"YOU HAVE TO START SOMEPLACE"

If you ask a travel agent how to get to Bethlehem you'll be booked on an El Al airlines flight to Tel Aviv, ride on an air conditioned coach up thru the hills, probably pass thru Jerusalem, and then into the tourist trap called Bethlehem.

Ask anyone in the New Testament how you get to the little town of Bethlehem and they'll say, "Go out to the desert, keep going till you get to the River Jordan. You can't miss it. You'll find a man out there, standing knee deep in the water, baptizing people. That's John the Baptizer. You ask him. If you want to go to Bethlehem, you've got to start there. There is no other way to get there."

They all say the same thing, all four gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They all say that if you want to go to Bethlehem, you've got to start with John the Baptizer.

That's the way Mark begins his gospel. Of course, Mark doesn't say anything about Bethlehem. In fact, Mark doesn't have a birth story; doesn't even mention the birth of Jesus. But he still starts with John. At the beginning of the Gospel - the Good News - of Jesus Christ according to Mark, there is John the Baptizer.

You've got to start somewhere, right? All the Gospels, say that you've got to start with John the Baptizer if you are ever going to get to Bethlehem. If you don't start there, you'll never understand what Bethlehem is all about. You may visit Bethlehem and even see the place where it is thought the baby was born in a manger, but you will never really experience Bethlehem until you ask for directions from John the Baptizer.

The Gospel of John - which isn't named for John the Baptist - begins with these beautiful words, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God." John uses wonderful, lofty, beautiful language, the most poetic and literary Greek in the New Testament. John is very very Greek, with this "logos." It is the Greek term that we translate as "word," but is really the "principle of creation," the power of God that created all things. In the beginning was the logos - the Word - God's creative power, bringing something ordered where there was nothing but chaos.

The Gospel of John records Jesus delivering long lectures, as if he were a Greek philosopher. The Gospel of John is sophisticated in its style, so very Greek. And yet John, like all the others, begins with John the Baptist, the old Jewish prophet, the man who ate locusts and wild honey, dressed in animal skins. Five verses into this sophisticated gospel there he is: "There was a man sent from God whose name was John." You can't get away from him. You have to start your journey to Bethlehem with John the Baptist.

It looks like Matthew might be the exception. Matthew begins with the story of the birth of Jesus. Matthew waits until the third chapter to introduce John the Baptist. Maybe he got carried away telling the wonderful stories about Joseph and his dreams and the visit of the wise men, because there is no mention of John in those first two chapters.

It appears in Matthew that you can make it to Bethlehem and back without running into him. But not quite. Out of nowhere he appears at the start of the third chapter. As you leave the stable of Bethlehem, John is waiting, leaning there against the fence, greeting you as you come out of the door. He's a little late, but he made it. The third chapter begins, "In those days came John the Baptizer preaching, "Repent!"

He's always there. In all of the gospels. In all of the Bible movies. He's right there at the beginning. Luke presents the most familiar and most popular of all of the Christmas stories. But get this: Luke begins his gospel, not with the story of the birth of Jesus, but with a fully developed story of the birth of John the Baptist.

What's more, Luke says that Elizabeth, who is John's mother, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, were cousins. He says they got together when they were both pregnant, sang together (maybe in a Klezmer band. I don't know). Talked about carrying a child. They shared stories, talked about what all of this meant.

I just want to point out to you: If instead of relying on the shopping malls and the television specials to tell you what Christmas is about, you turn to the Bible, you are going to run into John the Baptist. John is there in every story, out on the desert, standing in the River Jordan, telling us how to get to Bethlehem ... from here.

Isn't that why you're here? Isn't that really why you're here this morning? Don't you want to go to Bethlehem? Don't you want to know this man Jesus who was born in a stable and laid in a manger and died on a cross? I do. Don't you? Now I don't know about you, but I don't want to go out there to the desert, to ask directions from John. Because he says only one thing, like a broken record. What kind of a preacher is it who has only one sermon? No wonder he's out there in the desert. The bishop probably sent him out there.

