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Texts: Baruch 5:1-9; Luke 3:1-6
Karen and I had a wonderful pre-Christmas get-away in Newport Rhode Island this past week.
Lots of long walks along the shoreline and in some wildlife refuges,
and lots of reading and resting, prayer and reflection.
In one of the little tourist shops we saw a postcard that said
“Christmas is a strange time.
We stand around and sing songs in front of a dead tree, and eat out of our socks.”
It strikes me that Advent is a strange time too.
We hear messages like “Repent! Beware! Prepare!”
And what do we do? We decorate and celebrate!
We put up bright lights and bring in evergreens
and make sugar cookies and have parties.
And there’s a reason for that.
It’s in the last line of John the Baptist’s proclamation in this morning’s Gospel.
“And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”
Let me give you an example of what I mean:
My wife is a trash collector.
She often scours the curbs and sidewalks on trash night, hoping to spy some treasure
that a neighbor might be abandoning for no apparent reason.
Sometimes she’ll snatch up some really nice items
– a perfectly useful and even attractive chair or a lamp or end table for our home.
She’s been doing it for years, and actually she’s got a really keen eye for value.
But I didn’t know that at first.
I remember once, early in our marriage, she came home at the end of a work day
with two large, heavy pieces of furniture crammed into the back of our old Volkswagen van.
They filled the whole cargo area.
She asked me to help unload them and haul them into the garage.
I couldn’t believe my eyes.
They were a bureau and a wardrobe,
and they were about the ugliest things I’d ever seen in my life.
They were huge and very heavy – and they were a truly unappetizing shade of orange.
Orange!
Not only that, but the paint was scratched and chipped in places,
and under the orange I could spy an even uglier shade of olive green.
Now Karen was a trash picker, but she also had good taste in décor – far better than mine.
I couldn’t imagine she would ever let that furniture into our house,
and I couldn’t imagine that a fresh coat of paint
– or even many fresh coats of paint, were going to improve them much.
But Karen just said, “I’m going to clean them up, and I think they’ll be beautiful.
They’ll be our furniture set for the master bedroom.”
I bit my tongue, but if I remember, I was thinking, “Over my dead body!”
Well, Karen went to work cleaning up those two sorry pieces,
working away with paint stripper and scrapers and turpentine and steel wool.
Evenings and free days she’s be out in the garage,
stinking up the place and working her fingers raw.
I decided to just say nothing and let her have her fun.
Finally, one day she said, “Come out and see how they look.”
And I went to the garage and saw no sign of those two pieces of ugly furniture.
Instead, I saw two visions of beauty: a lustrous dark natural oak dresser,
and an equally lustrous dark natural oak wardrobe,
with a sheen so bright you could almost see your reflection in them.
They did become our bedroom set, and they still are today.
They’ve moved with us to five different houses.
The thing is, I looked at those two ancient pieces of furniture,
and I saw the crud and the scars and the scratches and the broken knobs
and all the layers of paint that had been splashed on
to cover the older layers of paint that covered the even older layers of paint
– and I thought that was what defined those cabinets.
I looked and saw, old and ugly and worn out.
Karen looked at the same pieces, and saw beautiful sturdy oak antiques.
All she needed to do was clear away the crud, and repair what was broken,
and strip down the layers of disguises that hid their true essence,
so their beauty and majesty could shine through once again.
And it did.
That’s what Baruch is saying in today’s first reading.
“Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, O Jerusalem,
and put on forever the beauty of the glory from God.”
Where some eyes might see a weak, defeated people,
conquered and shamed and exiled,
God sees the beauty and the majesty of the beloved people, and God will restore them to glory.
That’s what John the Baptist is saying when he calls the people to repent.
We don’t need to repent because we’re rotten, ugly, craven sinners,
born in sin and doomed without grace.
God created us good and holy and beautiful, and God sees us that way.
It is we who have forgotten it.
We’ve forgotten the innate goodness and godliness in ourselves,
and we’ve forgotten how to see the goodness and godliness in each other.
Oh yes, we sin and we covet and we take shortcuts.
We sometimes make a mess of things by the way we arrange our lives
and misdirect our priorities.
We let ourselves down and we let each other down,
and in the course of living our lives in the world we get covered with crud
and take on some scars and scratches.
And then we make lame excuses to cover up our failures and our shame.
Layers of paint splashed on to cover the older layers of paint
that covered the even older layers of paint.
And we look at ourselves and begin to think that’s who we really are.
We look at others and think that’s who they really are.
We forget the innate goodness and godliness in ourselves,
and we forget how to see the goodness and godliness in each other.
We need to repent by turning again to see ourselves and each other
through the eyes of God
— and then re-direct our lives in that direction.
And where do we see our original beauty and blessing most clearly?
In the being of Jesus Christ, the Divine man, the human deity.
Christ came to earth so that all humanity could see the salvation of God.
He reflects all the glory, all the radiance of God’s creation at its best.
By his teaching and healing and lifting of the lowly,
he reminds us again of who we are and whose we are,
and what we are meant to become.
“I have come that they might have life,” Jesus said, “life in abundance.”
So decorate and celebrate. Bring on the bright lights and evergreens!
Celebrate Christmas, and put on forever the beauty of the glory from God.
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