ADVENT II-C, December 7, 200

What if today’s Gospel reading began, not "In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was Governor of Judea," but began "In the third year of the Administration of George W. Bush, when Thomas Vilsack was governor of the State of Iowa, Paul Pate was Mayor of Cedar Rapids, during the time when Alan Scarfe was Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Iowa, the word of the Lord came to...you, came to me"? What if?

Frightening thought, isn’t it? The word of God coming to you or to me as it came to John the Baptist, not out in the wilderness but right here in Cedar Rapids, in 21st Century America. That would almost make the Christmas story a little too up close and personal when we really like it the way it is: a 2000 year-old-tale of a baby born in a barn because there was no room in the inn. The other details make it all the more heart-warming: shepherds, Magi, angels singing in the sky. If we keep the story distant, and if we keep the details schmaltzy, we can enjoy the feast without getting too involved.

But bringing the story home is a little too discomforting. Keep John the Baptist back then and keep him and his message away from us. But why? Are we afraid of getting involved in the Christmas story, really involved: involved like the people of John’s time? If the truth were known, the answer is probably "yes." Poet Annie Dillard asserts that most of us Christians seem like cheerful, brainless tourists who have not the foggiest notion of the power of prayer or of the God we invoke in prayer, the God we worship and serve. And we truly don’t.

The reason we do not is that we often come at our faith as sightseers, as tourists. We stand on the sidelines, on the shore, and listen and learn, maybe put our foot in the water to get a feel for the temperature of the water. When we discover it is a little to hot for comfort, we back off and walk away. In many ways we are like the majority of the people who came to hear John the Baptist. They, too, were tourists, sightseers, curiosity seekers. They went out to see John much as you and I would go out to listen to the latest guru who comes to town. We’ll listen with arms folded, think a little, then walk away if he gets too personal, if he asks too much of us in the way of response.

I mean, let’s face it, in terms of success, John was a failure. He didn’t pack them in like Billy Graham. And he didn’t make many converts. If the truth were known, I suspect only a small handful of people really listened to John and followed him. The rest acted and responded like cheerful, brainless tourists on a sightseeing expedition. They may have been full of awe and wonder because John dared take on the religious and civil authorities of his day, but they did not get involved. That was too dangerous and too uncomfortable.

John did not convert too many people. But he converted enough. His message changed enough minds and hearts so that Jesus, when it was his turn to preach, had at least a small listening audience. Without John’s preparing the way, Jesus would have failed.

Of course, when you think about it, Jesus wasn’t much of a success either, not by today’s standards. There are more of us here at Christ Church than ever followed Jesus, truly followed Jesus, truly believed in him and his message. Like John, most of the people who came to hear Jesus turned out to be curiosity seekers. They listened to his message, thought it sounded pretty good; but when it came to living it out, they backed away. It was simply too demanding, too life-changing, too threatening.

To tell the truth even further, if the word of God would come today, if the word of God would come to you or to me the way it did to John the Baptist, we would be called to preach exactly the same message John preached 2000 years ago. Nothing has really changed. The world today may be more advanced. We may live longer, have more material goods -- at least some of us -- but we are not vastly different when it comes to faith and morals. Sin is still with us, in the same kind and to the same degree. We would be hard pressed to discover any moral difference between the people who heard John the Baptist’s message back then than who would hear a modern-day John the Baptist’s message today.

Nor would the message itself change. In fact, nothing I have ever said in the thousands of sermons I have preached has not been said before. Nothing I will say you have not heard before. So why do I get up Sunday after Sunday and preach sermons you’ve heard before only in different words?

We’ve all probably heard the old story about the young Rector who, in his first sermon, preached a wonderful sermon. Everyone, but everyone, said so. They knew they had called the right person to be their Rector. And they eagerly awaited his next sermon. He got up in the pulpit the next week and, to their utter amazement, preached the exact same sermon he did the week before. He did the same thing for three more weeks until the Senior Warden came to him and said, "Father, that was a great sermon. But you’ve been preaching it for five weeks in a row. When are you going to preach a new one?" To which the young priest responded, "Whenever the people put into practice what I preached in this one."

In many ways every sermon is a variation on the same theme, a variation on John’s message: Company’s coming. Jesus is coming. Before we can truly welcome Jesus into our lives, into our homes, we have to clean up the mess inside. For some of us the mess is greater than for others. But no one lives in a spotless home. No one is sinless. We will never be, but we can always make it cleaner for the guest. We can always be better.

When I first moved to West Virginia almost thirty years ago, the West Virginia Turnpike was a two-lane road that wound over, in and around the many mountains and hills and valleys from Charleston to the Virginia border. It was a nightmare to drive even in the best of weather under the best of conditions.

Several years later the state made the turnpike a modern, four-lane highway. They had to blast through stone mountains and build dozens of bridges. In one short stretch seven bridges cross the same creek, all to make the road straight. To use Isaiah’s and John the Baptist’s imagery, valleys were filled and mountains and hills made low, rough ways were made smooth. It was an almost impossible task; it was daunting, but it was completed.

Building the turnpike and watching it being built is not akin to listening to John the Baptist -- or Jesus or any preacher -- and putting into practice what is preached. The reality is that neither John nor Jesus -- nor any preacher for that matter -- is asking anyone to build a turnpike through a mountain. All that is being asked of us, again, is to clean up our rooms. Sometimes those rooms may be a real mess, but we can clean them up. And the way we clean them up is one piece of clothing, one dirty bookshelf at a time.

John knew, Jesus knew, every preacher, I hope, knows, that change takes place slowly. Making roads straight, leveling mountains, filling valleys takes time and hard work. So does living out our faith at times. So does cleaning up our rooms, cleaning up our hearts and lives. But it all begins with taking that first step. John the Baptist’s message today would be the same as his message 2000 years ago. "Company’s coming. Jesus is coming. Your room’s a mess. Clean it up, one step at a time. And start now."