If I Could Ask One Question of John The Baptist, I would ask “What Was Your Cousin Really Like?”

“In the sixth month of Elizabethʼs pregnancy, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, a descendant of David, and the virginʼs name was Mary. The angel came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one, the Lord is with you!” But she was greatly troubled by his words and began to wonder about the meaning of this greeting. So the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God! Listen: You will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will never end.” Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I have not had sexual relations with a man?” The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called the Son of God.

“And look, your relative Elizabeth has also become pregnant with a son in her old age – although she was called barren, she is now in her sixth month! For nothing will be impossible with God.” So Mary said, “Yes, I am a servant of the Lord; let this happen to me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her…”
Luke 1:26-38

One thing we know about John the Baptist is this: he and Jesus were cousins. As such, since families in the first century Palestine lived together in clans, we can assume that John and Jesus would have spent a lot of time together as children. They would have played together — wandered the hills of Palestine together — talked about G-d together. Perhaps they argued about how we come to know G-d -what a relationship with G-d should really look like. Maybe they even argued about how a prophet or itinerant preacher should dress.

John and Jesus were born six months apart. In essence, they were the same age. As such, they would have gone through major life experiences at about the same time. Jesus was about thirty years old when the Gospels begin to report his ministry. So, we have very little information about most of Jesus’ and John’s lives. Perhaps John and Jesus did spend much of that time growing up together. Perhaps he would be able to tell us things about Jesus — things like “Did he tell jokes?” “Was he funny?” “What was it like to see the Holy Spirit descend into him?”

One of the weaknesses of the Gospels (this is just my opinion) is they leave out so much of Jesus’ day to day life — outside of the teachings, healings and other ministries. John would be able to fill in a lot of those details.

That is the one question I would ask John the Baptist. What is your question?

Pastor Dave

Just three days ago we celebrated Thanksgiving. Some of you watched the parade in the morning — some of you were obsessed with cooking and cleaning that you missed the parade — but perhaps you watched the dog show. Some of you may have been on the road early in the morning — others may have slept in as long as you could, but got up just in time to eat turkey. And some of you were perhaps working — because Thanksgiving is not a holiday for everyone. It was not that long ago that nothing was open on Thanksgiving — except the occasional gas station. Now, everything is open. But Thanksgiving is over, and to that the American Society says “Don’t let the door hit ya on the way out”. Because, as of Friday, our focus changed — well actually the change of focus began at 6:00 pm on Thursday — the Christmas freight train that is barreling toward us at 90 miles an hour was unleashed.

And since Thanksgiving Evening and continuing through Black Friday (which gets its name more for the fighting and the yelling and the shooting that happens when too many people show up for the three door busters on sale) we have seen the worst of humanity. Here is my traditional run-down of the most depressing news stories from Black-Eye Friday:

The 19-year-old boy received life-threatening injuries after being shot in the car park of a shopping center in Columbia, Missouri, which was open late as shoppers queued for bargains last night.
Another mall in Hoover, Alabama, saw violence break out and where stores were forced to close early after things descended into violence yesterday.

Footage shows women punching and kicking each other amid racks of clothes, and one allegedly threw a shoe that hit a baby. Cops are also seen pinning several people down on the floor as they try to quell the mini-riot. The mall was meant to stay up till midnight on Thanksgiving – with early bargains up for grabs ahead of today’s main event – but shut at 11.20pm after TWO MORE fights broke out.

I could not believe it when I heard that there were lines in front of stores beginning Wednesday evening. Some people ate their Thanksgiving meals while standing in line – as if they were trying to get their strength before the mad, mad, mad rush.

In our Gospel lesson, Jesus is forming lines – he is directing people into two lines. Two lines are formed, and the people are looking at one another trying to determine what is going on. Will one line get to the doors of the Kingdom of Heaven sooner than the other? Will one line get a “door buster” sale on wings –while the other will get a “door buster” sale on pitch forks and horns? We don’t know – all we are told initially is that the people are separated like a shepherd separates the goats from the sheep – the king puts them in different lines. And initially there would have been some anxiousness – what is the king doing? Why am I in this line, and not that line? We can feel the anxiousness building.

