Advent 2
Being away last weekend, I didn't get to start the Advent season appropriately. Now we are at the second Sunday of Advent. But the news is still the same:

Get ready.The Savior is coming.

Let's see a little of what William Willimon said about this at Duke Chapel in 1998:

It’s Advent. John the Baptist shouts, “People get ready. Your world is about to be rocked.” For you, is that good news or bad? I suppose that the announcement that the world is about to be turned upside down, shattered, rearranged, is good news or bad depending on where you happen to be standing when you get the news.

If your world is happy, pleasant, secure and fixed, if you live within my zip code, then John’s announcement that this world is about to shift, sounds as a threat.

On the other hand, if you live where the mass of human beings live – in realms of grief, sadness, poverty, distress, or injustice, then Isaiah’s poetic word that a new world is coming is decidedly good news.

That really is the context of The Baptist's preaching. It is for the lonely, the lost, the outcast and the oppressed.

He called the Pharisees and Saducees a "brood of vipers", the religious leaders, not unlike a lot of what Jesus would later say. We have turned it into a personal challenge of looking at our sins and repentence. John was talking to the People not to people. His was a message to a community that thought it was doing God's work when in reality their work was for themselves. He looked for the people to make a change in their lives- metanoia or repentence. That didn't mean feeling sinful and deciding to ask for forgiveness. It meant the physical action of turning around and doing what it right.

But what does this mean for most of us? For those of us who think we are on the right track and in church, unlike those pagans and sinners? I guess in some ways it does mean getting down on our knees and recognizing how we are part of the problem in the decline of repentance in our land. I guess in some ways it means to see that we are often like the Pharisees and Saducees in seeking ways to escape through ritual and righteous actions. I guess in some ways it means to turn around and see where we should have been going- and then heading in that direction.

After all, Jesus is coming.