Advent 3

This is the time of year for last-minute gift suggestions. Our mailboxes and e-mail start to fill up with them in late November. The pitch goes something like this: “Only X number of shopping days until Christmas! Here are some great gift suggestions for that special someone. Guaranteed delivery by December 24, if you order today!”

Some of us are last-minute gift-givers and appreciate the helpful reminder. A few of us began our Christmas shopping with post-Christmas sales a year ago. Most of us are somewhere in between.

However we approach the annual shopping spree, it’s a pretty fair bet that at some point during the Advent season most of us are faced with the question, “What should I give?” It’s a question retailers love to hear because a large portion of their annual revenue arrives in November and December.

The biblical wise men knew what to give: gold, frankincense and myrrh, which are replicated by those mysterious foil-wrapped parcels held out by bath-robed and cotton-bearded kids in church Christmas pageants. Gold: the sign of royalty. Frankincense: those waxy crystals that, when burned, emit an aroma associated with high church traditions and holiness. Myrrh: a pungent spice, used in ancient times to anoint dead bodies for burial — and in the case of the Christ child, an ominous foreshadowing of things to come.

Did you know the New Testament offers a Christmas gift-giving guide? It comes from a man most would consider an unusual candidate for personal shopping consultant: John the Baptist.

Old John doesn’t much resemble the picture that comes to mind when we hear the words, “personal shopper.” He doesn’t favor the elegant duds of Fifth Avenue or Rodeo Drive (or whatever high-fashion boutiques there may have been in Old Jerusalem). Luke’s gospel doesn’t tell us what he looked like, but Matthew and Mark do. They say John wore “clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist” (Matthew 3:4).

Camel hair clothing is actually a thing. You can find high-end sport jackets and overcoats that are woven of the stuff — but John’s garb was much less elegant. As for that leather belt wound around his waist, let’s just say it wasn’t Gucci.

Of course, there is one good thing we Christians can say about John the Baptist: He’s all ours. Nobody else wants him. He hasn’t been adopted or co-opted by the Christmas merchants at all, and with good reason. What on earth would Hallmark do with him? Can’t you just see it?  “Greetings from our house to yours. Our thoughts of you at this time of year are best expressed in the words of John the Baptist, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?’ Merry Christmas!”

But John was there to get people ready for the Messiah — not for the baby Jesus, but for the man he would become. So, as we celebrate Advent, there is good reason for us to stand on the banks of the river Jordan instead of waiting in the maternity ward with Mary. Because John has something important to say to us about preparing for Christmas, and it’s something we aren’t going to get anywhere else.

John’s message can be summed up in one sentence: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

Does it sound too gloomy for the season? Perhaps at first, but we need to understand that in fact this is very good news! When John urged his wilderness congregation to “repent,” he didn’t mean it in the way we usually think about it. He didn’t mean they should make a list of the things they’d done wrong or sit around feeling guilty about the past. If that were the case, he would have been wasting his breath. People do not simply turn away from a way of life just because they’re told to. They only do so when they are offered something deeper and truer to turn toward. And that’s what John was offering them. 

People flocked to John, not out of fear, but out of excitement. When they saw the way he was dressed, they didn’t snicker; they were amazed. Anyone with eyes to see in those days would have recognized that John was dressed like the great Old Testament prophet Elijah. And in the popular Judaism of Jesus’ day, people believed that Elijah would reappear when the Messiah was about to come. So when John showed up in the wilderness, dressed like Elijah and preaching like the prophets, he embodied the heart and soul of Israel’s faith.

 So the crowds just kept going out to the wilderness to hear what John had to say. John offered one thing no one else in the religion business seemed to offer: truth. Folks will come a long way and put up with all sorts of hardships — even getting dunked in muddy river-water — if by so doing they’ll encounter the truth.

United Methodist preacher William Willimon, then campus minister at Duke University, once warned his listeners in a campus chapel service:

“If you are going to graduate, you must first get past the English Department. If you are going to practice law, you must pass the bar. If you want to get to medical school, you must survive Organic Chemistry.”

Likewise, “If you want to get to the joy of Bethlehem in the presence of Jesus, you must get past John the Baptist in the desert.” John’s a demanding professor. The final for his course has some tough assignments:

If you’re a fashionista, give half your clothes away. If you’re a foodie, invite a beggar to your feast. If you’re a shyster, stop cheating people. If you’re a bully, become a model of kindness.

You’ve got to stop being a taker, if you want to experience Christmas rightly. You’ve got to become a giver.

 In today’s Gospel, some tax collectors come up to John and ask, “What should we do?”

His reply: “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.”

Some soldiers come up and ask, “What about us? What should we do?”

John answers, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusations, and be satisfied with your wages.”

Tax collectors and soldiers in Roman times were notorious for their corrupt ways. They often worked together, in fact, to fleece the common folk. The tax-collectors worked on commission. Can you imagine if you went into your accountant for help with your tax return, and they struck out a bunch of deductions because they earn a percentage of the tax you owe?

As for the soldiers, they were the enforcers. It’s as though a corrupt cop pulled you over for a traffic ticket, assessed a cash fine right there on the spot, then pocketed the whole thing.

The answer for us is pretty much the same as the one John gave to those people in the wilderness. Do some Christmas giving, only don’t limit your giving to “the usual suspects,” the ones who gather around your Christmas tree each year, who give you gifts in return. Give to the least, the lost, the lonely. Give to them directly, if you know any such people. Or give through the church and its mission.

As we do so, we follow the example of none other than Jesus himself. For Jesus ultimately came into this world to give. He came to give himself, on the cross, so that we may have life, and have it abundantly.

It was no easy gift he gave. It demanded all he had, and all he was. But look at the result: a world set free from the power of sin and death!

The best way to honor his gift to us is to pass it on, by giving to others in his name.