and it’ll tell you how long you can survive in a doomsday scenario. You can see that I will not do well.

I think it’s interesting that about 1/3 of this survey asked about necessities like food, water, and shelter. The other 2/3 was about defending yourself and your stuff. In the little bit of this show I have watched I heard these preppers talk about weapons and military training and self-defense training and more weapons. Why do you think that is the case?

I have a one word answer. Fear! It’s as simple as that. Fear is driving these preparations. Fear of some horrible event ending society as we know it and fear of what people will do in response. Because, honestly, we live in a scary world. We live in a world of darkness and fear. I think we can say that this week with some certainty. We live in a world that sometimes seems hopeless.

In the scripture I read earlier, John was dealing with some of this same fear. But he wasn’t preaching fear. He told the crowds that the end was coming. He described some scary scenarios – gave some scary imagery. Cutting down the trees that don’t produce fruit. Scooping up the grain and the chaff and burning the chaff.

I think the last line of this passage is the most interesting and has the most to say to us about the Advent season. This season of preparation.

After all of this talk of the end time. Angry judgment and Chopping down those who are not fruitful and tossing them into the flames. Luke tells us that John continued to “Proclaim the good news to people.” The good news.

I don’t think the doomsday preppers would agree that what John describes is good news. Well, some of them might, they seem a little too anxious. But he’s describing exactly what they are preparing for, a doomsday scenario. Except for John, it’s not Doomsday. For John it’s the gospel; the good news! And it is good news for us as well.

This world we live in is a world of darkness, but there is light. It’s a world that seems hopeless, but there is hope. This season of Advent is about just that. A light breaking through the darkness. Hope in the midst of hopelessness. A light of joy shining through the darkness of fear. John chapter 1 verse 5 says, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light.”

So we prepare for Emmanuel. But we don’t prepare out of fear. We prepare because of Christ our joy! This pink candle we lit today is there as a symbol of Joy. Christ our joy. There are a lot of people who would scoff at that. Joy? Now? How can you talk about joy when our nation is mourning the senseless murder of 20 children and six adults? Some of you may be asking that question as I speak. I asked the question myself. How can we even think about joy? It’s simple, because the darkness cannot, will not extinguish the light.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only son and those who believe in him don’t fear death, because they know and share eternal life! Those who believe in him don’t fear the darkness of evil and sin and death, because they know and share the eternal light. The light that will not be extinguished.

Not only will the darkness not extinguish the light, but the light will push back the darkness. The light will overcome the darkness. Not simply the darkness of the world, but the darkness in each and every one of us. Because we all wrestle daily with whether to walk in the dark or in the light. Christ, our joy, is God’s response – God’s answer – to the darkness. And so we prepare our hearts by walking in the light. We prepare through prayer, through the scriptures, by letting others help us and walk with us. We prepare to face the darkness within and without by exposing ourselves to the love and power available to us through God’s grace.

O come, Emmanuel!
©2012 - Scott Coats