Marley the Baptist

12-16-18 (Advent 3C)

Zephaniah 3:14-20; Luke 3:7-18

Marley the Baptist

            In December of 1843, Charles Dickens released A Christmas Carol in Prose: A Ghost Story of Christmas, which would go on to become the most successful and popular of all the stories he had ever written.  The classic tale of Ebenezer Scrooge and his spectral visitors enthralled his audiences in the 19^th century and has endured over the years to the point that it has become enshrined in the halls of Christmas Traditions for many people.  Whether it’s sitting down together to read the story as a family during the Christmas season, going together to see it performed on the stage, or sitting down together to watch one of the many film or television adaptations out there with “Scrooges” ranging from Bill Murray to Sir Patrick Stewart to Mr. Magoo (my favorite, if you hadn’t guessed, is the Muppet version), the chances are that somewhere in your experiences of the Christmas season, this “Ghost of an idea” that took Charles Dickens a mere six weeks to write will end up making a few appearances.

            If I’m to be honest, it’s one of my favorite Christmas stories – and as I looked at the texts for this week’s Advent readings, I was reminded once more of the many reasons why this story has had such a long and successful life in our Christmas traditions and culture.  It’s a story of warning, but it’s also ultimately a story of redemption, forgiveness, and joy.  It starts us off by introducing a man whom we have absolutely no trouble rooting against, a man who hates Christmas, loves his own money, and frequently shouts out “Bah, humbug!” and then invites us to watch his transformation into a person of whom it was always said that he “kept Christmas well.”  And in so doing, it becomes a story that gives us hope for ourselves, as well – after all, if even a wretched and bitter man such as Scrooge can be redeemed, then surely, we all have the same chance.

               I believe that it’s the same kind of story we hear even in the seemingly un-Christmas-like (but oh, so Advent-y) exclamations from John the Baptist to those who have come to the river in order to be baptized by him.  Like the ghost of Jacob Marley that comes to visit poor Scrooge to warn him of the fate that awaits his friend and to inform him of the Spirits already en route to show him images of Christmases past, present, and future, John the Baptist stands at the riverbank and calls out a message that “it’s not too late to repent” and be transformed.  He shouts out with the cry of “You brood of vipers!” in much the same kind of clanking of chains and ghostly wailing that ultimately begins to get the attention of Scrooge.  As Marley tells Scrooge about the heavy-wrought chain that he wears to remind him of his own sins and failings, and informs Scrooge that his own chain is even longer and that he’s still been forging on it, it’s not hard to hear the same warnings of the coming savior with “winnowing fork in his hand” who will baptize with fire.

               And in this Advent season, I have to admit: it’s easy for us to get hung up on the many places where we seem to hear people crying out some variation on the “You brood of vipers!” For at least the third year in a row, we’re hearing more and more controversy over the popular duet “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” as radio stations are pulling it from their playlists.  You may have heard about the Nebraska school principle who sent home a memo to students and their parents banning Christmas-themed items, including candy-canes because they were shaped like a J for “Jesus” and had other Christian symbolism.  But beyond the standard skirmishes in the so-called “war on Christmas,” we also hear the message coming from many other, non-holiday related directions.  We hear the continued concern over climate change as we see the increasing severity of natural disasters and the call for humanity to reduce the amount of carbon we pour into our atmosphere.  As we mark the sixth anniversary this week of the Sandy Hook shooting and remember the overwhelming number of shootings that have happened since then in these last six years, we hear the continued conversation and tension around guns and gun violence in our nation.  And as we get closer and closer to that night where we celebrate and remember the savior who was born in a stable because there “was no room for them in the inn” and then had to flee with his family and seek refuge in a foreign land because Herod began massacring all of the newborn male children in his kingdom, it should also bring to mind the thousands of people in our country right now who are homeless in this season and the thousands more who are seeking refuge from violence in their own country and being faced with the message that there is no room in this land for them, and all too many people who, like Scrooge, seem to have no other response than to muse at the possibility to “decrease the surplus population.”  And as we hear all these things, as we wonder and worry about what the future holds, as we feel the real struggles and stresses of this season even on top of the seemingly constant barrage of all the other things happening in and around our world… it’s easy to feel discouraged, to feel that the last thing we need right now is to hear one more voice shouting out “You brood of vipers!” at us right now.  I know a lot of pastors this week who struggled with this choice of text on a Sunday that we light the candle of Joy.

              The thing is, if we shy away from the cries of “you brood of vipers,” we end up missing the rest of John’s message.  John calls out to the people who are coming to be baptized by him because they think it’s some kind of quick fix for their problems, yes, but his message doesn’t end there.  It’s incredible and fascinating that today’s Luke passage ends by reminding us that John’s message here is good news.  Yes, it’s comforting to the afflicted and perhaps afflicting to the comforted, but it’s still good news – there’s still hope, there’s still a chance to get it right, to turn around and be freed from the chains that we have forged for ourselves.  And John proclaims that good news by telling the people what it is that they need to do – to live out the values of righteousness that other prophets before him had also proclaimed, to share their excess possessions with those who have none, to treat others justly and fairly in collecting taxes and enforcing the laws of the nation, to not cheat people out of their opportunities just so that we can have more for ourselves.

As we hear and embrace John’s good news, we discover that it gives us the opportunity to live into the joyful imagery and promises that we hear listed out in Zephaniah’s words.  Those chains fall away from us – God takes away God’s judgments from us as we embrace the one who came to deliver us.  And when we recognize and rejoice in the promise of God in our midst, when we rely on our deliverer and remember that he has already taken on our burdens that we might find freedom, we can truly find that good news and heed the words of the apostle Paul as he enjoins the church to “Rejoice in the Lord Always – again, I say, Rejoice!”  When we rely on that deliverer, when we freely give up the burdens we often choose to carry for ourselves, when we let ourselves be transformed instead by that ever-renewing grace of Christ, we discover that we, too, have the opportunity to be transformed, to be as giddy as Scrooge on Christmas morning because we are confident in the promises of Christ and his coming Kingdom.  May we always find joy in those promises, and as Tiny Tim observed, “May God bless us, every one!”  Amen.