Y’all Need Jesus

Malachi 3:1-4     Philippians 1:3-11     Luke 3:1-6

This week, as we draw near to the truth of God’s amazing love for us, let us begin with a message of hope from Sarah Are’s poem, Draw Near to Truth.

Truth is like sand—
slipping through my fingers
every time I turn on the news.
So day after day, I gather the dust at my feet
and build sand castles of the world I want to see—

Sand castle cities with fair housing, no walls,

families united and a name like Love.

And when the waves threaten to tear them down, I will rebuild.
For the truest thing I know is that God is love,

and love is stronger than fear.

The truest thing I know is that God is love, and love is stronger than fear – that’s a good place to start from, and it’s like a compressed version of the truth we discovered two weeks ago when we heard Pilot ask (rhetorically), “What is truth?” The answer we received from scripture is that there is a God. God is active and present and loving us into greater and greater freedom from sin, and everything we are, do, and say is either a response or a rejection of God’s love.

That’s the truth that we bring with us into a world of differing opinions where we seem to never really understand the true meaning of Christmas. Commercials tell us how to find the perfect gift, and consumerism pretends to be altruism. The meaning of Christmas becomes boiled down to a time when everyone could – or should – be happy, and yet we can’t buy or party or even carol ourselves into or out of whatever it is that we feel like we need.

I must confess, all of this consumerism makes me agree more and more with the woman I saw standing in front of our church last Sunday during the Christmas parade. She wore a white t-shirt with big black letters that read, “Y’all Need Jesus!”

I will also confess that I did not go over to talk to her about her shirt. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because I perceived her as a person of judgment. Maybe it’s because I didn’t want to confirm my own bias that expected that she might act in a way that made me want to tell her to read her own shirt.

I can tell you this, the only way I would wear a shirt like that is if it also said, “but probably not as much as I do.” In fact, it kind of reminds me of being examined by the Savannah Presbytery when I served there as a Pastor. There was a Pastor who was notorious for asking incoming Pastors if they loved Jesus. Well, I was ready. I said, “Yes I do, but not as much as he loves me!”

The other side of the coin of truth is that we need that love because there is so much brokenness in the world. Poets from Rumi to Hemingway to Cohen have assured us that brokenness creates the cracks for light to enter in.

While we can’t answer the question of why there seems to be so much brokenness in the world these days, we can see those cracks as spaces to let in more light! We can see that light as the love that binds us together in spite of our brokenness. We can ask instead, how it is that we might love in a way that encourages others to be more loving.

According to the scriptures that we’ve received today, the answer is that we must be refined and purified. Not only that – we are being purified, whether we like it or not! I say it that way because some of us happen to like our impurities. Some of us may have trouble figuring out what it might mean to live without them.

We can think on this all day if we want, but the truth of God’s amazing love is that purification is about God’s action and not ours. Over and over we’re told that this is what God is doing. God is sending a messenger to prepare the way for the one who will purify. God will complete what God has begun in and through you. God is the one who removes the barriers and makes the way level and plane for God’s people.

I love how clear this is in Malachi when the refiner purifies the house of Levi. It’s pretty terrible when you think about it as truly removing people like they were impurities, but when you think of it as a promise from God to God’s people it has a completely different outcome. It becomes about God’s promise to remove whatever keeps us from reflecting God’s image, for the way a silversmith knows the silver is pure is when the surface reflects her face like a mirror.

Paul’s letter to the believers in Philippi also speaks of the love of God that binds us as the source of our purification. It is this love that leaps into our hearts when we see each other in the store or when we see one another in church after an absence. It is that love that pushes us past our differences and moves us to reflect the very heart of God in our work together and our lives apart from this place.

All of this is truly a blessed gift at the hand of God, but there is one thing more that we must hear. It is John’s call for us to repent. It is the invitation to turn every day from sin and self-centeredness toward others and God-centeredness.

Believe it or not, my cat gave me a good illustration of this idea the other day. He was sitting on the couch, gazing curiously at all the shiny things on our Christmas tree. I took a picture of him, and I wish I had gotten him to turn around for another picture. Repentance literally means to turn around and re-orient your life.

Although I was not able to call my cat to repentance, I believe God still calls us! God calls us at particular times and places where power is balanced on the edge of a knife. That’s why our gospel reading starts out with the political science report. God wants us to know that human centers of power always seek to counterbalance faith and that the light of faith is never snuffed by power.

Herod was a puppet of Tiberius and Pilot was a regional governor to keep the priests in check. What about us? What does it matter that in our time and place there are elected rulers? What does it mean to us that there are corporate entities whose decisions impact our lives and the planet we call home? What does it matter that there are people who suffer because their choices are limited by politics and fear and the supposed need for power and control? For that matter, why does God want mountains to be made low and valleys to be filled?

Well, for starters, that part comes from Isaiah, and he was speaking to people returning from exile over mountains and through valleys who walked for miles and miles on the hope of a promised land of peace and rest. The land wasn’t being made flat for God. It was being made flat for God’s people, and in Luke’s gospel, it’s not about land at all. Luke is talking about the removal of barriers between God and God’s people, and the way it all begins is through repentance.

Believe it or not, I’ve found that I had a lot to repent for this week. I doubt my need was greater than any other week, but I’ve been more aware of it. I gotta tell you, it’s actually been kind of liberating. Walking around thinking that I have it all together tends to separate me from others.

Repentance, true repentance, is not something that is a “one and done” kind of thing. It’s more of a pattern of behavior that helps me see the light that filters through the cracks in my life.

It’s a pattern of behavior that helps me see the work that we are called to do – which brings me back to Sarah Are’s poem. It doesn’t end with “love is stronger than fear.” It pushes on to say what we might do with that love, the love that is made real and accessible through our repentance. This is how she hopes to respond with her castles made of sand.

So at the end of the day, if you need me,
I’ll be taking sand-soaked alternative truths
and turning them into sand castles of a better world—
A world rooted in love,
which I will keep building
until “love,” and “truth” and “God” all sound like synonyms.

Now, if you are still seeking the true meaning of Christmas, I hope you’ll consider the call of repentance. I hope you’ll be open to the purification that God’s love offers, and I hope you will come to see truth and love and God in me, the way that I see them in you.

I gotta say, Y’all need Jesus – but maybe not as much as I do. May your holy days be full of wonder and truth as we move toward the hope of justice and peace that God offers us as a people of God. Amen!