Today I preach for my Telling the Story course. Below is my manuscript. Let me know where I've messed up before 1pm EST! Thanks.
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We live in a time and culture infatuated with baptism imagery. Our films are filled with examples of this. In the Matrix, Neo chooses to be reborn into the true reality and is brought into the new community of others who share this reality. City of Angels ends with Nicholas Cage’s character in water that symbolizes baptism. In the latest film version of Titanic, Rose spends the night in water and is reborn as a new person the next day. In Toy Story, Woody is marked with the name of a boy on the bottom of his boot. This is his claim of belonging. In Shawshank Redemption, Andy Dufresne crawls through the sewer system to freedom and emerges anew.
These characters are changed after their experiences. Forces outside of themselves acted on them creating a change. Our experience in baptism is similar. We are marked as a child of God, given promises and have calls placed on our lives. Our baptism is not simply the day that we went to the font. After baptism, the real work begins. We are called to daily remembrance of that which was begun at our baptism. We are called to remember Christ came and still comes to us.
Today, our text is calling us to prepare the way for the coming of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Images from John the Baptist fill our reading. Today we hear of a man in the wilderness crying out.
To get this scene please create a film in your mind’s eye. You’re in Judea about 2000 years ago walking on hot, dirty, dusty road with filthy leather sandals on your feet. You and your family make a walking trip to the Jordan River to see a man wearing camel’s hair, a leather belt and who is rumored to eat locusts and wild honey to sustain him. When you arrive, crowds surround you and you head to the water to this man who rants about another man coming. He is calling out “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” He talks of a baptism of repentance a baptism of literally turning around. Furthermore, he tells of a man who is going to baptize you not only with water, but with something called the Holy Spirit.
Today we know about the baptism of Jesus. This raised questions about the different baptism offered by John. John baptizes with what he has, water and the word. According to Acts 19, he baptizes in the name of Jesus, Jesus, the one who is coming.
John proclaims that Jesus will baptize with the Holy Spirit. This is all well and good for those listening and being baptized by John, but what about us. We’ve been baptized with water and the word. We know about Jesus.
We are left asking the favorite question of teens everywhere. So what?
What is this advent thing all about? Most say that advent is about preparation. The problem comes when we think about preparation as being for Jesus who has already come. We are not called upon to act as though we’re preparing in the same way John’s crowd was. Christ has come. But a preparation of sorts is necessary. This is not the preparation where we get our children’s Christmas pageant and go caroling at the local nursing home. That’s a different kind of preparation with a different motivation.
John is proclaiming that one who is greater than he is coming. That one, Jesus comes to us today. He has come through the incarnation. He will come through the second coming. And He comes right now into our hearts. John says prepare the way of the Lord. We get prepared through a change in our heart.
This change is not something that we can do. We can’t. We can’t prepare the way of Christ. Preparation of the heart is the work of God. This is accomplished through hearing the proclamation of the Gospel. This makes the path straight in our heart. It is Christ coming to us as the word of God.
With all this preaching and baptizing John would have made the perfect Lutheran pastor. His ministry was one of word and sacrament. John proclaimed the word of God and baptized. He baptized with water and the word just as we do now and have for thousands of years.
Baptism is baptism because of the water and word of God that comes down. In fact, it isn’t water by itself that does such wonderful things, but the word of God with water. Without the word of God, water is used only to clean the literal dirt off. The kind of dirt that gets on your leather sandals and feet when you walk on hot, dirty, dusty roads.
In this sense, baptism is a good metaphor for the traditional Lutheran view of advent because advent is all about God coming to us in Christ. John got this. John preached this. His preaching was telling of the one who is coming.
When John was preaching the coming of Christ there were many other prophets proclaiming the coming of various messiahs. John was different. He wasn’t one of the false prophets. He was the one who got it right. He proclaimed Christ and Christ came.
Despite his clothing of camel’s hair and leather belt - despite his diet of locust and wild honey - John spoke the Gospel. He was the one God chose to declare the coming Christ. Christ came through the incarnation. Christ will come through the second coming. And Christ comes right now into our hearts. Christ comes now! Amen.
