Redeemer, Sarasota
December 17, 2017 – Advent 3
It is a joy to be with you this morning here at Redeemer. My wife Mary and I are very grateful to you for your kind and generous hospitality offered to us as we visit with you.
Such kind and generous hospitality mirrors the generosity that you as a community of faith offer to many in the larger community who are in need of many different necessities—and most especially in need of knowing that they are loved by God and by you as bearers of God’s presence and God’s grace.
I commend you for the outreach ministries that you carry out! Ringing bells for the Salvation Army around their kettles is a wonderful seasonal commitment—sharing some heart-felt joy with many who are shopping.
Your attention to children who are impoverished in the Day4Hope program outfits many of them with good clothing, fills their backpacks with supplies, and their stomachs with nourishing food; a very special day each year before the beginning of the school year including medical tests, haircuts, and photos for 250+ children. And volunteers sitting in counsel with their parents – a very unique and most generous program!
And I am also aware of your support of Resurrection House and of Caritas ministries, and the 20 year companionship with a congregation in the Dominican Republic where you are presently providing a new roof for their sanctuary.
Again—I commend you for these ministries and encourage you to continue to offer yourselves and your resources in this word of the Lord Jesus!
Who are you?—Who are you?
This is the great question we encounter in the gospel lesson this morning.
Levites and priests sent to Jerusalem by Pharisees want to know who the character is who is baptizing people in the Jordan river, who is dressed in very unusual clothing; and who expresses a deep conviction that something better is coming soon–someone who is the long-awaited Messiah sent by God!
We are told by the writer of the gospel that this man in question was also sent by God, and his name was John.
So it was John whose identity was being questioned. And how did John respond to all these people who were considered representatives of the religious power structure? He deflected all the questions about his identity away from himself—from his own person.
He denied that he was Elijah—the great prophet who was expected to one day return and again wage battle against all false Gods and idols.
John denied that he was a prophet in the great tradition of those who spoke for God by effectively identifying the grave ungodly issues of the day, and who yet also spoke of the wondrous presence of God with his people.
No—John was not Elijah. He was not a prophet. He was simply the voice of one crying in the wilderness,
‘make straight the way of the Lord’–
“who I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.”
John was ultimately imprisoned by the same religious power structure and martyred by an embattled Roman emperor.
Who are you? How do you respond to those who may come before you and want to know your true identity?
These curious people are really in abundance! They want to know your likes and dislikes—what they can sell you. They want to know your economic circumstances; your political preferences; your social status; how you live and move and have your being.
What if you—what if we—upon being asked who we are, would respond—
“I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness,
‘make straight the way of the Lord?’”
There might be some strange reactions to such a claim of identity, but would you not be sharing your true you? Would you not be deflecting away all the trappings that seem so important about identity in our culture, and instead speaking of what is in your heart—that place where what is real and most precious to you and most essential about you is found?
You and I do live in the wilderness—the wilderness of all the trappings that want to pull us away from what we believe and know is who we are called and empowered to be—those who are making straight the way of the Lord—the way of the Lord who gives of himself through the love that has no bounds, the love by which we are loved and called and empowered to share.
We are not worthy to untie the thong of the Lord’s sandal. But he has made us worthy to share with him in the offering of ourselves in the sharing of God’s unconditional love.
Who are you?—Who are we?
Like John we can easily deny that we are some great religious figure of the past who is expected to return in all his glory. And—like John—we can deny that we are of the ilk of an Old Testament prophet. But as baptized followers of Jesus blessed and empowered by his spirit, we can respond to the question of our identity by being ones who speak the truth from our hearts—speaking the truth in love in word and even more especially in deed, a voice crying out in wilderness of all the confusion and conflict and disrespect and lack of civility; a voice of word and deed that bears the love that makes all things new.
This Advent season of watching and preparing, pray and meditate upon this question of your identity, and of how you might respond anew to this important question.
And as you do so pray and meditate, hear in your heart the words of St. Paul from the epistle lesson this morning.
…”may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Sermon preached by the Rt. Rev. Barry Howe
Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota Florida
3rd Sunday of Advent
17 December 2017