COATS, FOOD AND FIRE

(A Sermon preached December 17, 2006 at University United Methodist Church of East Lansing, Michigan, by John Ross Thompson)

Scripture Texts: Luke 3:7-18, Zephaniah 3:14-20

An old saying is that “Character is what you are in the dark.’
In other words, your true self is what you are like when no one is looking.

On a positive note, I believe Christmas is what we are truly like, showing our potential for all year. The generosity, sensitivity and good will at this time of the year are not an aberration, but what God intends for us to be. To John the Baptist in our text today, our true self is shown in the fruit we produce.

In Luke 3, the message of John the Baptist is what Luke calls “good news to all the people”. This is a startling conclusion, considering that John calls the people who come to hear him “snakes!” The people are chastised for not bearing good fruit.

For John, who preached repentance, the best indication of true repentance is an altered life. That is the “good news” – it is possible to lead a changed life.

Repentance means “We come clean and we come empty to receive the gift of God.”

“What then should we do?”

The formula John presents is fourfold -
Coats, Food, Integrity, Fire

To the crowds of people, he makes it clear that if we have two coats and someone has none, we must give our extra coat. The same is true of food we have.

This was very real to us this week. Someone (I don’t know whom) saw one of our students walking home from church without a warm coat, despite the cold weather. That person passed the information on to our campus minister Tim Tuthill. Today, that student has two coats and some warm winter clothes, thanks to the generosity of persons in this church.

I doubt that there are any persons in this church who would not give an extra coat or extra food to someone they saw who was in obvious need. There are a few persons we actually see in need, and many more whom we will never see, but whose needs are very real. This is the reason for our various ministries to those in need.

John called on the two most despised groups of workers, asking them to lead lives of integrity.

Tax collectors, whom people expected to cheat them, were instructed not to take more than that to which they were entitled. Soldiers, who had the power to abuse others, were told not to extort others and to be satisfied with what they had.

The tax collectors and soldiers of today are those who work in financial matters and all those in authority over others. Add to that the many of us who are professionals, students, people serving others in the service industry, and you can see how John’s words strike home to us.

What is this One who is coming going to do? He is the one who is coming with fire.
According to John, he will clean up our act. He will separate the wheat from the useless chaff, the useful from the useless, the food from the debris.

This is the power of the incarnation, the coming of the Christ that we await – Changed, cleaned-up, fired-up lives.

Life won’t be the same. Rejoice – it’s good news!

Zephaniah, the other scripture text for today, is a gloom and doom prophet who suddenly has a positive message: “The Lord is in our midst.” He proclaims a God who is with us, bringing victory, and bringing us home.

The good news is that God restores us, and brings us home.

Who wants to be restored, especially if the past was not good? God’s restoration means that we are restored not to what was wrong in times past, but to what our God-given potential is.

So, in this season, we can all come home, even if the family no longer can physically gather.

Betty M. is a woman I worked with for ten years. After Joe, the love of her life, died, she stopped coming to worship. When I asked her about it, she said, “I won’t come to worship because I might get emotional.” I said, “What better place than church is there to be emotional? There you are surrounded by hope and caring persons.” Our Blue Christmas worship service tonight is an example of how we can reach out in a festive time to those who don’t feel like celebrating.

Joanna Adams, a pastor in Georgia, says it this way:
“Worship is homecoming. It is putting ourselves in the place where it is safe to tell the truth, safe to be who we really are in the presence of the holy and loving God. We come with broken places and unanswered questions. God takes us in, and yes, sometimes it
feels so good that we weep from sheer relief.”

Rejoice! The good news is that God can change us, restore us, and bring us home.