You can find the audio of this sermon here.
Isaiah 11:1-10 | Romans 15:4-13 | Matthew 3:1-12 | Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19
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When I was twelve, growing up in rural San Diego County, I remember standing out on our deck, leaning out as far as I could to see the tongues of flame lapping up from behind the hillside in the wide expanse of brush between between our house and town. Tall, red flames, twenty or thirty feet high I could see, and because it was evening, only faint black smudges of smoke that rose up, lit from below. On and on the fires burned, but away from us, so there was no need to worry.
Later on, when I was in high school, I remember coming back from a backpacking trip in Yosemite, driving down the Five, through the path of a wildfire, still burning off to the west. Again, I could see the tall, red and orange flames eating up the hillside, consuming the dry brush and leaving a charred wasteland behind. Scorched, ashy, shades of dark gray and black. I remember thinking about the contrast between this utter devastation and the beautiful alpine lakes and seemingly untouched wilderness I had just left.
And then just a few years ago, I walked around Camp Stevens, the Episcopal camp in San Diego, walking amidst the wreckage of the fire that had all but destroyed the place. Hillsides of matchsticks that had once been trees, and a pile of rubble that had once been the camp’s chapel. Fire ran through the camp, eating up everything it could touch, taking, consuming, destroying.
And it is with these memories in mind that I hear the words of John the Baptist: “His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” Unquenchable fire. These are not the words of a Christmas carol or an Advent hymn. For most of us, these words do not come as tidings of comfort and joy. We are waiting for the birth of our savior. We wanted a King who would bring justice, and instead, he is coming to take what we have and burn it all away.
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In the earliest days of the church, those first Christians did something naughty. Something illegal, really. They took titles that justly belonged to the Emperor and stuck them on somebody else. Somebody dead.
Look around you as you go out into the mess of holiday shopping that the world has suddenly become, and listen to the music, look for the signs. They’re getting fewer and farther between as Christmas becomes more and more thoroughly secularized, sanitized and sterilized, but here and there you will still see and hear the old titles, “Prince of Peace,” “Son of God,” “King of Kings.” It’s no secret anymore that these are names that were more properly attributed to Caesar, to the Emperor. And in putting this titles on the name of a dead, crucified criminal, the early Christians were daring the authority of the Empire to come crashing down on them like a tidal wave, to wash them away as though they had never existed.
In the Roman Empire, as in all empires in human history, the titles of Prince, Lord, and King have always meant power. They have meant power of the strong over the weak, the rich over the poor, men over women, the deserving over the undeserving. Rome had claimed these titles on account of their Roman Peace. “The sheep are safe,” they said, “because we have killed the wolf. The Lambs and cows and children are safe, for we have killed the lion and the bear and exterminated the asp and the adder. Your are safe because we are strong. We are the king who makes you safe, the Lord who gives you security. Truly the Emperor is the Prince of Peace.”
But the early church took the old titles and did something else with them.
Two weeks ago, we heard Luke’s account of the story of Jesus’ crucifixion. The disciples and all of Jesus’ followers had built up their hopes for the liberation of Judea. They were sure that this man was their promised king, the one who would save them from the oppression of Rome. This is the man that will punish the wicked and reward the righteous. This is the king, the True King.
Only, he wasn’t.
Jesus was executed.
The Romans did put a sign over his head that read “The King of the Judeans.”
“There is one emperor, one Caesar,” the Romans said, “and this, is what we think of your ‘king’.”
The disciples panicked. They had run and fled into the fire Jesus had lit on the cross, and through it, met Jesus resurrected. He met them in their fear and took it away, like the fire consumes a hillside. Their dreams of power and delusions of fear were eaten up by the pain of the cross.
And only then did see, and they looked up to the cross and said, “Yes. This is our king. This is what we mean by kingship. This man, hanging on a cross. Tortured to death and shamed. This is our king. The Prince of Peace and Lord of Lords. This man is the Son of God.
When we say King, we do not mean you. We do not mean your power. We mean this. A helpless victim. His innocence burns away the lies of your power, your promises of peace that come at the expense of our bodies. You have not killed the wolf, the lion, the bear: you are the wolf who eats the sheep the lion who eats the lamb. And in his innocence, this man exposes your fears. Your fears that if you do not eat us you will go hungry. That if you do not poison us, there will not be enough for you to eat. But this man you have crucified offers you more than that. ‘Come, dine with us‘ is his invitation, for there is more than enough and no need to fear. Here is our King,” they said. “Here is his mighty judgement.”
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And it is into this path that we are invited in this season of preparation. We are invited by God as we prepare to celebrate the Incarnation of God in human history by walking into the unquenchable fire and having our fears burned away.
What are you afraid of this Advent? What is looking you in the face and claiming its power over you? What in you needs to be burned away, left by the roadside as you walk along the way that we are called to follow. Because the fire is not optional. We have that clearly from John the Baptist’s mouth. And we know. We know what it’s like to have your illusions burned away. The lies unmasked, the truth laid bare. And the truth hurts sometimes, right?
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The first Christians paid for their crime. They were hunted and persecuted, betrayed and put to death. Failing to give the right offerings to prove their loyalty to the empire, they were executed just as their king was.
And in the days and years that followed, their fear was burned away, leaving faith and hope. Looking forward to the future without knowing what it held, only trusting that Christ was going ahead of them.
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There is nothing that I can say that will make the next few weeks, the next few years of any of our lives be more simple. Easier. Less painful.
The days between Thanksgiving and Christmas have become almost proverbially chaotic. Nothing I can say will make them less so. But we are invited in the gospel into a different vision of the chaos of our lives. Cleansed in the fires of baptism from the power of our fears, our histories, our broken relationships to determine our lives, our desires, our ability to see one another, we are freed to begin again the work of reconciliation.
We come to this table each week, together in our disagreements and differences, to join now the feast at which wolf dines with sheep and lion with lamb. To fear neither that we will be eaten or will go hungry, but rather to feast together.
We no longer need to fear that our relationships need always be broken or our hopes always dashed. We are invited to die to those fears and live again in hope, looking for foundations of the kingdom ruled not in power, but in the spirit of wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
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A few years after I visited the camp that had burned, I returned to work as a chaplain. I remember walking up and down the hillsides, still marveling at the skeletal black tree trunks that lettered the landscape.
The camp had almost finished rebuilding, and green shoots were growing from the stumps of the old. The fire had burned and left rich, rich soil. New life had begun.
