Scripture Text: Mark 1:1-8, Luke 3:10-14
I’ve shared some of my history with you all before. I’ve spoken about that time in my teenage years when I dabbled in other forms of Christianity, specifically the hand-waving rock-n-roll variants of Evangelicalism that were popular in the 80s and 90s and remain so today. I’m often rather harsh in my critique of that kind of Christianity because I had a very bad experience and I often remain bitter about that. But it’s not just my bad feelings. Every form of our faith, every religion born out of the teachings of Jesus, has its flaws. Even our own.
I’ve spoken before about what I consider to be the big flaw of Evangelicalism and it’s in its very name: the emphasis, to the exclusion of all else, on evangelism and conversion. Everything and I do mean everything in that variant of Christianity is tied to that.
I remember in quite a number of sermons (although not quite in this specific language) that the only thing that really mattered was how many souls I won for Christ. How many people I could convince to “give their heart to Jesus.” They kept score. Every soul won for Christ was a “jewel in my crown in heaven.” I heard that language a lot. I started to wonder, “Is it like Sheetz coffee, if I win 9, do I get the 10th one free?”
I joke about it, but there is a serious problem here. Why was it always about me? How many souls I won? What was my score on that tally? How many people did I talk to about Jesus today? How many jewels were in my crown? I started to question, dangerous in any circumstance. Why is all this emphasis on conversion more about how many points I score with God than about how great salvation is for them? Why am I never told that I do this to help others? Why is it always about helping me?
Christianity became for me a self-improvement program, one I wasn’t very good at. It was all about how much work I did. I’ve got news for us all however. Evangelicalism is not the only form of Christianity that is guilty of this sort of thinking. Whether it’s the penance of traditional Roman Catholicism or the ever present idea that we have to be good for God to love us, we are all guilty of turning our faith inward. We make it all about me. My soul. My salvation. God is here to serve me.
That is not what we find when we read the Scriptures. Time and again, we discover it is not about us, it’s about them. They, the people out there, are the ones that really matter.
We see this in the story of John the Baptist, whose introduction to our Advent journey begins today. Mark tells us John’s purpose: He “comes to prepare the way” for the coming of the Messiah. He does this by proclaiming a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”
Mark is typically brief, so we don’t get a lot of detail about what these things mean. For that, we must turn to the other Gospels, where we see a much broader view of John’s ministry. Luke, in particular, gives us an idea of what “preparing” looks like.
And it’s pretty much boilerplate Old Testament moral teaching: Take care of the poor, treat people with dignity, be honest, be compassionate on the less fortunate. Nothing new in John’s teaching. But note who it is that these things are done for. You do these things to help others and to prepare the way of the coming Messiah. Note who’s missing in that equation.
It’s not about us. It’s about them.
All of Scripture supports this idea. The Hebrews were the Chosen people not because they were more special or better in some way than all others. They were Chosen to be God’s messengers to the world. The morality of God’s law was not to save anybody, but to demonstrate a better way of life to the nations and tribes that the Hebrews encountered. The Hebrews were a priestly people for the sake of the world. And we, as the Church, are now called to be a part of that process. We exist not for ourselves, but for them. We are here to make them ready for God.
We always forget that part. Sin turns us inward. Helping others is hard, but helping ourselves is easy, so our egos always default to that position. “Thou shalt not” do the bad things is a whole lot easier than “Thou shalt” do the good things. “Hating evil” is easier than “loving good.” But that’s not why we’re here. We’re here to serve God and we do that by doing what he tells us to do: serve others.
Last Sunday, I spoke at some length about how screwed up our world and our society really is. And the events of this past week have done much to reinforce that. It feels as though evil is winning, both within and without. To me this is a wake-up call, fitting perhaps for this season of Advent, a season whose clarion call is “keep awake!” The Church is being called to action for a world that needs us now more than ever. The darkness is growing, but we can show them the light.
The light that we have received. The light we’ve been given freely. The funny thing about all this emphasis on self that we so often fall into is that it’s all wasted effort. Jesus came to take care of all that. He lived, died, and then rose again so we wouldn’t have to worry about how many jewels are in our crown in heaven. We don’t have to worry about that because we’re going to be in heaven. We’re going to be with God. We’re going to have salvation given to us. Jesus calls out from the cross what are probably the second most important words in the Bible (after “Fear not”), “it is finished,” or more accurately “it is accomplished.” That’s Jesus telling us from the cross as he dies for our sake “Don’t sweat this. I got it. You’re cool now.”
That’s our freedom. We don’t have to worry about ourselves; God took care of that in Christ. All of us in here are good; We’re covered. All our energy and effort can go towards making this world a better place. For the sake of them, the people out there who are in need of all sorts of things: food, freedom, dignity, humanity. Prepare ye the way of the Lord. That’s what it means. That’s what we’re called to do. Amen.
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