Sermon: Malachi 3:1-4; Luke 3:1-6
Messages come at us through all sorts of media these days, if we choose to use them: landline, mobile phone, email, Facebook, text, Twitter, even good old-fashioned pen or pencil to paper. But poor old John the Baptist had the advantage of none of these - though some of us may be tempted to envy him his lack of electronic media. He had to rely on a much older method of communication: listening and speaking.
When John wanted to hear what God was saying to him, he went into the desert to listen. And doing that, he was following a distinguished tradition. Moses heard God in the desert when he was leading his flock and turned aside to look at a bush that wouldn't stop burning. Elijah heard God in the desert when he was running away from King Ahab and his own depression: the still small voice in the middle of wind and earthquake, fire and storm. It makes sense that when we want to hear something very faint, we go where there is the least interference from competing messages. And in the desert, John found a place where he could listen hard enough to hear the difference between God's voice and his own, which isn't always easy.
When John was sure it was God's message he was hearing, he knew it was not for his own benefit alone. So he started to travel in the area around the Jordan River, not going into villages or cities but letting word of mouth inform others to join him in the countryside, hearing what he had to say.
And what was John's message from God, spoken from his desert soapbox? Turn around, change your mind, come back to God, and show you're serious about it by washing away your old life in the Jordan. We know from the verses following our reading from Luke that he didn't soften his words to make people like him. Who told you, you could escape God's anger? he demanded of the Jewish crowds. Don't rely on all your years of synagogue-going; God can make new and better followers out of the desert rocks if your lives don't match up to the challenge of your faith. When they asked him, What should we do, then? his answers were simple.
Share what you have with those in need. Don't cheat others, even if custom lets you get away with it. Don't make your wealth out of other people's work. And don't look for more than you need to live. Advice that's still good, not just for bankers and MPs but for us too.
People were so impressed by John telling it like it was that he was in danger of being mistaken for God's leader, the Messiah. It would have been easy for him to foster that mistake, just to make sure they were listening to him. After all, his message was from God, wasn't it?
But John refused to let who he was get tangled up with what God wanted of him. His flesh and blood, his evident passionate face-to-face sincerity was the medium of God's message; but John was not the message. Yet Jesus, both God's medium and God's message, was on his way.
We tend to think of Jesus differently from his cousin John. If John as a prophet specialised in disturbing the comfortable, pointing out to good religious people how God wanted them to live differently, as if their religion had an effect on their everyday lives, we often see Jesus as humble, gentle, meek and mild: healing the sick, loving the outcast and forgiving the enemy, not opening his mouth under false accusation, dying to cleanse us from the grubbiness of our lives.
That's all true. But Jesus is God's medium as well as God's message. So in him there can be no discontinuity between God's mercy and God's justice. God through Isaiah's prophecy John quotes in our reading today promises salvation - wholeness and healing - for God's people. Yet God in Malachi's prophecy promises a hard time for those who think they have achieved perfection. And for us Jesus is both God's disturbance and God's comfort. Take for example the bread and wine which we shall shortly be sharing. When God's people first shared this meal, it meant liberation from slavery in Egypt. But for the Egyptians, it also meant wholesale bereavement, as in every household the firstborn died; except in the households of Israel where lamb's blood smeared over the door gave them exemption from mourning.
When Jesus and his friends first shared this meal, it meant inclusion in God's company for those who had long been shut out of religious life. But it also meant scandal for the faithful, as tax-collectors and prostitutes flocked to eat and drink with Jesus - and even his own followers didn't wash their hands properly before they ate!
When Jesus and his closest friends shared bread and wine just before Passover, liberation and welcome, scandal and death were at the table together. He took the old story of God's rescue and gave it new meaning, sharing his very life with his friends, a life soon to be laid down for them and for all when the world's unjust values would collide with the justice of God's kingdom. Now when we eat bread and drink wine together, we can gain great comfort from God's promise of liberation and welcome. Yet unless we can tie in this meal we are about to share with the life of the world and our own lives, we are blocking God's message, worshipping Jesus lite, who offers only comfort, not challenge.
This danger may be particularly real as we approach December 25th and the coming of the Christmas child. Yes, babies are sweet - except when they cry, which Jesus undoubtedly did. But little children across the world are dying for lack of clean water and basic medical care, and little children coming into our church need our welcome and our interest in their families. How does our love of baby Jesus extend to children in urgent need of food in Ethiopia, or of love in Broomhall? Again, when we share bread and wine, how can we forget people dying of hunger because our trade system is unfair, or those in our midst whose problem may be isolation or loneliness, whose hunger is for a friendly word from us?
So as we prepare ourselves for Jesus' coming to us, in bread and wine, in the manger and in all our neighbours, we still need to heed John's message: Share what you have with those in need. Don't cheat others, even if custom lets you get away with it. Don't make your wealth out of other people's work. And don't look for more than you need to live.