Scripture: Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 3:7-18

“…[S]omeone is coming, someone who is more powerful than I am, and I am not worthy to undo the strap of his sandals…”

-- Luke 3:16

We are still with John the Baptist ready to hear more straight talk from his lips. Last Sunday he told us to do what we can to change our minds from minds that cannot tell the difference between good and evil to minds that are attuned to the will and wisdom of God. He told us what a simple thing it is to be attuned to God’s will, simply to share our goods with the poor, to be just and honest in our dealings, and not to deceive ourselves. The source of the energy for this change of mind comes from God, who at this time is coming to us with a new offer of the opportunity to get in touch with His truth. “Make straight ways for God in the desert of your mind!” he cried last week, and this week he gives us more straight talk about how to set foot upon the straight way. His message is, “You are not the one!”

The second message for today comes as last week from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, “ I want you to be happy, always happy in the Lord; I repeat, what I want is your happiness. Let your tolerance be evident to everyone: the Lord is very near. There is no need to worry; but if there is anything you need, pray for it, asking God for it with prayer and thanksgiving, and the peace of God, which is so much greater than we can understand will guard your hearts and minds, in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:6-7).” If Christmas is really to be a celebration of peace on earth, that peace has to be the inner peace of heart and mind that God gives, the miraculous peace that is “so much greater than we can understand,” because out there the world’s wars grind on, and, sadly, the little town of Bethlehem is at this moment on a battlefield, patrolled by military personnel, its population terrorized into submission. The birthplace of the Prince of Peace has become uninhabitable for Christians who are fleeing by the score and leaving it to others as a place where they can fight out their bitter hatreds. The only peace there is on earth is the peace of our hearts and minds that God gives miraculously, to those who think straight.

So we have two mutually dependent messages for today, “You are not the one!” and “there is a miraculous peace which God gives in our hearts and minds when we think straight and entrust ourselves to him thankfully in prayer.” Let us take up each one in turn, and then relate them to each other and try to internalize them as we prepare for Christmas.

In Luke’s gospel the message “I am not the one,” has to be inferred from John’s statement that a greater one than he is coming, whose sandal straps he is unworthy to stoop and untie. In John’s gospel they ask John directly who he is and he answers, “…quite openly, ‘I am not the Christ’ (John 1:21).” The first thing that comes to mind when I hear this disclaimer is the perhaps naughty notion that we would all be better off if more clergy were as modest and realistic as John, and more laypersons appreciative of the fact that they do not have Jesus Christ working for them, but just another human being like themselves. The pathological extreme of this syndrome are the Jim Jones’ of this world whose catastrophe was memorialized recently in the local newspaper. Twenty years ago people followed him from San Francisco to mass suicide in the jungles of Guiana. TV evangelists and that type of miracle monger occupy the mid-region of the spectrum of such madness and the nearside features the clergy who in their own minds and self- presentation believe the Holy Spirit speaks to them and through them directly, and so disagreement with their desires is disobedience to God. All members of this spectrum suck people into adoring them and instead of God filling hearts and minds the hero clergyperson does. We must all join John the Baptist, clergy and laity alike, and say loudly to ourselves and to one another, “I am not the one!” Unless we do this the group dynamics in a religious community afflicted by this malaise, and my colleagues lead me to believe that it is the majority of such communities, will continue to be the usual debilitating mix of excessive expectation and exaggerated disappointment. Let us all say together, “I am not the one!” with the clear corollary that only God can do for us what we need to have done.

So our first bit more of straight talk is not to expect of our fellow humans what we can legitimately expect only of God. The second is that if we take this to heart and act on it we shall live happy lives. “I want you to be happy,” says the Apostle. “There is no need to worry, but if there is anything you need, pray for it, asking God for it with prayer and thanksgiving, and the peace of God, which is so much greater than we can understand, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:6-7).”  Here is the great inwardness of our faith! It is a truism that while we have no ultimate control over what happens to us we do have ultimate control over how we respond to what happens to us. We cannot control the external world very much, but we can control our inwardness.

The most frequent inward response to what happens is anxiety. Some people even suffer what we call “panic attacks.” And most of us have so much anxiety to spare that we worry fiercely about what has not yet happened and probably never will happen, indeed, the not yet happened is probably the source of more anguish than the already happened. Have you ever heard people with a dire medical prognosis say that it is better at last to know than to imagine and worry? So the Apostle says, “Don’t worry, just pray with thanksgiving and the peace of God, so much greater than we can understand, will keep our hearts from fear and our minds from awful imaginings.” This will only work, however, if you are quite clear that you are not the one!

How then might we in conclusion bring the two poles of today’s readings together? Let me be autobiographical. The only sure thing I believe I can say at this point in my life is that while I might from time to time have lost my hold on God, God has never lost His hold on me. I might have doubted God but God has never doubted me. I might have been unfaithful to God, but God has never been unfaithful to me, never ceased to trust me. This realization of the primacy and priority of the love and grace of God in my life comes to expression in John’s demurrer, “I am not the one.” You remember how Dickens’ “David Copperfield” begins, “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.” I’m happy to say that in my life that station is indeed held by somebody else, and I hope that is the case with you. For that reason I do not worry, even though all around is war, lies and trivial nonsense, which our great commercial culture calls Christmas and pimps as peace on earth. There is a peace that passes human understanding, so do not worry, and make your needs known simply and directly to God, with thanksgiving.

If you go, as I have, to the town of Colmar in Alsace, just across the French border from Basel in Switzerland, you must visit the Isenheim Altar of Matthaus Grunewald in the museum there. Grunewald painted the altar in the 14th century when the Black Death ravaged Europe. Two thirds of the population of Europe died of this bubonic plague, and its impact on the living was perhaps even more terrible than on the dead. In order to live many had to abandon the sick and dying, and so the moral impact was terrible. The Christ of Grunewald is a great, gray figure, flayed and rotting, with the skin peeling from his disintegrating flesh, a truly pitiful, even revolting picture of the Suffering Servant from whom we turn away in disgust. These traditional altars come in three panels – they are called triptychs – and the secondary panels always present the Virgin on the Christ’s and John the Baptist on the left. In the case of the Isenheim altar the John figure is covered with animal skins, and out of them protrudes a huge knotty hand with an even bigger gnarled and knotted finger pointing to the Crucified. In all its shock and ugliness there is a peace that passes human understanding, and this is what John’s bony finger indicates as it declares robustly, “I am not the one! He is the one! that poor and ugly Jesus, he  is the Savior of the world, he is the Prince of Peace.

I am not the one, so don’t worry, be happy! That is John’s advent message to us today!