Guess Who’s Coming for Christmas

Isaiah 11:1-10, Matthew 3:1-12

December 9, 2007

Rochelle A. Stackhouse

Sometimes when I read the texts appointed for Advent, hearing the prophets and John the Baptist, I wonder if they are talking about the same Savior as all those Christmas carols we have been hearing since Halloween. “Little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes” is a bit of a contrast to Isaiah’s vision of the “one who is to come” striking the earth with the rod of his mouth and with the breath of his lips killing the wicked, oh, and the part about the fear of the Lord being his delight. Then there’s “holy infant, so tender and mild” in contrast to John’s little sermon to the Pharisees and Sadducees in which he says the one who is to come will baptize not just with the Holy Spirit, but with fire, and then the lines about him clearing the threshing floor and gathering the wheat into the granary but burning the chaff with unquenchable fire. UGGGH. Not a very Christmas-sy sentiment, is it?

So are we talking about the same person here? Is the baby Jesus also like this ruler in Isaiah’s prophecy? Is John’s cousin, Mary’s son Jesus, the one coming with a winnowing fork and an ax lying ready at the root of unfruitful trees? One commentator I read this week said that actually John had it wrong and was looking for someone other than who Jesus was. Maybe. But I don’t think so. Just who is it we celebrate coming for Christmas each year? This sweet gurgling babe, the Prince of Peace, or the great judge with the sword of truth and the power and will to toss the unfaithful into unquenchable fire? Is it the Savior or the Judge?

Or both? This is hard for some of you to think about because you have come from other Christian traditions that so stressed God or Jesus as the harsh judge that you have been wounded. Some of you drowned in guilt from childhood, fearful that you were going to be condemned for mistakes both small and large. You lived in fear of the Lord. Some of you heard a lot about the unquenchable fire. But now you are in a nice mainline UCC church where we don’t generally preach fire and brimstone from the pulpit, where the theology of my spiritual ancestor Jonathan Edwards and his “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” seems to have been banished. And we like it that way. Jesus loves us, this we know, for the Bible tells us so. We are comforted and welcomed by that love, the way it comforts us to think of God coming to earth not as an avenging warrior but as a little baby.

That is all good, as far as it goes, but if we stay with that sweet baby and forget that he actually grew up, and was seen as so threatening that the people in power killed him, we are in danger of believing what the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “Cheap Grace.” Bonhoeffer described it this way, “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline…grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” (The Cost of Discipleship, p. 47).

God did not come to earth in Jesus just to make us feel good. That is, perhaps, the most dangerous thing that the secularization of Christmas has done, for we are invited by the secular celebration of this holiday to think that the beginning and end of this event of Incarnation is a good news that is shallow and fleeting and dependent upon our moods or, worse, how much stuff we have.

I believe we cannot fully participate in Christmas if we do not understand that God came to us and continues to dwell with us for many reasons, and that one of those reasons is to call us to be accountable for our lives, our “fruit” to use John the Baptist’s metaphor. The phrase in Isaiah that I lifted up earlier paints a picture of the one who is to come using the “rod of his mouth” to strike the earth, and the breath of his lips to kill the wicked. Odd weapons, these, if you think about them. It’s not some superhero thing where the ruler breathes out toxic fumes or produces a sword out of his mouth like the Hogwarts Sorting Hat. Isaiah is saying that in speaking truth, the ruler will strike the hearts of those who live by lies, who deceive themselves and others. If they do not admit to those lies, deceit, yes, sin, then they do not allow themselves to receive the grace, forgiveness, and joy that God longs to give them. If we hide in the shadows, we cannot receive the light. The coming of Jesus is meant to shine a light into the shadowy places of our lives, the places we would rather not go and definitely not show to God, thank you very much. The light shines on the deeds we have done and the ones we have left undone, on the words we have said, the silences we have kept, and the love we have given or refused. That’s what frightened King Herod so about that star and the words coming from his advisors that the ruler whom Isaiah had prophesied was at hand. He could not face that kind of scrutiny and he refused to change, so he sought to kill the ruler before he was even weaned.

Repentance means change. Most of us do not need to change on the order of King Herod, but if we really look at our lives and hold ourselves accountable for how short we fall in following Jesus, it’s hard to miss that something needs to give. I read a story this week about a woman who gave her mother a lovely needlework pillow for Christmas with the words, “Prayer changes things.” When she noticed on subsequent visits that her mother did not have the pillow displayed, she asked why. The mother replied that she really didn’t want to change and so she hid the pillow in order not to be reminded of a need to change. We can accomplish the same thing by masking the true nature of Jesus in sentimental songs and by keeping him, very firmly, in that manger.

To repent as John the Baptist called his people to do does not mean groveling in the dust and shouting how awful you are. It does not mean giving up on God’s love and being convinced you are damned to a hell of unquenchable fire along with the chaff. It does not mean walking through life as a container for nothing but guilt. Living in the “fear of the Lord,” does not mean waiting for God to strike you dead, but acknowledging that God is more powerful than you are and has a claim on your life. What it means, I think, is being honest about how short I fall in my effort to be a true disciple of Jesus and being committed to making the changes in my life that are needed to be more faithful in that discipleship.

Repentance is also absolutely not the final word. John’s baptism was a gift of grace, both a cleansing and an offer of the water of life to strengthen the continuous transformation of the believer. Bonhoeffer says that true grace is both a “comfort in tribulation and a summons to discipleship.” (Cost of Discipleship, p. 57) Grace is the “tidings of comfort and joy;” comfort comes in receiving forgiveness for our sins and healing when we are the victim of the sins of others. The joy is much more complicated than silver bells and “Ho, Ho, Ho.” True joy comes to us when we discover that our lack of faithfulness is not the end of the road, for Jesus comes to give us the courage and strength to change what needs to be changed. Jesus comes to give the predators of the world (and make no mistake about it, Isaiah is not talking about animals here) the opportunity to change the way they treat the most vulnerable and bring them to a table of community. Jesus comes to give the prey of the world, the most vulnerable people, the courage not to either remain as victims or to lash out in revenge as that sad young man did in Omaha this week. Jesus comes to show us a better way. But we cannot see it until we come clean about our lives, our attitudes, our choices and truly desire to enter the road of discipleship. That is the road that leads to joy, not only for us as individuals, but for the whole world. You cannot receive healing if you do not admit you need it.

How many of you have crèches, nativity sets of some kind, in your homes? The baby you lay in that manger has the potential for great power this Christmas. Some day or night, when you are alone in the room, pick up that baby, wooden or ceramic or cloth though he may be. Hold him. Look at him. Then open up your imagination, your spirit, and see him looking at you. Consider fully, perhaps for the first time, whom you have invited into your home for Christmas this year. Don’t look away, but begin to see yourself with his eyes, no matter what you see. But don’t look away then, either, because there’s more to come, and that’s where perhaps John the Baptist didn’t get it entirely right. There may be a purging fire along the way, but it doesn’t end in fire. It ends in love. Amen.