Advent 3  12/13/09
Luke 3.7-18, Philippians 4.4-7

What Shall We Do?

John the Baptist was a troublemaker. The Jewish historian Josephus tells us that King Herod saw him as a real threat, and our gospel lesson this morning makes clear why that was so. After all, any preacher who goes around calling people snakes and talks about throwing the unrepentant into the fire is bound to cause a stir! But perhaps the strongest clue comes in verse 10, where the people ask John, “What then should we do?” John isn’t shy about telling them. Anyone can tolerate a preacher who speaks vague platitudes or even harsh words about repentance, as long as the question of “what shall we do?” doesn’t come into focus. But when that question gets addressed, there’s no telling what might happen. 

John had the gall to answer the question. You’ve probably heard the story about the country preacher who denounced drinking and denounced sexual misconduct, and the little lady in the front pew gave him loud “amens.” But when he started denouncing chewing tobacco, she stomped out of the church. “Now he’s quit preachin’ and commenced meddlin’,” she muttered. Anytime we get down to “what shall we do?” we run the risk of being thought to be meddlin’.

And so John the Baptist was a meddler and thus a troublemaker. For us, perhaps the most important lesson to learn from him is that being a Christian has implications. “What shall we do?” his people asked, and the question needs to echo in our hearts and lives. Like John’s crowds, we have been baptized. Like them, we have heard the call to repent. Like them, we have heard that we must bear fruits that befit repentance. So what shall we do? What does it mean for us in our daily living that we are baptized? What does it mean to live out our baptism, to live out our faith?

John’s response to this question is very specific and pointed. It has several dimensions, but let’s focus on two of them. First he says that living out our baptism involves learning to share and give freely. “Whoever has two coats,” he says, “must share with anyone who has none.”  That’s a message that we hear often at this time of yeara message of giving, a message of helping those in need. 

Sue Monk Kidd tells about the cold December day that she came out of a department store and saw an unshaven, threadbare man sitting on a bench. He had an inadequate jacket, and shoes without socks, and he had wrapped a newspaper around his neck to try to keep out the cold. “Such a pity,” she thought. But there was really nothing she could do. Just then a young girl about eleven walked by. She had a bright red scarf around her neck.  She stopped beside the man and stared for a moment, then quickly removed her scarf and placed it tenderly around his neck, then slipped away. “I crept away,” writes Kidd, “wishing I had been the one to give the scarf. [But] God taught me something that day. Wherever I am, whatever I possess, there is always something I can givea touch a smile, a prayer, a kind word, even a red scarf.” [New Guideposts Christmas Treasury, p. 191]

What shall we do? John’s answer is that we can always give, that we should always give. It’s a good Christmas-time message, but it needs to last for the year.  Giving isn’t a Christmas-time special, but it is a way of living, a way of bearing fruit. But if, in this Advent, we could learn to work on that all the time, it would be a great miracle in our lives.

Something else we can learn from John. It is interesting to note that John, as eccentric and wild as he appeared, did not ask anyone else to join him in the wilderness. He didn’t suggest that his followers don his rough garb, or eat his locust and wild honey menu. No, his suggestions as to “what we should do” all relate to ordinary people, doing their everyday work in their everyday places. And this is important for us. So often we forget that the real fruit of our faith is born, not in doing great things or accomplishing dramatic results, but in simple acts in everyday life, acts of kindness, charity and love. I believe it was Mother Theresa who once commented that true faith doesn’t consist in doing great things, but in doing simple things with great love.

Pastor Holmer was a German Lutheran pastor and director of a church-owned retirement home in the secluded village of Lobetal, Germany. Back in the late 1980’s, after the fall of the communist regime, church officials approached him with an unusual request. Erich Honecker, the deposed Communist leader of East Germany, widely hated by his countrymen, had just been removed from a state-run hospital where he was recuperating from cancer surgery. He had been put in prison to stand trial for treason in the new unified Germany. But a court had ruled him too sick to stay in prison. There was no place for him to go; he was too despised. This, after all, was the man who had ruled East Germany with an iron fist, who had presided over the building of the Berlin Wall, and who was feared and hated as one of the worst of the Communist dictators.

And now Pastor Holmer received this request to provide Erich Honecker a place to stay during his convalescence. He had bitter memories of the regime in which he and his family had suffered for their faith. On the other hand, his mission at Lobetal was to take in the poor, the sick, the homeless. Erich Honecker certainly met that description. Still, the pastor thought, it wouldn’t be fair. There was a long waiting list to get into the retirement home, and to put Honecker ahead of those on the list would be unconscionable. So Pastor Holmer did the only thing he could think of to do: He invited Erich Honecker and his wife into his own home.

Unfortunately, Holmer’s view of his Christian duty was not shared by many. He began to receive hate mail and even bomb threats. Loyal supporters of his ministry in Lobetal threatened to cut off their financial support. But Pastor Holmer did not budge. He wrote a letter to the editor of a prominent East German newspaper: “In Lobetal,” he wrote, “there is a sculpture of Jesus inviting people to himself and crying out, ‘Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’ We have been commanded by our Lord Jesus to follow him and to receive all those who are weary and heavy laden, in spirit and in body, but especially the homeless. . . .What Jesus asked his disciples to do is equally binding on us.”

A simple act of charity yet not so simple, when you look beneath it. Indeed, simple acts of charity are rarely simple. When John tells his hearers to share a coat, or treat people with justice, it seems easy. But we all know it isn’t. Sharing is difficult; justice is often troublesome. Compassion is hard, forgiveness is hard.  All these things are, in some very real sense, costly.

And yet they are the fruit of our baptism and our faith. When we ask, “What shall we do?” the answer is very specific and very difficult, because it involves sharing ourselves, and it must be done daily, in many, many situations where we would just as soon go on our way without a second thought.

Martin Luther commented once on how easily we condemn the people of Bethlehem for being so unaware of Jesus Christ, born in their midst. “There are some of us,” he said, “who think, ‘Oh, if I had only been there! How quick I would have been to help the baby. I would have washed his diapers. How happy I would have been to go with the shepherds to see the Lord lying in the manger.’ Yes, we would. We say that because we know how great Christ is, but if we had been there at that time, we would have done no better than the people of Bethlehem. For why don’t we do it now? We have Christ in our midst, in our neighbor-and still we don’t care for him.”

Dear friends in Christ, bear fruits that befit repentance. Hear St. Paul’s words: “Let your gentleness, your kindness, be known to everyone. . . . Keep on doing the things you have learned and received and heard and seen.” These are words, not just for Advent and Christmas, but for every day, every day, as we live in the response to the great love that God has for us.

Richard O. Johnson