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Now that we are well into the month of December, you are surely familiar with that standard query posed as a virtual greeting among friends lately, "Are you ready for Christmas?"
Well, are you? Are you prepared, or do you still have miles to go before you settle down in your kerchief for a long winter's nap? Because when we ask if somebody is ready for Christmas, what we usually mean is, have they finished the shopping, wrapping, Christmas-card-writing-and-standing-in-line-for stamps-and-then-mailing, shopping, cooking, baking, shopping, decorating, crafting, shopping, dieting and fixing that precedes Christmas. How about the shopping?
Are you done making all your trips to the mall, taking your life in your hands as a pedestrian in the parking lot? A preacher friend of mine says there are two kinds of pedestrians at the mall during December: the quick, and the dead. Another of my friends enjoys going with his father to the mall at about 7:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve. They buy one another fancy coffees and sit on a bench in the middle of the action, voyeurs on the scene of commercial frenzy at materialism's ground zero. These two guys, whose wives have done their gift-buying for them, sit fascinated at the desperation which has been wrought by capitalism on the celebration of our savior's birth night. And they're Christians, too.
Do you only think you are ready for Christmas because you have been systematically hypnotized by the constant sound of "Christmas" music, a way the proprietors of every venue have of hyping whatever they are selling to you? From before Halloween to Boxing Day, there is no escape. If you're lucky it's mostly Frank, Perry, Bing, Barbra and Rosemary, and if you're not, it's… the chipmunks. But it's always about hype.
Along with those sleigh bells and car horns, hype fills the air. You and your children hear a stream of messages proclaiming good news of great joy, which shall be to all people who make it to the 50%-off sale downtown. Be not afraid: abundant life may be found in the Toy of the Year, the must-have item for the season! And this shall be a sign unto you: your kids are not going to be "cool" or "in" or acceptable to their friends or satisfied unless Santa produces this particular thing. So if you know what's good for you, you'd better get back down to that mall and get thoroughly prepared or Christmas may never actually come at all. You've only got eleven shopping days left! Why are you still sitting there?
This is the sort of thinking that John the Baptist was confronting in the scene presented to us by Luke. These people wanted to be baptized, and they awaited eagerly his answer to their question, "will you please tell us more about the salvation of this Lord who you say is coming?" John's expectation was that the Lord was coming right then. His answer gave his listeners the crestfallen feeling that it was 7:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve at the mall, and their shopping baskets were all still empty. John was a good preacher, and he got them whipped up into a midnight-madness-sale excitement: they were all ears. All of them--mostly Jewish, some of them Pharisees and Sadducees, but also publicans and tax collectors who were hated by Jews and Gentiles, soldiers, civilians, the poor, the wealthy, the businessmen, and their wives and children too--were riveted by John, and their minds were on nothing else except this thing that was coming.
So when he called them snakes in the grass, it was a surprise. "You brood of vipers!" he hissed at them, and being from the desert, John knew a thing or two about snakes. "You're not anywhere near ready for the one who comes! It is judgment that's coming! If you think you're prepared to receive it easily, you have gone about your preparation entirely the wrong way. You think because you have a pedigree as Abraham's descendants you are safe. But Children of Abraham are a dime a dozen. What the Lord is going to ask you when he arrives isn't 'Who's your granddaddy,' but 'What have you done for me lately?'"
These words of John's are packed with eschatological meaning. We all know the satanic significance of the image of serpents and snakes, and so did John's Jewish listeners. Luke includes here a great pun in the Aramaic language of John, when he has John say that God can make sons of Abraham, ba-nayya, out of ordinary stones, ab-nayya (The Jerome Biblical Commentary, 44:48, p.127.) So being in that "in" group, that's no biggie to the One arriving.
This message bears repeating to those of us who spend a lot of time, energy and money attempting to belong to the "in" group. We're particularly good at this during the Christmas season, when the Beautiful House Competition, the Gourmet Party Food Semi-finals, the Expensive Gift Contest and the My-Outfit-is-Size-Two Game tempt us to use the festivity of a holy day as a weapon with which to beat one another over the head and prove we are more "in" than they are. This is not the kind of Advent preparation John says will truly get us ready.
