What Should We Do?

A sermon for the third Sunday of Advent given at the United Church of Acworth, NH on December 16, 2012.

Luke 3:10-18

On Friday Rachelle and I went to Walpole to watch their production of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. It's a very familiar story. Ebenezer Scrooge is wealthy, stingy, mean, and unhappy. When people wish him Merry Christmas he responds, “bah, humbug.” He is a business man and does not have time for charity.

But on this Christmas Eve, Scrooge is visited by three spirits of past, present, and future Christmases. These spirits show him what has been, what is, and what is possible.

Scrooge is shown a mirror so to speak. He is shown himself he begins to feel remorse for the way he has lived his life, putting business over the concerns of his fellow human beings.

In a climactic moment, when Scrooge follows the pointing finger of the spirit of Christmas yet to come and finds it directing him to his own name inscribed on a gravestone, Scrooge breaks down.

"I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!"...

Holding up his hands in a last prayer to have his fate aye reversed, he saw an alteration in the Phantom's hood and dress. It shrunk, collapsed, and dwindled down into a bedpost.

Yes! and the bedpost was his own.  The bed was his own, the room was his own.  Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own, to make amends in!

I couldn't help but remember Ebenezer Scrooge as I was reading today's gospel lesson from Luke 3. Here is John calling his audience to a changed life, to a rethinking of their priorities. He is calling them to rethink their relationship to the past, the present, and the future.

He makes a profound point that it's worth thinking about for a moment. He says, “Do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.”

He is confronting their confidence in the same way that the spirits confronted Scrooge's confidence.

Whereas Scrooge's confidence was in his business sense which gave him his self-sufficient lifestyle, not needing anyone else nor really wanting anyone else, John's audience had confidence in their identity as children of Abraham.

But John says hyperbolically, “I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

Very nice, Ebenezer, you have a good business, you are a thrifty business man – but have you gained the world and forfeited your soul?

Very nice, you have Abraham as your ancestor and you can hold on to that identity with pride – but do you have Abraham's faith as well as his blood?

Here John is asking us to do some serious soul-searching.

On Friday something happened that left most of us speechless and confused, angry and afraid.

And when traumatic events happen like that, we long for answers, for order, for meaning. So we seek to make meaning by pointing fingers, we seek to make meaning by composing “answers.”

Since we are Americans we strive to create meaning and order again through democratic action – and almost immediately some people on Facebook were saying that this shooting means we really need to do something politically. And the blame games got ugly, fast. And understandably because people are angry, hurt, in a state of confusion. Sensitivity and vulnerability was high, tempers were ready to blow.

One thing I wanted to post on Facebook in response to this mess of politicization that I was seeing was one of the most beautiful lines from scripture. It comes from the book of Job, a story about a man who lost everything and was in a state of great pain, great anger, and great confusion. And when his friends saw him from far off they wept and it goes on to say:

They sat with him on the ground for seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great. 

No one spoke a word to him for seven days.

What we need in response to events like this is solidarity and silence. And eventually it will come time to do something. But before we do anything we need to search our own souls. People can be so quick to consider themselves children of Abraham and start pointing fingers all around them. People are so quick to talk.

We're so quick to assume we are in the right and that we have the responsibility to show where the true blame lies in our society, in our politics.

Before we go about shouting our opinions of who or what to blame, let us listen to John who calls us away from this posture of self-confidence.

John calls us to look to ourselves – examine our own lives and wake up to a new relationship to past, present, and future – just like the spirits to Scrooge.

And so we find ourselves, having examined our own hearts, our own lives, our own relationships, joining with the crowd that had come to see John asking, “What should we do?

John replies:

“Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.”

The tax collectors ask John, “Teacher, what should we do?”

John replies:

“Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.”

The soldiers asked him, “And we, what should we do?”

John replies:

Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusations, and be satisfied with your wages.”

We all ask John, “What should we do?”

“do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God,” he might reply quoting the

prophet Micah

As we remember this trauma and as we seek to make meaning out of it, may we search our souls – look to our own lives, our own relationships to others and to the past, present, and future, and allow the question of “What should we do?” posed in today's gospel reading lead us to consider how we might be agents of the love of God in our communities – not putting ourselves in the secure position of judge, but putting ourselves in the healing position of friend. May we translate our fears and anger into prayers of lament and may we find in God the strength to respond in our hearts by a changed life, bearing the fruits of justice, mercy, and humility.

Amen.