Text of Sunday Sermon - Advent Imagination

Matthew 3:1-12

Advent Imagination

James Sledge                                                               December 5, 2010 – Advent 2

I saw this post on Facebook the other day from a pastor colleague.  It read: “crowdsourcing a hymn for Sunday: is singing ‘Hark, the Herald Angels Sing’ sacrilege for Advent even when its themes of peace fit very well into the texts and sermon?”  Within minutes it had sparked a number of comments varying from “Don’t do it,” to “Go for it.”  Lots of pastors and churchgoers, it seems, have a somewhat difficult relationship with Advent.

Centuries ago, when Christmas was not all that big a deal, Advent was developed as a kind of miniature Lent.  But as Christmas has grown into a bigger and bigger cultural event, Advent has been co-opted into a longer and longer Christmas season

And this means that a typical question when pastors and church musicians talk about Advent and Christmas is, “If you don’t want to get your congregation mad, how far into Advent can you go without singing Christmas carols?”  And this tension is only aggravated by the Scripture readings assigned for Advent.  Until the fourth Sunday, there is no mention at all of Mary or Joseph or a virgin birth, absolutely nothing that looks like Christmas.

If you were not a churchgoer and popped in for today, you would likely be somewhat stunned to hear nothing said about mangers or shepherds or baby Jesus, to hear instead John the Baptist shouting, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

There’s simply no turning John into anything cute or adorable for Christmas.  No one puts John on Christmas cards or wrapping paper.  No Christmas carols demand that we “Repent.”  Yet all four gospel writers feel the need to put John at the beginning of the story they tell.  And every single Advent, John pops up once more, a jarring counter-image to sleigh bells, twinkling lights, and a sweet little eight pound, six ounce baby Jesus in the manger. 

To be honest, I’m not entirely sure why the people of John’s day went out to see him.  I think I would have avoided someone like John, a crazy looking guy yelling for me to repent.  I suppose you have to be disillusioned with life and the world to turn to someone like John.  People who are happy and content don’t go out to hear crazy prophets in the desert.  And they sure don’t get baptized and change the way they live so that they’ll be ready for the new day that is coming, unless they really, desperately, want and need a new day.  You have to be a little desperate to hope that God is going to intervene, that God’s rule is going to come and straighten out a broken and troubled world.

Maybe that’s why John singles out the Pharisees and Sadducees.  They were the in-crowd, religious folk, the pastors and elders and bishops of their day.  They may have been curious, even intrigued by this prophet everyone was going to see, but they weren’t ready to change, to live differently in expectation of something new.

I’m not sure I’m ready to change, to live differently in expectation of a new day.  I’m a lot like those Pharisees and Sadducees.  John is mostly a curiosity to me.  He’s an Advent oddball, an interruption in the Christmas preparations that are about the only getting ready I’m doing.  And John doesn’t call people to get ready for Christmas of for Jesus.  He calls them to get ready for God’s new day, a day when God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.  And Jesus says the very same thing when he shows up.  Get ready, turn and change the way you live, for God’s kingdom is drawing near.

But we don’t see it.  We can’t really picture a day when “the wolf shall live with the lamb…” when “the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”  We can’t imagine such a thing and so we’ll celebrate and enjoy another Christmas, then get back to life as usual.

But Isaiah and John and Jesus can imagine such a thing.  They can picture a day when God transforms human history, when God’s will becomes the way of everyone on earth.  They can see it, and so they shout, “Get ready.  Repent, for the kingdom has come near.” 

I have come to think that the peculiar curse of modernity and the scientific age is the loss of imagination.  We have become so accustomed to thinking in terms of cause and effect that we cannot see possibilities not supported by “the facts.”  We look around at the world and we “know” that nothing can bring peace, nothing can end terrorism, nothing can make Israel and Palestine, the US and Iran, North and South Korea, get along and trust one another.  It just isn’t possible.  We can’t even imagine it.

But prophets can.  Contrary to what many think, prophets generally do not predict the future.  Rather they are people whose intimate relationship with God grants them vivid imaginations.  They see things that others can’t see, and they find hope that others can’t find.

Which makes me wonder if John Lennon was a prophet.  Although I know many pastors who abhor it, one of my favorite songs is Lennon’s “Imagine.”  I suppose some dislike the song because it begins, “Imagine there’s no heaven.  It’s easy if you try.  No hell below us; above us only sky.”  I can see why that bothers people, but in fact it is fairly easy to imagine no heaven.  People have such faith crises all the time.  People of deep faith at times find themselves struggling to believe in a good and just God who will redeem the world. 

But other things are much harder to imagine.  “Imagine no possessions. I wonder if you can.  No need for greed or hunger.  A brotherhood of man.  Imagine all the people sharing all the world.”

I make no claims that John Lennon was a believer much less a Christian prophet.  But the vision his imagination conjures up is remarkably similar to the day Jesus envisions.  It is remarkably like the vision of a new day that compels John to shout, “Repent, for the kingdom of God has come near.”

As we move through Advent, most of us are focused on Christmas, on its joy and its traditions, on its warmth and its nostalgia, on the momentary respite its celebration provides from the harsh realities of the world.  But John the Baptist interrupts our Christmas preparations.  He shows up at the Christmas party like an unwanted guest who throws cold water on our Christmas fun. 

But John is no spoil-sport.  He does not come to dampen the celebration, but to help us see something more.  John interrupts our Advent of waiting for Christmas to prod our imaginations, to get them working again, to call us to hope in God’s new day, a day that cannot be perceived through facts or evidence of how things are, that can only be glimpsed by faithful imagination.

Come, Lord Jesus!  Help us see as you see, dream as you dream, imagine as you imagine, that we may live as you lived.

Come, Lord Jesus.