Malachi 3: 1,2; Luke 3: 1-3

Advent as preparation

The Old Testament words about the “one who comes in the name of the Lord are part of the bones of the church.  They have an emotional appeal.  It takes us back to a time long long ago, but also it thrusts us forward to the future.  Things will be set right, crooked roads will become straight, someone will speak truth to power.  There is hope that injustice will be vanquished and faith that we will be saved.  Our opening hymn strengthens that sentiment with the words from Isaiah 40: Comfort, Comfort Ye My People.

One way this text can be so powerful is because it is somewhat opaque or even vague.  There is no distinct person, there is no IP address, there is no social security number or awkward driver’s license photo none of us ever want to show to anyone. None of it is there. Even when we finally get to meet John the Baptizer he is this hobo of a man, a real eccentric, one of those people you meet in line in a downtown coffee shops who tells you things about his life and you are not sure whether he is a clairvoyant genius or someone who just makes things up as he goes along.  Yet he is the  messenger who is coming.

Friends, what makes the story so compelling is the narrative of preparation.  We think of advent of anticipation of the coming of the Christ child, vulnerable and full of light at the same time.  We kind of think as John the Baptizer preparing the way of that child.  But Jesus and John were also contemporaries, with Jesus bing baptized by John.  He is great announcer, a kind of spiritual Paul Revere on sandals instead of a horse calling “ the Messiah is coming, the Messiah is coming.”  But he is also the great preparer, wanting people to get into a right mindset before the coming of Messiah. The act of his preparation is a humble act. John tells us in three gospels that he is not worthy to untie the straps of Jesus’ sandals.”  This made me think of preparation and how there is a John the Baptist in all of us.  Granted, we all wish there would be a lot more Jesus in us, but our task is more that of John the Baptist, especially as we age.

A month or so ago I was talking to Rev. Motoe at the Sacramento Japanese United Methodist Church and she was telling about going to conference on the topic of “hero makers.”  One thing she learned was that pastors are not Batman. That came as a shock to me.  Just kidding.  But maybe at some point we want to be Batman.  Until we dare the say the words :”that is not my strength” and  “I don’t know.”  Batman would never say those things.. Another thing she learned was that pastors are supposed to be like Alfred, Batman’s aging wise helper and assistant.  We’re not heroes, we are hero makers. That brings us back to the idea of preparation.  Alfred gets Batman ready, physically and emotionally, to face the evil forces of his world.  We have coping mechanisms for dealing with that world. One of them is humility, another is humor.  As former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson said during the eulogy for former President Bush last week:” humor is the universal solvent against the abrasive elements of life.”  But neither humility nor humor will be enough to get us ready for life in its brutality.  We all need a guide a long the way, someone who shows us how it is done.  Having lost my father relatively early, for me that task had be taken over by others: A Presbyterian pastor in Dallas who guided me away from Methodism ( I would not have dealt very well with being told I was moving all the time),  Bryce Littlle who encouraged mission work and sent me to a remote reservation  for my first assignment as a young 26 year old pastor and an Indonesian hospital director who turned me into a writer because he demanded that of me. You can think of the people who were your Alfred, who helped prepare your way, who helped you find the heroic in yourself, albeit just for a fleeting moment.

Interestingly, two months ago there was an article in the Christian Century about the Frontier Internship on Mission Program which was started here on the West coast by a Presbyterian woman, Margaret Flory.  It became a worldwide program which sent young people out across the world to develop a mission project.  The “FI’s” as they were called would have to develop a program with the locals, live like them and work themselves our of job.  There were only several hundred FI’s worldwide and I was one of the last of them.  The job was to help the locals on Java to prepare a program in Health and Social Justice that would sustain itself.  Looking back it taught me to blaze new trails just because people believe I could.  There were Alfreds along the way who occasionally, for a moment, made me feel like Batman, the hero I had loved so much as a kid through the American tv program and Dutch language subtitles,

Friends, if we do things right, we are always preparing others.  It has been so rewarding to be an Alfred to the four resident daughters of Parkview whose names all end in a (as in “a number one”) so that they sometimes could feel like Wonder woman for a moment, although I never let them linger there too long.   I hope that over the years at Parkview I have never tried to come across heroic, but always a hero maker.  I would feel deeply embarrassed if I did.  It has been an honor to help you prepare for new trails you can blaze as a congregation.  Remember that as there have been those that helped you prepare to become a servant to an unjust world, so must you provide the shoulders for other to stand on. You must preparers as the road goes on and on. May God bless our journey.