Reverend Philip Stringer
Luke 3:7-18
LET US PRAY: Come, Lord Jesus -- and fill us with expectant waiting. Give us ears that hear your coming and receiving hearts. Come and lead us into the world to serve you, as we watch and pray for your coming in Glory. AMEN
You may have seen the scene in A Charlie Brown Christmas, where Sally asks Charlie Brown to help with her letter to Santa Claus by writing as she dictates.
“I have been extra good this year, so I have a long list of presents that I want . . . Please note the size and color of each item and send as many as possible. If it seems too complicated, make it easy on yourself: just send money. How about tens and twenties?”
To which Charlie Brown groans, “TENS AND TWENTIES? Oh, even my baby sister!”
Sally answers, “All I want is what I have coming to me. All I want is my fair share.”
I think John the Baptist would have liked Sally, because John the Baptist proclaimed what is fair.
In this Advent Season we celebrate the coming of Jesus. And thankfully for us, Jesus was not at all fair. Instead, Jesus was gracious and loving.
Today the Word of God comes to us with the good news that NOT ONLY does Jesus love us; Jesus wants us to be as unfair as he is! Jesus wants us to be gracious and loving, too!
A number of years ago the author, Daniel Erlander, drew an illustrated Bible study called Manna and Mercy. In it he re-tells the story of the Hebrew people wandering in the desert for 40 years following their deliverance from slavery in Egypt. Erlander speaks of the desert as God’s “classroom,” where God teaches them faith.
To survive in the desert, God gave them bread from heaven that they called “Manna.” Moses instructed them to go out each morning to collect the fine substance up before the rising sun melted it away. “Gather only enough for yourself and your family to eat this day,” he instructed them, “The Lord will provide enough for today and tomorrow the Lord will provide enough for you again.”
But some of the people gathered up more than their fair share and when they went to eat it they found that it was rotten and filled with worms.
Daniel Erlander sums up the meaning of the lesson they learned with two words: “Hoarding stinks!”
If you take more than you need, things will wind up rotten. Selfishness and hoarding are not the ways of God.
When John the Baptist came (IN THE WILDERNESS — btw), he echoed this lesson as he called the people to righteous living — which is why I said that I think he would like Sally Brown. John said to the people who came out to him, “take only your fair share.” He knew that hoarding stinks.
But he also knew that what God would accomplish through the Messiah would catch them all by surprise. “One who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals.”
And when we look at Jesus, it is easy to see that he was right. Jesus turned the teachings of John upside down — and it surprised even John. While John proclaimed a justice rooted in one’s “fair share,” Jesus proclaimed a justice rooted in loving relationships.
John the Baptist said, “If you have two coats, keep the one you need and give the other away.
But Jesus said, “If someone comes and asks for the very shirt off of your back, let them have it.”
John told the tax collectors, “Collect only the amount prescribed for you.” And he told the soldiers — “Don’t extort money from anyone with threats or false accusations.”
John told the tax collectors and the soldiers to do no harm to others.
Jesus told his followers not only to avoid doing harm, but to actively seek to do good for others.
(Martin Luther made the distinction in his explanation of the SEVENTH COMMANDMENT: You shall not steal. “What does this mean?
We should fear and love God, so that we do not take our neighbor’s money or goods, nor get them in any dishonest way, but help him to improve and protect his goods and means of making a living.”)
John told his listeners to be satisfied with your fair share, whereas Jesus called his followers to not be satisfied until their neighbor was safe and had every good thing.
What Jesus taught is that your fair share is given to you so that you may have something to share.
What Jesus proclaimed — and what Jesus modeled — was decidedly and decisively UNfair, — BEYOND fair — it was loving! and it was strikingly different from what John and his followers expected.
The summation of Jesus’ UNfairness bursts upon us in John’s own words as he offers imagery of the Messiah as the Thresher.
“His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
I wonder if John recognized how truly UNfair those words were, because when a person hears those words from the perspective of people getting their fair share — they convey something quite different from when one hears them from the perspective of a loving God.
Most people approach these words with an interpretation of “good people and bad people.” The good people are gathered like grain into the storehouse, but the bad people are punished like chaff being burned in a fire.
But the truth is that the chaff and the grain are BOTH parts of the wheat! The chaff is the husks and stems that surround the grain, which must be shaken and broken loose in order to draw forth the grain.
I looked up the definition of the word, “chaff,” and the word literally means, “worthless things. trash, garbage.”
You and I are like that wheat. It is Jesus, the Thresher, who lifts off of us the trash and garbage of our sin. He purifies us with the unquenchable fire of his love and gathers us in.
Jesus UNfairly and lovingly gives himself away for us. He calls us to live UNfairly, too. Because the meaning of life is not found in things — it is found in loving one another. Live for others and you will live, indeed.
Jesus loves us all — and if the characters in A Charlie Brown Christmas were real people, he would love all of them, too — but among the characters in A Charlie Brown Christmas, I think he would be particularly fond of Linus, because Linus is the one who best articulates the UNfair love of Jesus.
He and Charlie Brown go out to select a tree for the Christmas pageant. They have been told to get the biggest, loudest, fanciest tree possible. Instead, Charlie Brown selects a scrawny, pathetic little scrap of a tree because, he says, “I think it needs me.” As a result, the other kids ridicule and insult him.
Soon, though, Linus kneels down beside the tree and says, “I never thought it was such a bad little tree.” He wraps his most prized possession — his security blanket — around its base and says, “it’s not bad at all, really. Maybe it just needs a little love.”
Do you suppose that this is how Jesus wants us to view the world?
Do you suppose that this is how Jesus wants us to view each other?
Paul writes in our Second Reading today, “Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.” Today the Word of God comes to us with the good news that NOT ONLY does Jesus love us; Jesus wants us to be as UNfair as he is! The unquenchable fire of his love is burning still!
Everything you have is given so that you may have something to give. Because life isn’t about getting our fair share — It’s about loving one another!
“Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.”
AMEN
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