advent 3 13 November 2009

Zephaniah 3. 14-20
Philippians 4. 4-7
Luke 3. 7-18

At the Parliament of World’s Religions this last week there were a number of times when reference was made to the Abrahamic religions as a significant group of the world’s faiths present there. These faiths have a deep connection stretching back millennia, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and we trace Abraham as our common ancestor. We Christians are descendents of Abraham because we are, when it comes to it, actually a sect of Judaism; albeit rather considerably mutated, but nevertheless, a sect of Judaism. And so we claim Abraham, as do Jews and Moslems, as our ancestor. Paul in his letter to the Christians in Rome makes much of the connection to Abraham. He argues that for those who are not born Jews but who act with faithfulness toward God, they are the true descendents of Abraham too, through the faith they exercise. So, we are faith-descendents rather than blood-descendents.

For this reason [the promise that we also will inherit the world] depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham - in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

John the Baptist berates those who have come out to the desert to hear him that they should get their lives in order. It seems there are probably both practicing Jews present as well as Roman soldiers and those contracted to collect taxes; maybe Jewish like Zaccheus but deeply loathed. And he warns them that being a blood-descendent of Abraham means nothing if their lives are not lived with justice and equity. You brood of vipers,( or maybe, you offspring of vipers.) Who warned you to flee from the wrath that is to come. There’s no space for hiding here.

One of the things which impressed itself upon me at the parliament was the deep commitment to justice and equity in all of the major faiths of the world. While we do have our differences there was concerted effort to focus on our similarities, especially in the face of so many issues which threaten the well-being of humanity and the life of the planet. It was this commitment to a just response to common concerns which was the united call of the parliament. A call for a more equitable world and an effective and rapid response to the profound moral challenges of our time: poverty, the climate crisis, the 30-40,000 children who die each day of curable diseases, the gross inequity between rich and poor. These are monumental problems requiring economic and technological responses but they are at the core ethical problems which demand of us some moral fortitude in order to do things differently.

It really is the same issue that John addresses. The crowds ask him in response to his call for repentance, ‘What then should we do?’: He responds ‘Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.’ Even tax-collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, ‘Teacher, what should we do?’ He said to them, ‘Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.’ Soldiers also asked him ‘And we, what should we do?’; these surely are soldiers of the occupying Roman army – it’s like US soldiers in Iraq asking: what should we do? He said to them, ‘Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.’

One of the things I was deeply conscious of while I was at the parliament was the profoundly devoted faith lives many there clearly live; simple and devout lives. I became very aware of my own secularization. I suffered from a sort of holy envy for the faith practices of many there. A couple of fellow Uniting Church ministers and I shared our sense of the inadequacy of our own Christian practice. The trappings of our secular society seem to overshadow any attention to a life of prayer, or the common practice of our communities to prayer and acts of justice and kindness. We were aware of how deeply our church communities too are shaped by secularisation; it’s really a consequence of the part the church played in Christendom, and all that represents, and now especially our confusion as Christendom has all but crumbled.

It feels like John’s charge is aimed directly at us. As though we are like those blood-descendents of Abraham against whom John’s charge is directed. We have in some sense felt safe in the church sure in our sense of what salvation is about. But when we hear the call for justice and equity we must acknowledge that we breath the same air and drink the same water as people of all faiths and none. We breath the same air as the people of the polluted cities of China and drink the same water as the residents of Tuvalu and the Ganges delta.

Luke tells us that what those who come seeking John are doing is seeking to flee from the wrath to come; whatever that might have been imagined to be. Maybe it was a sense of a coming Day of Judgment – a belief of many in Jesus’ time that very soon there would be a sorting out and a balancing up of all things. What is galvanising many in our own time is the looming climate crisis; which seems to carry with it a sense of a modern day of judgement. The idea of a tipping point for the climate has a sense about it that we need to get our house in order.

The earth is crying out: enough!
It does feel like it is sentencing day for us and the way we have lived over the past two centuries.

Our response can be to attempt to flee from the wrath to come, - to take flight ourselves and on behalf of our descendents, whatever grasping for security we imagine that fleeing might take. Fleeing to the hills; building bunkers; securing our assets; at least making sure that we and our own will be safe. The powerful can always do this. When push comes to shove the powerful have the most resources, the most weapons: we were reminded at the parliament that arms are the largest item of expenditure in the global economy – a global culture of death above all other things on this precious and sacred God-given earth.

The reading from the prophet Zephaniah and from Luke reminds us that as always God’s concern is with the outcast and the oppressed. With such tenderness the prophet speaks: Do not fear, O Zion;
 do not let your hands grow weak. 
The Lord, your God, is in your midst,
 a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness,
 he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival.

For those who have come to hear John he exhorts those with two coats to share what they have – a reminder to us in our affluence and surfeit of possessions that we take and possess too much of the bounty of the earth, so that many do without.

The challenge of John is for those of us with the power to take to act with more restraint. This is a hard message to hear. It was one of the challenges of the parliament; that the developed world needs to begin to live more simply; much more simply. We need to live with restraint. One of the things that I struggle with is how to share this message with two or three generations that have been raised in the developed world on an ethic that to splurge to excess is our birthright.

Luke tells us that with many other exhortations, John proclaimed the good news to the people. For us a message of restraint is not good news; it is profoundly unpalatable. But as the wrath of the earth threatens to break out maybe we are going to have to consider the possibility that restraint is good news; for ourselves and our children. Many wring their hands with concern for their children’s and grandchildren’s futures. But will we repent of our excess and induct them into a world which is not characterised by personal excess but restraint and respect for the beauty and sacredness of the earth. Our scriptures describe us as made in the image of God. But not just us but every element of the creation is a sign of God; each time a specie becomes extinct; each time we violate the earth; each time a part of the natural world is destroyed we annihilate for all time those things fathered-forth by the hand of God.

Why, I ask myself, does Luke say these difficult, unequivocal words of John the Baptist are good news?

Because in them we are called into a reminder of our common humanity with all with whom we share the earth and her bounty;

because we are called into a place of respect for the needs of others before God;

because we are reminded that it is not the things we possess, the power which can wield, which make us of value but first and foremost that we are, all of us at heart, impoverished without living a life based in the sense that we are made to live with justice and compassion alongside our neighbour.

Without these we are already judged and condemned.

But we need to hear from the prophets not only the warning of judgment but also a sense of the tenderness of God for his children in order that we may live gently and respectfully together. We need to savour from the words of the prophet this sense of the longing of God for us and know that when we respond with justice and tenderness God is present. In doing this we incarnate the Christ we long to be present. As we allow the longing of God and the groaning of creation to draw us and shape our lives Christ comes to birth again – and heaven and earth rejoice.

May the Christ be born in us this Christmas.

Andrew