We gather here today, and undoubtedly some of you have anxieties. I have anxieties — my life, and perhaps your life is filled with places where family cannot get along — bills can’t get paid — you don’t seem to have enough money from one pay check to the next – or your loneliness replaces love and companionship. Some of you have a restlessness where you know all is not right in your family, in your community, in your world — you have compassion for others where you cannot be settled — you cannot be settled because you know people go without: without food, without opportunity, without justice, or without love. And others may have an anxiety about the end times – they wake up worried at night wondering, are they in – or are they out? Following the Thanksgiving holiday, we often find our thoughts turning to those who are homeless, poor, and lacking basic needs.
But often our ideas about how to reach the poor, the hungry, and the homeless sometimes sound more like a political solution than an answer to Jesus’ call to love our neighbor. We want to put people in two lines just like the king in the parable – one line is for those whose outside appearance is more palatable to us – the other line for those whose outside appearance needs to change. One line is for those we can help – the other line for those we deem helpless. One line for those who look, well, clean – the other line for those who need cleaned. How strange of us to think that if we can force people to change their outward appearance, then our willingness to help them will change. We remember that Jesus said we should be “fishers of men,” but he never suggested that we should try to clean the fish before we catch them. Many of us want to give people a razor, a deodorant and a bar of soap before we give them our acceptance. We tell them in so many ways that they are not accepted, and then wonder why they never hear the good news that God loves them. Jesus never suggested that we clean people up before we pick them up.

In most of our churches, we tend to consider ourselves good at ministering to the clean and the comfortable and those whose lives hold some amount of promise; but we choke on our words when some poor soul who comes to is deemed to clearly be absolutely, truly hopeless. And this was Jesus’ specialty – the hopeless. There are some people (and I know we find this hard to understand) there are some people whose lives, and situations are truly hopeless — who cannot lift themselves up by their own bootstraps, because they do not even have boots. This is where I believe we watch the events of Black Friday, the awful, terrible, selfish, behavior of people grabbing, tripping, punching, biting, and shooting one another to get the best deal on a smart Television – and some of us feel sick to our stomachs. I believe it is increasingly obvious that we live in a society that is so radically ill – that is increasingly showing how deep are the social and spiritual problems, that nothing short of a radical commitment on our part, a radical commitment to the radical love, Mercy and Grace of Jesus will help us better understand those who find themselves standing in line for our help.

The ordinary, superficial keep-the-needy at arms length, safe religion so many churches practice are becoming less and less effective among people who are hungry for love, who crave a sense of community, and have no idea how to help themselves. If our conventional words and ways do not touch them where they hurt, then we must find new words and new ways. It is really true: “People do not care how much we know until they know how much we care.” So the people standing in line would have been suffering a lot of anxiety — anxiety that is worry — that is fretting — worrying about the future – what is going to happen to them. We all have this worry, at some point in our lives. We all have anxiety.

But Jesus comes to the rescue by doing what Jesus does – showing the anxiousness, or better said the compassion that defines the ministries of Jesus. And Jesus lifts up those who were not afraid to act on the anxiousness that they felt to act on their compassion – those who fed, gave a drink, clothed, or visited someone in need. When the Gospels talk about Jesus and his compassion, it is the Greek word “Splagnizomai” used to describe his compassion — a compassion that wells up from the guts, it is born out of the place true compassion comes from —our inner-most being — the place where so much happens so that we can live — our inner organs — the heart, the Bowels, the guts. And I know we all have had those moments when we have a visceral reaction to the insufficient help that is required to meet the many and varied needs of so many people – but we feel helpless as how to help. When we are truly thankful for the abundance of blessings Jesus has given to us all, we want others to know that abundance, to know that people do care for them, to have love they so crave, to have basic needs like food, clean water, and a visitor when they are in trouble. And that makes us anxious to share compassion with others — makes us anxious to be someone else’s “Thankful” — to be the one others are thankful you are in their lives.

So, for the rest of the Christmas season, (and as far as that matters, for the rest of our lives) I guess we have some decisions to make. We can live our lives worrying about which line Jesus may decide to put us in, or the line “we expect” Jesus will put us in – or we can get on with the business of helping people –and not worry about which line we end up in – for our compassion for the others in our lives will make our decision for us. I guess what I am asking you is this — when you leave here — I want you to leave here having dropped your anxiety about which line you may end up in at the feet of Jesus. Instead, go from here ready to share your “Splagnizomai” — your compassion — ready to be someone else’s “Thankful”. For this is what Jesus wants us to do. He says in scripture:
“…for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was in prison and you visited me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ 40 And he answered them, ‘…just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’”

Jesus was thankful for those whose compassion drove them to be someone else’s “thankful”. Jesus heaped blessings on them because they were the “Thankful” in others lives.

Be Thankful — and be someone else’s Thankful — each and every day.