He destroyed every church he was appointed to. You know what his one sermon is? "Repent!" And he doesn't soften it with jokes. He doesn't gild it with poetry. He doesn't use much illustrative material. He doesn't subscribe to any email list for preachers. He just roars like a lion in the wilderness. You can hear his roar an hour before you see him.

You can hear "Repent!" echoing off the barren landscape. I don't want to hear that, do you? Some things you just don't want to hear. At dinner, a junior high boy told his parents there was to be a small parents meeting at school the next evening. His mother asked, "Well, if it's a small one, do you think we ought to go?" "I think so," the boy said in a low voice, "It's just you, me and the principal."

There are some things in life that we just don't want to hear. John is like that. You see, he is a prophet. Some people think that a prophet is somebody who can foretell the future. That's probably because "prophecy" in English usually refers to predicting the future, and that's part of what prophets do. But what's hard about prophets is what they say about the present. They're always saying "Repent!" - which means practice what you preach.

Prophets rarely say anything new; they rarely disclose any new information. They tell us what we already know but don't want to be reminded of. They tell us to start living what we believe. And one more thing about the prophets: they never say the "right thing." The right thing is what the right people, the people with power, want to hear. Prophets are always going to the right people and saying the wrong thing, the thing that they don't want to hear. All the biblical prophets did that, including John the Baptist. And all of them suffered for it, including John.

John goes to King Herod, who thought himself to be liberated from common decency. King Herod committed adultery, incest, murder, and God knows what else. John the Baptist went to Herod and said, "Shape up! Your lifestyle is going to bring down the whole nation."

The Jews had this funny idea that morality is serious business. And what's more, they said, it's not private business. It's corporate business. It's community business. It's family business. What you do is not your own private business - not even if you are a king or a queen. What you do, or what you do not do, will either hurt or bless somebody else. Society is not made up of autonomous individuals, moral virtuosos, each one doing his or her own thing. Life is not like a circus filled with performers.

Life is like an expedition. It's like going on a journey. It's like a pilgrimage. It's like ascending a mountain, each one tied to the other, where we need each other. Where, if one is sick or injured, or one is uncooperative, or wasteful, or always angry, everybody suffers.

Prophets are always reminding the people of that. You will never hear a prophet shout, "Do your own thing!" Prophets shout, "Do what God has told you to do. You know what it is. Now do it!" And that's when they get into trouble, everyone of them. John the Baptist got into trouble with Herod and Herod won that fight. John the Baptist lost his head over it.

Prophets remind us of our sin. I like the story of the Sunday School teacher who asked a little girl, "What are the sins of omission?" The little girl answered, "They're the sins we ought to have committed, but haven't thought of."

When Jesus heard about what Herod had done to John, do you know what he said? "There is no man born of woman greater than John." That's high praise coming from Jesus. Jesus knew John. Luke says that they are cousins. Jesus held John in the highest regard. The respect was mutual.

You know what John said of Jesus? "The one who comes afte

r me is greater than I am, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down to untie." I don't know of any relationship like that in the Bible, this mutual respect, this sense that we are a team, what I do is preparation for you, what I do is fulfillment for you. We could put it this way: Jesus said, "No one born of woman is greater than John the Baptist. So listen to him." John said, "Jesus is the one you are waiting for. Follow him."

They all say the same thing, all four gospels. They all say, if you want to go to Bethlehem to see for yourself, if you want to find out who Jesus really is for yourself, if you want to really know Jesus in your life then first go see John.

So we might as well do it. We might as well get it over with. John says just what you would expect. He says it right off. "Repent! Practice what you preach. Live up to the standards that you believe in. You know what they are. Do it."

That's what repentance means. Repentance doesn't mean going through life with your head down, feeling remorseful for being so bad. It means start doing something good. Start practicing what you say you believe.

Now it's probably a good thing that I am jumping the gun and preaching about John the Baptizer now before Christmas gets into full swing. I mean, why do we have to hear about repentance at Christmas time?

