Advent 2C

Two years ago,

when I moved here,

I experienced a baptism by fire.

For the first time ever,

I hosted my family in MY home

for Christmas.

I don't know how you felt about it, but hosting Christmas in my house the first time for my family was a big deal,

Which made me feel very pressured going into the Christmas season.

I needed to make sure I had multiple rooms all done up properly.

I needed to find all the dust in the house and get rid of it. 

I had the nightmare of my mother coming to my house with the white gloves and running her finger along the mantel and making a face about my house cleaning skills...

I needed to stock all the foods. 

I have two twenty something year old brothers. 

We are talking ALL the food.

I needed to make sure I took care of our family traditions of having a pickle ornament for the tree

and the particular Christmas morning CD we always listen to with the one wrong note in the seventh piece.

I had to buy the right gingerbread cake mold for the gingerbread cake village,

And so on and so forth.

And on top of all that, I had to make sure everything at the church was ready for Christmas too!

I had so much to prepare!

I felt like I had to move heaven and earth to make sure everything was right.

Moving heaven and earth in preparation for God 

is exactly what Isaiah was talking about.

"Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low."

The whole earth moves in preparation for God's coming.

Nothing like that has ever happened!

While John the Baptist was intent on personal preparation for God,

being reborn in the waters of baptism, being washed in forgiveness,

and starting a new life in relationship with God.

The Word of God came to John, son of Zechariah,

in the fifteenth year of Emperor Tiberius' reign,

when John was already out in the wilderness. 

He hadn't yet focused on baptism or the Jordan River when the Word first came to him,

but he already knew something was going to happen,

he was out in the wilderness. 

Unlike Jesus, who is driven out into the wilderness after baptism,

John is waiting in the wilderness for the Word.

When the Word did come to him, he went to the Jordan River,

and he walked around the region of the Jordan. 

The Jordan River is 156 miles long. 

There is an upper stretch of the river, above the Sea of Galilee, 

and a lower region, between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea.

While we don't know where exactly John the Baptist was wondering around, 

or where he was typically baptizing,

because the gospels say that people from Jerusalem were going out to see John,

the understood area of the Jordan River is in the lower section, along the west bank of the river,

situated in what is now the West Bank.

The author of the gospel of Luke, draws the connection between the scripture passage from Isaiah and what John was doing.

John was proclaiming in the wilderness, he was telling people to prepare themselves.

While Isaiah called the land to prepare,

John called all the people to prepare,

to prepare their hearts, minds, souls, and bodies,

for the arrival of the Messiah,

the Holy Anointed One of God.

There are many ways to prepare your heart and mind and soul and body

for God's arrival. 

If you were here last week, you'll remember I talked about having a Rule of Life

a practice designed to help prepare you for intimacy with God.

The first part of the Journeying the Way of Love Rule of Life is Turn. 

Turning means going back to God.

Turning means repenting

apologizing

both to God and to others

Turning

is what John the Baptist was trying to get people to do

He was in the wilderness baptizing with the baptism of repentance

for the forgiveness of sins.

Part of preparing the way of the Lord means straightening out what was once crooked

and we all know that when relationships go crooked they have a tendency to stay crooked unless we put a lot of work into making them straight again.

John has gone down in history for this act,

baptizing people who have repented.

It was a very physical act.

Most people when they visit the Holy Land

go down to the Jordan River and renew their baptismal vows, in some shape or another

However, the baptism that John was giving out was a different kind of baptism then the baptism we do today.

His was solely focused on repentance and forgiveness.

It was a visible sign of forgiveness for those who repented.

They came up out of the water, washed.

Clean. Renewed. Forgiven.

Nowadays we only baptize once.

In the water of baptism, you are fully forgiven and become a part of God's kingdom.

However, we need the reminder of forgiveness much more than once.

We need it over and over and over again in our lives.

Almost every week in church, we are reminded of the forgiveness 

God has given to us.

We say together the Confession of Sins and we hear the Absolution,

because as the people of God we have been forgiven.

We too have been washed. Clean. Renewed. Forgiven.

Yet for all those reminders,

Forgiveness is not easy.

It means letting go to the idea that the people who hurt you owe you something

owe you an apology or their own pain.

It is a hard thing to let go of.

Sometimes we think we have forgiven others, but then

something happens and we realize we still want them to apologize to us

we still want to cause them pain like we were caused.

I struggle with forgiveness, especially when it comes to personal boundaries.

Yet Jesus is very clear on the subject of forgiveness

Jesus gives the injunction to forgive 77 times a day if need be. 

And sometimes it is that many times a day.

Some people grate on us or drive us nuts

when we continue to have those conversations with them in our heads, 

we haven't forgiven them.

John the Baptist, is also clear about repentance and forgiveness.

The people who were baptized by John were people

who had asked forgiveness from God.

They were people who had listened to John and 

wanted to prepare themselves for the coming of the Messiah.

We too need to prepare ourselves for the coming of Christ with repentance and forgiveness.

You need to forgive me for my faults.

I need to forgive you for your faults.

We need to forgive each other for our faults

and we all need to forgive those outside of this community,

our wider communities.

All the hurt and hate

all the pain and suffering

all the annoyance and anger and frustration

we cause and we are caused

it is all washed away by Jesus in God.

As you prepare your house this season,

take a moment to prepare your heart.

As you prepare your baking this season,

take a moment to prepare your mind.

As you prepare your gifts this season,

take a moment to prepare your soul.

As you prepare your tree this season,

take a moment to prepare your body.

Repent! 

And rest in God's gracious forgiveness.

Amen.