"Advent Intruders" San Williams
Micah 3: 8-12; Phil.1:3-11; Psalm 85; Luke 3:1-14
Last Wednesday, on the eve of Thanksgiving, Tareq and Michaele Salahi, a couple from Virginia, wangled their way into the White House state dinner honoring the Indian Prime Minister, even though they were not on the guest list. The uninvited couple were announced as they arrived on the red carpet, posed for photographs and spoke with other guests. Apparently the couple crashed the White House party hoping to become reality TV stars. The incident was an embarrassment to White House Security, and left everyone wondering how these uninvited guests were able to crash the party.
Well, the prophet Micah and John the Baptist may also strike us as unwelcome intruders. Here we are trying to get into the spirit of the season, sing carols of the baby Jesus and enjoy the holiday festivities. Yet just as the hot cider and crackling fireplace begin to warm our hearts with Christmas cheer, in burst Micah and John the Baptist, disrupting our pleasant gathering with their unsettling words of judgment. I wouldn’t blame you if you secretly wondered: Who invited them?
John the Baptist has always struck me a kind of party crasher. Just when we’re ready to get all sentimental about the baby Jesus, John intrudes with his message of repentance and judgment. John the Baptist comes around every year at this season whether he’s invited or not. John is called the forerunner, the one sent by God to prepare the way for Emmanuel—God with us. John has a clear, unambiguous understanding of how to prepare for the Lord’s coming—share your belongings with the poor, refrain from extortion, pay fair wages, resist the temptation to take more than your fair share. These are the ethical imperatives that prepare the way of the Lord. It’s not visions of sugar plums and presents under the tree that prepare us for Emmanuel. No! John screams. Put down the cups of eggnog, and pick up the axe of God’s justice. Strike at the roots of oppression, cut down sprigs of deceit and wrongdoing, chop away at greed wherever it raises its ugly head. That, declares John, is how we prepare the way of the Lord—by making the crooked places straight and the rough ways smooth. John may not be the guest we most want in our company this time of year, but without him we’d deceive ourselves into thinking that we can have peace without justice, Christmas without Advent, Emmanuel without repentance .
And the prophet Micah is yet another intruder who interrupts the nostalgic melodies of the season. Bing Crosby singing “I’ll be Home for Christmas” is drowned out by discordant cries against injustice, corruption and greed. I’m sure Micah’s presence and voice were no more welcome in his day than they are in ours. Go back to 8th century B.C. Jerusalem. Imagine Micah standing in an open place, surrounded by massive public and religious buildings, some of them hundreds of years in the making. Micah sees the artfully cut wood of the official buildings, and the carefully hewn stones of the temple complex, all architecturally impressive. Yet Micah also sees the human cost of these buildings. "Zion,” Micah declares, “has been build with blood, and Jerusalem with wrong!” Perhaps some of his own townsmen from Moresheth had been involved in forced labor assignments and paid only a pittance. Micah then lets his prophetic gaze fall on the public officials, who accept bribes and render judgments based on extortion. Then his eye falls on the temple, where priests and prophets are motivated more by a love for money than by the integrity of their profession. Micah decries the greed of those religious leaders who teach for a price and give oracles for money. Like John the Baptist, Micah declares that prosperity without justice is doomed, and God is not in it.
The December issue of The Atlantic magazine contains a provocative cover story titled, “Did Christianity Cause the Crash?” The short answer is “no,” but the article does describe the growing tendency in Christianity to equate the gospel with material blessing, with money. So-called prosperity preachers command some of the nation’s most influential pulpits and largest congregations. The article points out that in American religious life prosperity preaching is proliferating with its message that the faithful will be rewarded with wealth. Oral Roberts is considered the father of the prosperity gospel. He developed his famous concept of seed faith. Roberts would tell people that if they would donate money to his ministry as a “seed “offered to God, then God would multiply it a hundredfold. I’m not sure how many seed offerings returned hundredfold to the giver, but this approach did return a financial windfall to Roberts, enabling him to live a life that revolved around private jets and country clubs. Prosperity preachers bask in their Italian suits, sleek cars and large homes. They point to all these as blessings and declare, “Surely the Lord is with us. No harm shall come upon us.”
Of course, you recall that the money-grubbing priests of Micah’s day made that same pious claim. But the prophetic, and perhaps unwelcome, message of Advent is that we can’t claim God’s presence if we’re doing God’s will. During the terrible persecution and suffering of the Jews in Nazi Germany, Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned that only those Christians who cried out on behalf of the Jews could sing the Gregorian Chants. Similarly, in our day, only as we share our goods with the poor, fight for the rights of the left out, the underpaid, the under nourished and the uninsured do we have any right to sing, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.”
Perhaps the most unwelcome aspect of Micah’s prophetic word is the shocking totality of the destruction it announces. Because of the injustice that characterizes the city of Zion, the prophet declares that Zion will become like a plowed field, Jerusalem a heap of ruins, and the temple a denuded mound, where only a few trees were left standing. It must have been hard for Micah’s listeners to imagine that the splendor around them would one day be flattened like a plowed field. To be honest, I don’t know quite what to make of these visions of destruction. At the very least, these visions make us face the fact that any society, economic or political system, city or individual that is built upon structures of injustice, characterized by corruption and fueled by greed will not stand forever.
In fact, Micah--and the prophets in general—never preach judgment apart from hope, or destruction apart from the promise of a new day. Micah’s image of a plowed field may be a symbol of judgment, but it’s also a place where the seed of something new can be planted and grow. In the very next verses, Micah begins to envision a day when “nations will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks…and will not lift up a sword against nation...and all shall sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees.” See how the bad news of judgment is in tension with the good news of God’s coming day of peace and justice? The final slide in the prophet’s vision is not a plowed field but a harvest of righteousness.
So friends, while our first temptation may be to grab these scruffy prophets by the neck and usher them out of our seasonal celebrations like uninvited guests, let’s resist that response. Instead let’s hear them out, for they save us from thinking that we can sing “Glory to God in the highest” if we aren’t serving God among the lowest. They turn us toward the coming light, not by escaping or ignoring the darkness, but by facing it in faith, hope and love.
In this season of Advent, let us prepare the way of the Lord, not just with Christmas trees and colored lights, but with lives that are being transformed into the likeness of the one who comes…Jesus Christ the Lord.