Every Advent the story of John the Baptizer comes up and it always threatens to ruin our Christmas, so this year we're hearing the story early in Advent. I mean, John the Baptizer just can't get into the Christmas spirit. He's not on Christmas cards. He is in constant danger of being the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Advent and Christmas are to be happy times. Party times. This isn't a gloomy time.

There is old John. He comes up out of the water. He's been in the River Jordan so long that his legs are blue. He says to me, "You fixin' to go to Bethlehem again this year?" I say, "Yes, we started on our way last Sunday. We'll be there in two and a half weeks."

He says, "Well, let me tell you what happened out there. Let me tell you what's at stake. What happened out there at Bethlehem is nothing less than an invasion, not a violent one with armies, but a quiet one with love. A beachhead for the realm of God."

John stands there in his animal skins, long hair, wild eyed, and tell us, "Not many people believe that, because it's not what they had expected. It isn't what they want. But that's the way it happened anyway."

I believe that. Do you? I believe that the realm of God - the kingdom of God - is now here. Do you? I believe that the realm of God is now set against the rulers of this world, and now you've got to choose. Do you? You've got to choose which realm - which kingdom - you are going to give your loyalty to - God's rule - or the rulers of this world.

John asks you, "Are you going to give your loyalty to Herod or to Christ? And when you make up your mind, then you come out to see me here and I'll tell you what you must do to really celebrate the meaning of Christmas."

I knew he was going to say that. John says it every year and I don't want to hear it. What I want to hear is that God came into this world the way it is so the way it is must not be so very bad. It may even be the way God likes it. But John won't let me get away with that. John says that God came into this world to change it, to transform it, and that God wants to begin with me.

I want to hear that Christmas is a good feeling, all warm and fuzzy, a time of make believe. I want my Christmas celebration to be a vacation from the hard facts of this world. I want it to be more like Muzak on the elevator, Christmas music in the mall, mood music while we put the world on hold.

And John won't allow that. John says Christmas means nothing less than an invasion of this world by God. A new age is here. God's rule has come. There are two rulers now: Herod and his successors and Jesus and his disciples. And we've got to make a choice. I've got to make a choice. You've got to make a choice. We all have to make the choice between the Kingdom of Rome and the Kingdom of God, between the Kingdom of Iron and the Kingdom of Love, between the Kingdom of Darkness and the Kingdom of Light. We've got to choose, you and I, and we will have to make that choice again and again and again and each time we choose it will be as if we are choosing for the first and for the last time.

And then old John wades back into the cold water of the river saying, "It's here all right. The Kingdom of God is here right now." And then he turns his head and says over his shoulder, "And you know that it's here." And then he takes up his one note message: "Repent! For the Kingdom of God is at hand."

You see, John is here every Advent in case, just in case, this is the year that you really want to go to Bethlehem. "Repent" means to start doing the things that you know you should do. If you are alienated from somebody, be reconciled. If you are self-righteous in relation to somebody, humble yourself. If you have been uncaring about the poor, now is the time to get some moral imagination and put yourself in the plight of another human being. If you have been callous about the prospects for peace in your life, now is the time for you to start praying and working for those things that make for peace. If you have put your trust in the accumulation of things so that you are a slave to a whole host of masters, now is the time for you to unload some of that stuff and put your trust in God. And if you have assumed to this point that you are going to be judged on your ability to avoid evil in this life, Christmas is a time for you to hear that you are going to be judged on your courage to do the good.

So John is waiting. He's waiting for you and for me. He's waiting there in the water until we are ready to hear the real meaning of Christmas, until we are ready to see that what happened then makes a difference in what happens now.

Stephen Vincent Benet wrote a Christmas play in which he pictures the wife of the innkeeper, who knows what momentous thing has happened back there in the stable, and she says, "Something is loosed to change the shaken world, and with it we must change."

When you are ready to do that, John will be waiting.






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