4 December 2011

What is baptism? It’s an Advent Conspiracy.
“Spend less”
2 Advent B
4 December 2011


Last week we began the season of Advent, and our “Advent Conspiracy” series, with a remembrance of a television series – in that case, Seinfeld, and how it launched a whole new holiday, Festivus, created especially for people who have grown disgusted with what Christmas has become in our culture. Overblown, drawn out forever, and dollar-driven … many, many people have said “there’s got to be another way.”
That way for the creators of the Advent Conspiracy was our initial focus … Worship Fully … meaning that, the holiday begins, and ends, in Jesus … and by worshipping fully, by following our baptismal calling to live fully into the preparation and anticipation of the season of Advent … preparing for, anticipating Jesus’ return to earth once again, rejoicing in the Good News that the kingdom of God is coming “on earth as it is in heaven,” … and we ourselves, dying and rising with Jesus, joined with him in our own baptism … we are given freedom to reject the death-bound ways of worldly living (like overbloated Christmas) and instead, embrace real, authentic, faith-filled life, so we can truly receive and celebrate Christmas as God intends it … GOD, FOR US.
But that was last week.
This week, this Second Sunday in Advent, we move ahead … move ahead, with the word of … another television show.
It’s one of those “train wreck” kind of reality programs … presenting situations so horrible and awful, you feel like you have to turn away … but we don’t … we’ve got to watch because we just can’t believe it’s true. Perhaps it’s one of your “guilty pleasures.”
I’m talking about “Hoarders,” the series on A&E which focuses on people who are literally surrounded by their stuff.
Many of us save things … some of us more than others. We collect t-shirts and baseball hats, ticket stubs and commemorative plates. My dad was a “saver” … not a hoarder, but he kept an inordinate amount of stuff in his basement shop … some of it, things he’d fished out of the trash that my mom, my brother and I had thrown out. So the three of us – all “throwers” … we learned the neat trick of setting things in the outside trash can right before the garbage got picked up.
“Throwers” don’t save much … we give it away or recycle it or sell it or just plain get rid of it because we like things neat and tidy with lots of room to move around.
But I digress … we were talking, not about savers and throwers, but “Hoarders.” These are the extreme people who have massive problems with massive amounts of STUFF.
One recent episode of “Hoarders” showed a man who had somewhere between 50 and 60 cars in his yard, all in various states of disrepair and decomposition. Another woman’s house had every room filled with bins and bins of videotapes she’d recorded on her 10 or 15 VCRs. And many of the hoarders simply have houses crammed full of … STUFF … you name it, they have it, piled so high they can’t get through the doorways of their houses, and when they do manage to crawl in they can’t get in bed, can’t use the dining table, can’t even hardly move because of the sheer amount of STUFF. So each episode follows the trials and tribulations of these hoarders … most of them, in some kind of life crisis (usually a demand from a family member or the local authorities) to clean up their place, to reduce their piles of stuff, to throw things out, recycle, just plain GET RID OF IT. And the “train wreck” comes in the watching, the seeing, how they (usually) just can’t do it … can’t bring themselves to part with any of it.
The show points out, that there are more and more hoarders, more and more people in crisis over having too much stuff, all the time.
Really, it’s the nightmare scenario of the American way, isn’t it? This end result of the consumerist merry-go-round we all are on … hoarding, throwing, saving, losing, it really doesn’t matter, because it’s still all about our STUFF, isn’t it?
To have STUFF to give or throw away, we have to have bought the STUFF in the first place.
We buy a lot of STUFF at all times of the year; the economists and politicians are all very happy when we decide, to heck with our budgets, LET’S GO SHOPPING.
But at Christmas, even in the worst of times, we pull off the brakes and go all out.
The good folks at Advent Conspiracy know this … and here’s what they have to say about it:

We like gifts. Our kids really like gifts. But consider this: America spends an average of $450 billion a year every Christmas. How often have you spent money on Christmas presents for no other reason than obligation? How many times have you received a gift out of that same obligation? Thanks, but no thanks, right?