We moderns can use this reminder of John's explanation to his congregants, whose cultural understanding of their own lives had eclipsed their theological understanding of them. So he spoke directly to as many of them as questioned him personally: what do we need to do to get ready for this advent?
From the soldiers in that day's group of listeners--who weren't members of the Roman army but were probably actually the tax collectors' bodyguards, those who wielded great power--John does not require any big theological lessons. Instead, he asks them not to be violent or to extort more money than they were due, or to demand raises in that threatening way that only the muscle-bound heavyweights can. This is a down-to-earth advent preparation: don't use fear and threats to get what you want.
From the tax collectors and publicans--who had purchased from Rome the right to collect taxes from citizens and were allowed to collect not only the amount of the actual tax owed but any extra they could extort--John requires that they stop cheating people out of more than the amount due by playing math games with their victims. There are some big bank CEOs, people who wield great power over our money now, who could hear this again: levy a fair charge instead of billing as much as you can get. Re-finance some troubled mortgages and keep some of your customers in their houses. Apply this new math to your bonus, too, while you are at it.
From the general populace listening to his sermon, the Baptist's words are a broader challenge for everyday advent living: enough is enough. When you have plenty, not only should you stop accumulating more, you should give away the extra you have. This is the real clincher for all of us listening to John's sermon on the radio as we make our way home from our latest mall excursion: all this getting ready for Christmas is the opposite of real advent preparation.
Turn the car around and take everything back while you've still got those receipts! Better yet, drive not into your own garage with all that loot, but over to the children's shelter or the Total Ministries gift collection and dump your load there. Then, says John the Baptist, you will be ready for the one who comes.
John was a hard man, and these are hard words. But the people in his audience are said by Luke to have been on tiptoes of expectation as they listened to John preach. They heard something holy in his message, and they wondered if he himself were the Messiah. He needed to set them straight.
"I'm telling you to get ready for the advent of the Messiah, and I am baptizing you with water, but the one who is coming will use the Holy Spirit and fire on you. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, separating the wheat from the chaff." The process of winnowing and preparing grain involves wind and fire. The farmer allows the wind to blow through the crushed grain material he has shoveled up, to separate the heavier grain from the lighter chaff. He sweeps up and burns that chaff, a great metaphor for John to use so that his listeners fully understood. There will be two groups of us: the wheat, and the chaff; the quick, and the dead; the ones who come to life by preparing in advent, and the ones who get burned.
Those of us who live in the city and not the farm might imagine our own urban metaphor: some will awaken on Christmas Day with full stockings, and some will awaken instead with full hearts. The truth is, these are not absolutely disparate groups, but it's difficult to fill both, and it's the full heart that counts in John's advent economy. Luke has shown John as an excellent preacher.
Hey, today is the advent of Joy! You there, under the pile of paper, tape and unwrapped gifts! You with the credit card and gift catalogs in your hot little hand! You there, standing in line to have your kid indoctrinated by the mall Santa! Hey, you, over by the office buffet table where you have single-mouthedly knocked back the entire shrimp display! This is no way to get ready for Christmas!
A good way to get ready for advent in the manner of John is to follow a simple plan created by two mothers who hoped for more Holy in the Holidays. How many ways can you follow this plan right now?
The Christmas Pledge
Believing in the true spirit of Christmas, I commit myself to
Remember those people who truly need my gifts
Express my love in more direct ways than gifts
Examine my holiday activities in the light of my deepest values
Be a peacemaker within my circle of family and friends
Rededicate myself to my spiritual growth.
--Jo Robinson and Jean Staeheli, Unplug the Christmas Machine: A Complete Guide to Putting Love & Joy Back into the Season (New York: Quill/William Morrow, 1982, Revised Edition 1991.)
You don't have to hurry! But you do have to attend to this advent preparation. There are only eleven worshipping days left until Christmas. Only eleven. It's not too late to follow the instructions of John, who knew that it is Christ Jesus, and not Santa, whose coming is most exciting. It was Christ Jesus who came to his cousin and friend that advent season, and it is Christ who is coming now. Christ is always coming to those who expect him. Are you ready for some of that?
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