Creekside Church Sermon of December 17, 2000 "The Fruits of Christmas" Luke 3:7-18	Rev. David Bibbee
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In front of the house stands a forlorn looking little girl. Her hands are in her coat pocket and in the balloon above her she says, "When your birthday's on Christmas, everyone is too busy with toys, gifts, and merrymaking to remember." And standing beside her is an equally forlorn Jesus who replies, "Tell me about it..."

The message of the cartoon was like a sock to the solar plexus. In a time when the main attractions of Christmas are, in order-Santa, the Grinch, Christmas commerce, Scrooge, It's a Wonderful Life, and then maybe a token remembrance of Jesus, perhaps the only approach to set things right is a startling one. It's time again to put sixth things first. But the fellow whose task it is to do this is not the most pleasant person you have ever met.

John the Baptist feels like an intruder on Christmas. You won't find him on a Christmas card. He won't be in the cast of the Christmas pageant. You wouldn't want him for Christmas dinner. He'd refuse your glazed ham and ask for locust with honey instead. Yet in the Bible readings for Advent, there he stands, blocking the road to Christmas. Before we get to Jesus we must go through John.

He must have struck a responsive chord with the people. Luke says multitudes came to him to be socked in the solar plexus and be baptized. "The one we've waited for is coming. It's time to crawl out of the viper pit and get washed up. You must better be presentable when he comes."

A prophet's voice hadn't been heard in Israel for hundreds of years. The prophets were eccentrics who pulled off the camouflage and exposed that which the people would have rather left concealed. They told the truth. The comedian Steven Wright says he was called to offer testimony in court. "Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?" he was asked. "I do." he replied. He then proceeded to tell the truth... "Judge, you're ugly." He said, "My attorney is gouging me." "That woman on the jury is a fox."

Telling the truth is fine as long as it's the truth we want to hear. "You shall know the truth," someone said, "and the truth will make you miserable." John the Baptist didn't gussy up the truth. He didn't seal it in a sugarcoated, easy to swallow capsule like preachers who don't want to offend their people. He was unequivocal. "If you want to be ready when he comes, repent!" I'm afraid that like other familiar religious words, we have lost touch with what repentance means. The Greek word is metanoia which means, "to turn around." It's like missing the correct expressway entrance and seeing a red sign with white letters saying, "Wrong way." Repentance means to have a change of direction... it is a changing of the mind.

Repentance is an action, not an attitude. It is not feeling miserable or even guilty. Feelings, as the old song goes, are nothing more than feelings. Repentance is not feeling sufficiently miserable for a specific period of time until it's okay to come out of the doghouse. Buechner says, "Repentance is coming to your senses. Repentance spends less time looking at the past and saying 'I'm sorry,' than to the future and saying, 'Wow!'" The repentance John the Baptist called for was an action... a desire to be different, a first step toward making Jesus our first love.

But, what does this mean? And how will we become the fruits of Christmas? Remember that those who came to hear John were good, religious people. They worshipped. They prayed. They tithed. They were fine church folks. Fine like the people sitting around you. But John wasn't going to flatter them for their goodness. Flattery wasn't in his rhetorical tool chest. What he said knocked them back several steps. "Don't go on and on about having Abraham for your father. God can turn a rock pile into the children of Abraham. When the messiah comes there will be no safety in religious heritage. Just because your great grandfather was a godly man doesn't make you one. Like Garrison Keillor put it, "Sleeping in the garage won't make you a car." One doesn't become a Christian by association. Christians are made by personal decision, one person at a time.

John warned of the time when the old order and sacred institutions would fail. A cover of a recent issue of Newsweek read, "Chaos: Will the war of the courts give us a new president or a constitutional crisis?" Sure things aren't so sure. We can't attach our hope to a president, or Supreme Court. There won't even be safety in the church, if the church is only looking for quick fixes so it can remain the same old self.

For John, the messiah wasn't a holy infant so tender and mild. He would be the messiah who would one day come and reveal the inadequacy of everything except himself. He came because he loves us, for sure. But he also came to change us. He came to make of us a people willing to stick our necks out and mirror on earth that which exists in heaven. We prepare for his coming best when we repent and make that daily decision to turn around.

When we experience pricks to the conscience, the world counsels us to "forget about it". But John's audience asked, "What are we going to do about it?" Here he became practical and gave a crash course in ethics. "Give your coat to the person who has none. Give your food to the hungry." He told IRS agents to collect no more than the tax code allowed. To soldiers he said, "Don't stick a sword in someone's ribs and ask for money." Hardly sounds theological. Sounds basic... straight forward, like something everyone is capable of doing.

Maybe John had some Christmas spirit after all. We can give a coat or two to the clothing drive. We can fix a food basket and toss in a turkey for a deserving family. We can drop some money in the Salvation Army kettle. But people are also cold in February. They will be hungry in June. Remember, our motivation is not to feel good. It is the result of a changed life. We become others oriented. Acts of caring don't need to be dramatic. Dramatic results come from simple gestures.

An enduring piece of Christmas literature was written by the Presbyterian minister, Henry VanDyke. It's called "Keeping Christmas." It centers on our "ongoing" concern for others inspired by the coming of Jesus into our lives. Listen to these excerpts:

Keeping Christmas is knowing that probably the only good reason for your existence is not what you are going to get out of life, but what you are going to give to life.

Are you willing to stoop down and consider the needs and desires of little children?

To remember the weakness and loneliness of people who are growing old.

To stop asking how much your friends love you, and ask yourself whether you love them enough.

To bear in mind the things that other people have to bear in their hearts.

To trim your lamp so it will give more light and less smoke and to carry it in front so your shadow will fall behind you.

Are you willing to believe that love is the strongest thing in the world-stronger than hate, stronger than evil, stronger than death-and that the blessed life which began in Bethlehem 1900 years ago is the image and brightness of eternal love. Then you can keep Christmas.

Along with the need to be changed people and caring people, John the Baptist linked the coming of Jesus with experience of fire. Luke tells us there was a great mood of expectancy among the multitudes. They wondered if John was the one they had waited for. "No way," John said. "I baptize you with water. He'll do it with the holy spirit and fire." It was not enough to make a person think twice. Water we can handle, but fire? Seems dangerous.

Each Christmas I think of the story Annie Dillard tells about herself. She was scared to death of Santa Claus. Santa showed up at the door one Christmas eve when she was little, and she bolted upstairs. Despite the family's pleading, she wouldn't come down. Eventually she learned that Santa was really a rigged-up Miss White from across the street. She was old and lived alone, and she adored Annie. She loved plying her with cookies and loved to teach her about the things of the world.

The summer after the Santa incident, Annie was with Miss White in her back yard. Miss White was showing Annie a magnifying glass. She lifted her hand, held it still and focused a spot of sunshine on her palm. The light wobbled and contracted to a point. It burned. Annie ripped her hand away and ran home crying. Miss White tried to call her back to explain and say she was sorry. Looking back, Annie Dillard writes:

"I wonder: If I meet God, will he take and hold my hand in his, and focus his eye on my palm, and kindle that spot and let me burn?

But no, I misunderstood everything. Miss White, God, I'm sorry I ran from you. I am still running from that knowledge, that eye, that love from which there is no refuge. For you meant only love, and I felt only fear and pain. So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid."

"Never play with fire!" we were told as children. But no one said we couldn't pray for it. Thomas Merton also used the imagery of a magnifying glass saying, "...as it concentrates the rays of the sun into a little burning knot of heat that can set a fire, so the mystery of Christ magnifies the rays of God's light and fire to a point that sets a fire in the spirit of man."

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