Getting Ready for God

The lead singer of the rock band U2 has become quite the prophet for our times. Speaking on stages across the land, even at the chapel of our Presbyterian headquarters and the National Prayer Breakfast, Bono is God’s voice crying out in the wilderness about how the wildfire of AIDS is consuming 8,000 lives every day across this globe – one person every ten seconds – and what in the world are we doing about it?

He’s been to Africa several times and describes the horror of seeing Africans lining up to die, "three to a bed," and then, in a stinging rebuke, he says, "We can get cold fizzy drinks to the farthest reaches of Africa," (and I can attest to that!), "but we can’t get lifesaving medicines to the people who need it." "I don’t have any letters after my name," Bono says. "I don’t even have a name after my name, but I am determined to turn around this supertanker of indifference." ¹

So why am I quoting Bono at the beginning of an Advent sermon? Because the gospels are clear that we are not ready to receive Jesus until we hear from the prophets, more specifically until we hear from John the Baptist.

How’s that for a Christmassy message? Now you know why we don’t see John the Baptist on Christmas cards or in a Christmas pageant!

"You brood of vipers!" he calls them at the beginning of his sermon, i.e. "you offspring of snakes." Given the Hebrew association of snakes with Satan, he might as well have been calling them "children of Satan."

And he was talking to the good people! These are the men and women who get up on the Sabbath and go to worship, who journeyed out into the wilderness to be baptized by John. There were not wicked. They were devoted to prayer. They were good Jews, "children of Abraham," but John mocks them for making such a claim. Why?

Because their lives don’t show it. They are like unproductive fruit trees that not only have no fruit, their branches are dead, dry and ready to be burned. They are like the dry shell around a grain of wheat that is discarded and torched.

And something about what John the Baptist said must have hit home because they don’t disagree with any of it but they want to know what to do. Their lives obviously told a completely different story than what they thought, and John is letting them know that they are in no way ready for God’s salvation until they see that, until they realize just how desperately they need saving.

And the same is true for us. To help us get ready for God’s salvation, I’d like to tell you a little story that has been passed around for many years.

Once upon a time, on a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur, there was a crude little lifesaving station. The building was just a hut and there was only one boat, but the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea, and with no thought for themselves went out day and night tirelessly searching for the lost. Some of those who were saved and various others in the surrounding area wanted to become associated with the station and give of their time, money and effort to support its work. New boats were bought and new crews trained. The little lifesaving station grew.

Some of the members of the lifesaving station were unhappy that the building was so crude and poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable place should be provided as the first refuge of those saved from the sea. They replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in the enlarged building.

Now the lifesaving station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they decorated it beautifully and furnished it exquisitely, because they used it as a sort of club. Fewer members were now interested in going out to sea on lifesaving missions, so they hired lifeboat crews to do this work. The lifesaving motif still prevailed in this club’s decorations, and there was a liturgical lifeboat in the room where the club initiations were held.

About this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boatloads of cold, wet, and half-drowned people. They were dirty and sick; some of them had black skin, some had yellow skin. The beautiful new club was in chaos. So the property committee immediately had a shower house built outside the club where victims of shipwreck could be cleaned up before coming inside.

At the next meeting, there was a split in the membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club’s lifesaving activities because they were unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal social life of the club. Other members insisted that lifesaving was their primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called a lifesaving station. But they were finally voted down and told that if they wanted to save lives of all the various kinds of people who were shipwrecked in those waters, they could begin their own lifesaving station down the coast. They did.

As the years went by, the new station experienced the same changes that had occurred in the old. It evolved into a club, and yet another lifesaving station was founded. History continued to repeat itself, and if you visit that seacoast today, you will find a number of exclusive clubs along that shore. Shipwrecks are frequent in those waters, but most of the people drown.

God is interested in lifesaving, not exclusive clubs. God’s purpose for Israel was the same as God’s purpose in Jesus – his name means Yahweh saves – which is the same purpose God has for the church. We are God’s lifesaving station. But too often, in one pastor’s words, "the point of the church gets hollowed out, and it becomes nothing more than a club, a nice place where nice people do nice things with other nice people,"² a place where the only lives we want to save are our own.

