Many of you may remember Judy Proctor, who has preached here several times in my absence. Judy has been working the past seven years toward becoming an ordained pastor in our denomination, the United Church of Christ. She has completed seminary; she has been examined up, down and sideways; she has answered all the questions, passed all the tests, and jumped through all the hoops necessary to be ordained. The last hurdle is for her to receive a call as a pastor to a church.

I am delighted to report that the Pastoral Search Committee at the First Church in Danvers has selected Judy as their top candidate, and at this very moment, Judy is preaching her candidating sermon at the Danvers church. And immediately following the service, she will be whisked away while the members of the congregation vote to call her to be their next settled pastor.

Now that is what I call pressure to preach one heck of a sermon – a sermon that will connect with the congregation, a sermon that will draw people in and engage them, a sermon that will touch people some place deep in their souls. And I am sure Judy would have liked the scripture for this Second Sunday in Advent to provide her with some heartwarming passage to prepare us for Christmas – the story of Elizabeth and Zechariah, perhaps, or the appearance of the angel Gabriel. But no. Instead, the Gospel passage assigned for today features John the Baptizer.

Ah yes. Good ole John the Baptizer – that lone voice crying out in the wilderness, that messenger sent to “prepare the way” for Jesus, who dresses in camel’s hair and eats locusts and wild honey, and who – in this morning’s scripture lesson – lashes out at the religious authorities, warning them to “repent, you brood of vipers.” Not exactly the best scripture to preach when you’re trying to get on the good side of a congregation!!

But when we spoke the other day, I told Judy to be not afraid; the two candidating sermons I have preached in my life, including the one here, were both during the season of Advent, and yes, the Gospel lessons for those Sundays featured none other than – you guessed it – John the Baptizer.

He shows up every Advent, knocking on our door like a salesperson trying to sell us something we know we need but don’t necessarily want. Just when we want to focus on the sweet image of the baby lying in a manger, here comes this crazy looking guy bellowing about sin and selfishness and calling us to repent.

In all honesty, we don’t really want to see John during our preparations for Christmas. His appearance this time of year feels like an intrusion, and his message too strident, too confrontational for this season of love and good will. One preacher¹ calls him the “Doberman pinscher of the gospel,” and he comes along ready to take a big bite out of the season’s fun and festivities. But the fact of the matter is, we could not find our way to Bethlehem without him.

John is a link between the Old and New Testaments, and he is the physical embodiment of a past generation of prophets. His leather belt and hairy clothing are meant to call to mind the Prophet Elijah, whose return was a sign of the coming of the Messiah [Malachi 4:5; Matthew 17:10-13]. And John comes to fulfill the prophecies of Isaiah [40:3-5] to "prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight, every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways be made smooth."

Isaiah wrote these words to the ancient Hebrews while they were in exile in Babylon. They had been captured by the Babylonians and taken far away from their homeland, far away from their much-loved city of Jerusalem and from their beloved temple. Many times out there in the wilderness of exile, they felt far away from God, too, and they knew it was their own actions that had landed them there. Ignoring God’s warnings that had come to them through the prophets, the people had turned away from their God and God’s ways.

The Biblical image of the wilderness is a metaphor for separation and estrangement from God. We have a word for estrangement from God – it’s called sin. Sin is separation from God, from God’s people, from God’s creation, and from God’s purpose for our lives; and it’s not a subject we’re comfortable talking about, especially this time of year.

But in the Gospel lesson for this Second Sunday of Advent, John calls us to repent. The dictionary² tells us that to repent is to feel such sorrow for sin that we are moved to change our life for the better. In Greek, the original language of the New Testament, the word for repentance is metanoia, which means literally “to turn around.” If sin is turning away from God, then repentance is turning back to God. And this requires a change of heart; it requires that we do some work in here.

The ancient Hebrews Isaiah addressed could not head out of the wilderness of their exile in Babylon and turn back to God until all the obstacles which blocked the way back home were removed. "Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low. The crooked roads shall become straight, and rough ways made smooth." Matthew lifts Isaiah’s mountains and valleys and crooked and rough places from the very real physical geography of Jerusalem and places them in the spiritual geography of the human soul. During this season, we are to clear away all the obstacles that keep us estranged and separated from God; we are to let go of those burdens which keep us in the wilderness, so we can find our way back to God.

What might be keeping us in the wilderness this Advent? Maybe it’s a death, a divorce, a disappointment, a depression that has left us feeling alone and abandoned by God. Maybe it’s a relationship that needs mending, or a fear that needs to be overcome. Maybe it’s letting go of something or someone we've been hanging onto for too long. Maybe it’s dealing with our unhealthy habits or addictions. Whatever is keeping us in the wilderness, we are to clear it away so we can turn back to God and receive a fresh start.

We hear John’s call to repentance every Advent because, as we begin this new church year, we all need a clean slate and a new beginning. And as much as we cringe when we see him coming, it is John who gives us the real message for this time of year. Christmas is not about the glitter and the malls and the presents; it’s about forgiveness and transformation and new life; that’s why Jesus came in the first place.

And so, let’s use this Advent time for turning back to God; let’s use these last few weeks leading up to Christmas to prepare room in here, that we might be fully open and ready for God to be born once again in our hearts. Amen.

¹Barbara Brown Taylor, “A Cure for Despair,” God in Pain (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998), p. 22.
²http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/repent, meaning 2.

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