Last Sunday people who know the congregation better than I do commented after the worship service that there were probably more visitors than members in attendance. To me that's a "glass half-full" kind of thing rather than a "glass half-empty" kind of thing. It's wonderful that visitors want to be here for our worship service. But it reminds me not to assume everyone in attendance has experience with some of the things we do.
I remember one December when my daughter was in the church high school youth group, she was cast as Mary in the Christmas Eve pageant at one of the Christmas Eve services. The young man she was dating (his name was Ray) attended the service and sat toward the front. He listened intently as the story of Jesus' birth was read and presented in a series of tableaux. His eyes seemed to take in everything. I attributed his rapt attention to his feelings about my daughter Jenny, but after the service Ray surprised me. He told me that that night was the first time he had ever heard about the birth of Jesus. He said that in his family Christmas had always been about Santa Claus, reindeer, and presents under tree. He had no idea it was about a baby born to a teenage woman and the man she was engaged to. I thought about Ray when I checked out some stores selling Christmas cards. There weren't a lot of cards with the nativity theme.
I learned from Ray that night not to make assumptions about people who come to worship services, and I learned how important it is to express a welcome to people who are inexperienced in the things that happen in churches. I have already spoken words of welcome. I want also to say something about Advent and about the readings from the Bible we have heard this morning. For a long time many Christian churches have designated the four Sundays before Christmas Day as a season of preparation, and they have called that season Advent, which, as we have said in our call to worship, means coming or arriving. The practice of lighting four candles in an Advent wreath is fairly recent, and different meanings can be ascribed to the four candles. This year we are focusing on hope, love, peace, and joy as our four themes of Advent.
Each year on the second of the four Sundays of Advent, we hear a reading from one of the Gospels about a strange man called John the Baptizer or more familiarly, John the Baptist. John the Baptizer seems to have been the classic preparer, pointing beyond himself, getting people ready for the arrival of Jesus. John was something of a hermit, living in the wilderness, eating locusts and wild honey, and wearing something like a costume in a Mel Gibson movie. He was a "hellfire and brimstone" kind of preacher, pointing out the sinfulness of humanity. The writers of the Newer Testament remembered that John the Baptizer pointed beyond himself to one who had been promised, to one in whom "all flesh" would "see the salvation of God."
What does that phrase mean to you—"the salvation of God"? It's possible that for John the Baptizer "the salvation of God" meant deliverance from punishment, exemption from God's wrath, whatever that meant. That's close to the way I understood salvation in my early years as a Christian. I went down the aisle during altar calls. I didn't want to burn in hell for eternity, and I was told that damnation would be my fate if I didn't accept Jesus as my Savior. Just this past week I passed a man on the street, a very earnest man, who was giving out that message. "If you died tonight, would you be lost without Jesus?" For quite a few years, I thought salvation meant getting off the hell list and onto the heaven list.
"And all flesh will see the salvation of God" we heard in our first reading as John pointed ahead to Jesus. The word salvation has a long history in the Bible going back to the Hebrew Scriptures. Its meaning is broad and varied. In some places, salvation or being saved means to be delivered from an enemy; in other places it means to be restored from sickness to health, from the brink of death to a period of wellness. It can mean regaining dignity after experiencing disgrace, obtaining favorable prospects after abject hopelessness.
If in this season of Advent, as we prepare for Christmas, I were to tell you what I understand God's salvation to mean, I would say, "It means knowing how much God loves the world, including you and me and everyone else in all creation." I would go on to share with you something I stumbled on many years ago, something that changed my understanding of salvation and of the Christian faith in general—something I hope I never lose sight of. In his autobiography, David Cairns, a Scottish minister and scholar, tells of reading a book
...which all at once opened my eyes to one simple elementary fact which, in spite of all the good teaching I had had, had never really come home to me. This was, that just as I was, and whether I loved Him or believed in Him or not, God loved me.... It made all the difference in the world to me. I have never in my life known more intense happiness than in the days that followed. [David Cairns, An Autobiography, (London, Student Christian Movement Press, 1950) quoted in The Interpreter's Bible, Vol. V, p.498, Abingdon Press, 1953]
At Christmas we hear again the words spoken by God's messenger to shepherds out in a field: "Unto you is born this day in the city of David a savior who is Christ the Lord." And however many times we have heard those words, we need to remember that the birth of Jesus was an expression of God's love, God's unconditional, inclusive, affirming love. That is the gospel, and to trust it is to be saved, to know salvation.
I think people whom society has forced to struggle with self-worth bring an unusual receptivity to the truth that God loves us as we are, whether or not we believe a certain way, whether or not we know what it means to love God. Friday night in this place I re-discovered the way the African-American community can respond to the gospel. It was a service celebrating the life and career of Benjamin Matthews, world renowned singer and co-founder with Wayne Sanders of Ebony Opera. I was reminded of the late Howard Thurman, African-American educator and minister, who out of his own experience said that "...to be Christian, people would not be required to stretch themselves out of shape to conform to the demands of their religious faith; rather their faith should make it possible for them to come to themselves whole, in an inclusive and integrated manner, one that would not be possible without this spiritual orientation" toward God's gracious love.
Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans-gendered people can resonate with that. People who have struggled with addictions for their whole life can resonate with that. Women and men with weight issues or height issues can resonate with that. Anyone who has ever felt less than fully acceptable can understand the power of the Christmas story when it is heard as the outpouring of God's unconditional love.
Love in light of Christmas. It is fundamentally about God's love for the world, God's acceptance of us as we are. And it goes on to speak to us through Paul's words to the early church in Philippi: "...this is my prayer," he wrote, "that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you determine what is best...." I believe we can never hear too often how much God loves us and loves the world. I also believe that having heard that good news and responding to it with a sense of joy and freedom, we have the high privilege of sharing it with whoever is open to it. We can tell our stories of spiritual journeying from brokenness toward wholeness. We have the high privilege of expressing our gratitude in working for what God wants for the world: peace with full dignity for all the oppressed and marginalized of the earth, economic justice for all the exploited, a sense of belonging for all the homeless and lonely, medical care for every woman, man, and child alive today. And the list goes on.
Love in light of Christmas. It's about God's astounding love for the world, for you and me and everyone else on the earth. And it's about the way we internalize that love and give it out in our words and our actions.
The voice of one crying in the wilderness, "Prepare the way of the Lord. ...And all flesh shall see the salvation of God."
Thanks be to God.