How hollow are we? How indifferent to those shipwrecked all around us? What is the prophetic truth-telling we need to hear today in order to get ready for God’s salvation? Are we really following in the lifesaving steps of Jesus Christ who was and is God’s heart continually moving out toward those in need, or have we inadvertently morphed into more of a club?

If I can speak very candidly with you for a moment, I think the danger for us is that we live in a community that many describe as a bubble. When your Program Staff went out to interview civic leaders in San Carlos a few months ago, that’s the word that people used. "We live in a bubble," meaning that we are pretty insulated from the seamy side of life. We don’t have the gangs and crime and poverty here that are found right next door in

Redwood City. It’s why we are called "the city of good living," and it’s why our housing costs are so high. We live in a bubble.

Many would say this is true of the United States compared to the rest of the world, or true of suburbs in general, and certainly true of gated communities. And how does this "bubble effect" impact us as God’s lifesaving station?

Several months ago the New York Times ran an article titled "My Other Vehicle is a Gulfstream." It was about how more and more wealthy travelers are getting away from the hassle of commercial airports and flying private. They are not buying their own private jets, but instead they are buying into a jet-share program for a mere $200,000, and with this little Starbucks like MetroCard they can avoid "the noisy, cramped, humiliating nightmare" of commercial air travel.

One man described the moment and the reason he decided to quit flying commercial and go private.

I was in first class and there was a woman in business with a baby that screamed for five hours, and that did it… In North America I only fly privately…For me what’s important is excluding myself from people who might bum me out. ³

Isn’t that the dangerous mindset for those of us who can afford to live in any kind of bubble? "For me what’s important is excluding myself from people who might bum me out." In the words of Mark Labberton, "Nothing could be more antithetical to the gospel." Nothing could be more antithetical to being the lifesaving station, the chosen instruments of God’s grace that God created and called us to be!

Three times the prophet John is asked this question by three different groups of people, who recognized the bald truth of what he was telling them. And what did he tell them to do? "Pack it up and enter a monastery? Retreat into silence and take a vow of poverty? Go to seminary? Get a Ph.D. in theology? Nope." ⁴ He doesn’t tell them to go anywhere, just do things differently where you live your life right now: share your clothing and your food, don’t be dishonest and greedy in your work, don’t use your power to intimidate and take advantage of others. Quit focusing on saving yourself and move out by God’s grace to save others.

In essence John is getting them ready for the real Lifesaver who is on his way. He knew he could only take them so far. He could get them baptized and wash them on the outside, but it would take a real inside job to turn this supertanker of indifference around once and for all. It would take the fire of God’s Holy Presence, coming right to us in the flesh, in Jesus, in his passion, in his death and resurrection, to transform us from dead branches to fruitful vines, to turn the dry chaff of our lives into a productive harvest of love.

One man told about a special Christmas he had in the early 1900’s. His brother shocked him and gave him a new Packard for Christmas. A local street kid who was obviously very poor happened by and was adoring his brand new car. "Mister," he said with awe, "how much did this car cost?" "Nothing, my brother gave it to me." The little boy was overwhelmed. "I wish…" he started to say and then stopped. The man knew exactly what the boy wished and he finished his sentence for him: "…I had a brother to give me a car like that?" But the boy said, "I wish I could be a brother like that."

The good news of Christmas is not meant to make us feel better. It is meant to make us be better, to be authentically children of God, like that. How are we doing at that?

Jim Wallis reports that when he travels around the country for Sojourners and asks people what they think of when they hear the words "evangelical Christian," they use words like "harsh," "divisive, "self-righteous," "intolerant" and "mean-spirited." When these same people are asked what Jesus was like, the answers include "compassionate," "loving," "caring," "humble," "friend of the poor and outcasts," "forgiving," "peacemaker" and "reconciler." ⁵

What does God’s truth-telling prophet have to say to us, the body of Christ, as we prepare for Christmas this morning?