And so in this second week of our participation in the Conspiracy, they present us with this challenge:

We’re asking people to SPEND LESS … to consider buying ONE LESS GIFT this Christmas. Just one. Sounds insignificant, yet many who have taken this small sacrifice have experienced something nothing less than a miracle: They have been more available to celebrate Christ during the Advent season.

Spend Less this Christmas? Why, it sounds positively un-American!
I mean, haven’t we been told by our leaders, exhorted by our authorities, that the way we’ll get out of our economic mess is TO GO SHOPPING????!
I can just hear the economists and politicians now: “Why, in our economy which is almost totally built on consumption, if everyone Spent Less, we’d be plunged into recession. Maybe even, depression. Hundreds of thousands, millions, would suffer because of that ONE GIFT NOT PURCHASED.
Well, probably not.
But, maybe?
AND SO WHAT IF IT DID put a little dent into our economy?
Might that actually point out that what’s really messed up isn’t the suggestion that we buy one less gift this Christmas, but OUR mindset and OUR behavior instead … credit-carded, buy it now, pay for it later, endless consumption of more and more AND MORE STUFF.
So why do we do it, anyway?
It almost seems like, like, we’re looking for meaning in our STUFF.
Certainly that’s true for those television show-“Hoarders.” Each program always features a psychologist brought in to help provide the hoarder much-needed therapy. And the first thing we hear from the psychologist each week, is that the Hoarder is initially unable to give up even one little thing because to them, it means giving up part of who they are.
But I’m probably being too hard on the Hoarders. For we all try to find identity, meaning, in our stuff. Part of why we buy STUFF is because of what we believe the STUFF says about us. The kind of car we drive, the house we live in, the labels on the clothes we wear, the ZIP code in which we choose to live, that’s the way we believe we show our identity to the world.

What a contrast to the texts we have before us today. Yes, they are also about identity, who people are, who WE are, but they’re sure not focused on STUFF.
Isaiah’s word comes as to us as pure grace. It’s not the harsh prophetic word of judgment for God’s people that we hear in the first chapters of this book. No, here the people Israel have already lost the war and been hauled off into exile in Babylon. They’ve had the land of God’s promise taken from them because of their greed and idolatry.
Everything bad that they feared has come to pass. What their living has gotten them into is a wilderness, for sure, a place where all that they’d been certain and sure of in their lives, their very identity, has been snatched away from them.
So Isaiah’s word comes to them, helpless, hurting people, to remind them of WHOSE they are, so they can once again know WHO they are:

In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand fast forever.

Despite your search for identity away from me, Israel … God says to them … despite your wandering away into a wilderness where you have felt abandoned and become hopeless … despite all this, God says to them, my promises to you remain true and FOR YOU. I will once again rescue you from the ‘fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into’ because I am your God and you are my people, and I will be your shepherd, your caregiver, your help and your hope, and I will never leave you.
Then there’s our Gospel text. It starts out The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and at first, it certainly sounds like good news, quoting word for word what Isaiah said to his people centuries earlier.
Ah, but the one we encounter in these words isn’t a comforting Isaiah, but a hair-shirted John the Baptist, calling people to repent, to turn from their sins, to turn around and follow God’s call to holy living.
But once again, we hear a word about identity … knowing whose we are, so we can know WHO we are.
John is calling people to baptism, to be sure … but his is a baptism of repentance, for forgiveness. It was an ancient Jewish practice still done today, called Mikveh , a ritual bath of immersion for purification. This kind of baptism which John offers would have to be repeated time and time again, as many times as people sin and become impure, they would need to be immersed.
Yet John points beyond himself … to the one whose way he is preparing … the one whose Good News is being proclaimed in these opening verses of Mark’s gospel:

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

The good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is that his baptism will inseparably link his people with him, forever … his people, US, WE will be baptized with the same Holy Spirit with which he, Jesus, is baptized. And so we recall the words we heard last week about that baptism:
• On the one hand, Baptism = death. Being joined to Jesus in his baptism means dying to the old ways of sin and death. Dying to the death-bound ways of the world. Dying to how far short we fall from where God calls us to live and be, to and for others.
• On the other hand, Baptism = life. Being raised with Christ, we are raised FOR something. And that something is life … full, rich, and abundant … free from the fears that we’re going to lose out on something … whether it’s place or stuff or whatever other gods, other idols we’ve placed in our path along the way. In Baptism, we have DIED to the death-bound ways of the world, and been RAISED to life together, in Christ, forever.

The Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, which we received from last week’s text is that we no longer fear “the End” because our End is in Jesus Christ, the Lord of life and forgiveness and salvation, … and he is in God and with God, forever.
The Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, which is for us this week is that our identity, our True Identity, is … baptized child of God, brother or sister of the one who brings Good News in his very self, Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
In other words … our STUFF is not us, whether that’s a fancy car, piles of video cassettes or clothes or papers hoarded away … or pride in a clean, tidy house, an organized desk, or a showroom-condition car. We are not saved from our sins by our hoarding or our throwing, our saving or our recycling.
OUR STUFF IS NOT US.
No, we are given our indelible identity in our baptism … though the water evaporates, it leaves its mark on us permanently, because, as Luther tells us in his Catechism,

Baptism is not just water.

The Good News for us here this week is that Baptism is Identity for us … we are part of God’s Kingdom, on earth as it is in heaven, what will be perfect then, is not yet perfect now, but still in the works nonetheless. We are walking wet works in progress … dead in Baptism, alive in Baptism, sinner-saints, sent forth to bring wet footprints of God’s love into the world.
And Advent is the perfect time for us to focus on “walking wet,” all our Baptism means for us.
In the old, old church days … Advent was seen as a ‘little Lent,’ a time of repentance, preparation before the festival of the Incarnation of Jesus … Christmas. Though we use blue as our liturgical color for Advent now, we still have a vestige of that Lenten link in the purple and pink candles of Advent … purple being the liturgical color for Lent.
And that’s not a bad thing. We hear the Baptist’s call for repentance today, and we heed it … heed it by repenting from our overspending, overconsuming ways that have marked Christmas for us in the past. We can turn from that poor way of marking the Advent, the coming of our God in Jesus Christ … turn from it, if even a little, hearing and following the Advent Conspiracy call to a simpler celebration this year.
And in the Baptist’s words we’re also given freedom … freedom from our fears and courage to take risks … little risks (like not giving in to the needless ‘well, she bought me something, so I need to buy her something’ cycle), but meaningful ones nonetheless … giving us more freedom, more time to spend in our true calling as disciples of Jesus, to continue to go and grow in faith …
So here’s a suggestion … with the time you’ll gain from doing less shopping … why not take up a devotional life?
Here’s a Word for you which doesn’t have to cost you a cent. The Daily Texts are a great way to engage with the Scriptures every day, brief readings and prayers which millions of people have used worldwide since the 1700s to begin their day with a Word of faith and life.
Yes, they are produced by the Moravian Church, one of our ecumenical church partners … but millions of Lutherans use them, too. They were Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s constant companion throughout his life, including his time in Nazi prisons. And they can be yours, too, just by visiting the Moravian Church’s website (I’ve run off copies of the web page and they’re on the round table – with the url listed) and signing up for email delivery of the Daily Texts, each day.
If you’re more a book person, you can also order your own personal copy of the Daily Texts for a little more than $10, by using the order form which is attached.
I ask you, Nativity, God calls you, Nativity, to go deeper in faith … not just “going to church,” but BEING CHURCH.
For Jesus has given us an indelible identity, our true identity, in our baptism.
And we are called to set aside that masks that identity … hiding behind our STUFF, our
busy-ness, in fear of going deeper prayerfully, spiritually, in faith … we are called to set that all aside, to unmask, to cease hiding … and walk wet … fearlessly, in faith, in love, in service … walk wet into God’s future … where all that matters is that we are IN HIM, brothers and sisters of our Lord, given his same Spirit, beloved, baptized children of God.
Amen.