What Pastor Jon Preached on Sunday, December 11, 2011

Third Sunday in Advent
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 • Psalm 126 •
1 Thessalonians 5:16-24 • John 1:6-8, 19-28

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. ⁷He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. ⁸He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. ... This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” ²⁰He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, “I am not the Messiah.” ²¹And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.” ²²Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” ²³He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’” as the prophet Isaiah said. ²⁴Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. ²⁵They asked him, “Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?” ²⁶John answered them, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, ²⁷the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.” ²⁸This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing. The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! ³⁰This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ ³¹I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel."

Today is the Third Sunday of Advent which is traditionally understood as “Gaudate” Sunday, which in Latin means “Rejoice.” We distinguish this day by using a pink candle on the Advent wreath. It’s a day when we mark the halfway point of Advent...that we have made it this far and are only two weeks away from Christmas! It’s a little mini-celebration in the midst of a season of continued darkness, waiting and preparation.

As we mark this day with these small gestures of joy, we also admit that the real reason to celebrate is not here quite yet...we come together to admit our un-faithfulness and brokenness as we did in the opening confession. While one thing of joy is happening on the surface today--the coming together of God’s people to watch for the promised Light of Christ--another dynamic plays out beneath the surface. The dynamic of the honest, real and raw realities that are happening in our lives. We all come today wearing masks, and beneath them lie our true selves, our selves where all of us are cracked, and all of us are longing for something deeper to sustain us and make us whole. In many ways we could say today is two-faced Sunday...one of wearing joy...and one of raw honesty.

But then we have the John of today’s Gospel, and John offers us a way of taking off that mask and opening up our hearts with honesty, and turning that honesty into an authenticity that receives the coming Light of Christ as good news amidst our darkness. This disciple of Jesus is also traditionally associated with this third Sunday of Advent as well. This John is not the writer of John’s Gospel, it is just John...who in John's Gospel is John the Witness to Christ. He is not given the titles in the synoptic Gospels, like John the Baptist in Matthew, or John the Baptizer in Mark, or John the son of Zecharaiah in Luke. The first words John uses to describe himself are not even his own--he only will define himself by the one he has come to witness to: “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’” (1:23)

John goes through an engaging dialogue with religious authorities who have flocked to come and see him. They want to know, “Who are you, John?” (1:19) It’s John’s opportunity to choose if he’ll wear a mask or not: will he wear the mask that boasts of the importance God has given him in the story of salvation...or will he reveal the light that he has come to prepare us for, and point us to...the light of God that shines in the darkness, and that the darkness cannot overcome?

John takes off any mantle or impression that he or anyone else may be putting on him, and quickly replies who he is not: he’s not the Messiah, he’s not Elijah, he’s not a Moses-like prophet. John quickly reveals a lack of any pretentiousness, which is exactly what had been foretold of him: “he came as a witness to testify to the light...he himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light...” (1:8-9)

John shows his leadership through the power of vulnerability, the power that comes in putting on no masks about who he is. He is not the big deal. It is Jesus, whom he has come to witness to, who is the big deal. John's identity is not self-made. He did not become the great prophet through his own efforts—but through his faith. He's made who he is by someone else—it's clear that Christ the light coming into the world, makes him who he is. Like John, our identity in Christ is as his witnesses, and followers. John shows the tremendous vulnerability it takes to confess we're not who others think we are—especially when they are elevating us to an elite status. John demonstrates that real power comes not in boasting of ourselves, but in boasting of the power the merciful light of Christ that comes to shine in us.

As we wait for the advent of Christ among us, the church is one of the few places where, with John, we can speak the truth about our lives. This can be the place where we don't claim to be the Light, but where we continually point to the one who is our Light. Here is the place we can be real, honest and unpretentious about who we are, where we can be vulnerable to our struggles as well as our triumphs. We speak the truth here, because the truth is what Christ comes to die for. He comes so that the truth no longer need be hidden from plain sight, but through the truth his Light of compassion, of wholeness and mercy can shine all that much more brightly in our lives. Here is the place where because we can speak the truth, God moves us from the isolation of triumphant individualism, to intimacy born by a community, like this one, that bears one another's burdens.

If we were to choose a musical background for this Advent time of taking off our masks to reveal to the truth of the darkness within us, and the places in our lives that need Christ's Light, I don't think it would be the station playing Christmas music twenty-four hours a day. I think it would be the music that matches the blue color of this season: the blues. Advent is a time for blues, and not just because we're in Chicago, although there's not a better town for blues music. The blues wastes no time in telling the truth...in fact it revels in it. Whether it's the truth of “I done lost my baby 'gain...” or “I'm so poor, ain't got no money,” the blues finds hope by confessing the very real troubles of life that human beings face. The blues were created by enslaved African-Americans in the deep south who found healing and wholeness in the truth-telling power of this musical form. Thomas Dorsey, who wrote the hymn “Precious Lord, Take My Hand,” saw many connections between the blues and church with the cries that come out of both in response to the circumstances of life. In talking about how the blues tries to uncover our brokenness, he once said: “Now what we call low-down in blues doesn't mean that it's dirty or bad or something like that. It gets down into the individual to set him on fire, dig him up or dig her up way down there 'til they come out with an expression verbally. If they're in church, they say, 'Amen.' If they're in the blues, they say, 'Sing it now.'” (Scharen, Broken Halelujahs, p. 73)

The place that Dorsey says the blues can touch in us—the place beneath our masks, where we are broken—is the place that God touches us in Christ's coming. That is the place that Christ absorbs on the cross. That is the place that God turns from a “no” into a cosmic and definitive “yes.” Even though we sing the Advent blues, the “Amen” God shouts in return to us affirms all that John confessed to when he saw Jesus for the first time: “Here is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (1:29) (Scharen, p. 94)

So what posture do we take in these remaining days of preparing for Christ? What's our response as we wrestle with the everyday choice of whether we will put on a mask of pretentiousness or not. Our posture in these Advent days is one of hope. It's not a hope that everything will be better, or a hope for what we want individually or communally. It's time to hope for God's Spirit to arrive in us and sweep away all that shields and keeps the Light of God's mercy out of our lives. It's time to hope for God to come and renew us again with the promised peace and love of our Savior. It's time to sing the Advent blues...and hear more loudly still the song of joy that the advent of Christ sings into our lives.

Our posture of hope in these days will come from the model John sets for us today. Once a preacher pointed out that the witness of John is remembered in Advent which comes at the darkest time of year, with the winter solstace approaching. As the light around us decreases, John testifies that the coming Light in Christ will increase. In the same way, John is commemorated by the church on June 24, just a few days after the summer solstace. When the earthly Light is at its highest, we commemorate the lowliness of John, who saw himself as one who pointed to the brightness of Christ's Light.

May we embrace the dawning of the Light of Christ John points to—the Light that comes to set us free from our masks, who hears our “Advent blues” cries of “Amen! Save us, Lord!”, who renews God's covenant to hold us in God's love forever.

Amen.