In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Last Thursday evening there was a program on CBC television entitled Christmas Confidential. It featured the outlandish and often garish preparations that people make for the Christmas season. Now these preparations were not counted in weeks but rather involved a 365 day commitment.

There was a visit to a gigantic Christmas marketplace in Atlanta Georgia where every conceivable decoration from Elvis to Homer J. Simpson could be found. Viewers also had the opportunity to see the cut throat competition that takes place for the most over-the-top decorated house in an up-scale Brooklyn neighbourhood.

There was also a stop in Frankenmuth, Michigan where one could shop for a stealth bomber tree decoration in the middle of summer. However, the irony of a stealth bomber decoration to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace seemed to be lost in the translation. Oh, and there was also the Butterball turkey hotline in Chicago which was preparing for the calls from frantic Christmas gourmets concerning their turkeys.
I guess if there were lessons to be gleaned from this program the first would be that preparation is important. We are in the season of preparation after all. But a more important lesson, beyond the state of our Butterball turkey, is that we need to make sure that we are getting ready for the right thing.

Preparations are good. However they can be a strategy to avoid facing what is truly important. How many times have you made lists, and lists and lists, just to avoid getting to what is hard or scary? There is a distinction then between the external preparations involving decorations, baking,  Christmas cards, planning Christmas services and music etc and internal preparations where we look deep into ourselves to see “the mountains and hills” that serve as obstacles to us welcoming Christ and allow God’s grace to work in levelling them.

However, to speak of internal preparations in the midst of a culture that can obviously obsess about external preparations is a challenge. This is why we encounter John the Baptist every year at this time to help us make sure we are getting ready for the right thing.
He bursts upon the scene like a meteorite crashing into the earth, obliterating all of those stealth bomber Christmas decorations into cosmic dust. Now John didn’t preach in a big, beautiful church-who would give him a pulpit. No, he was relegated to the wilderness, the desert. You had to go out to the desert to hear a sermon like John’s.

You low down snakes! Why do you think you even deserve to come here and listen to me? God doesn’t care about who your parents were or how long you have been a member of this congregation. If you don’t change, and quit slacking, God is going to chop you down.

But who wants to hear preaching like that? Well, as it turns out a lot of people. Crowds came out to be baptized by him. There is nothing like a good verbal dressing down to bring us up short so that we get our priorities straight especially when someone speaks with authority. It stings but it we possess a modicum of maturity it also gets us to do some thinking about those hills and mountains that need to be made low. It allows to come within the reach of a gracious and forgiving God who comes to us, so that we might come to him.
When I went through Basis Officers training there was nothing like a verbal tongue lashing at the hands of the sergeant major to make you re-evaluate your priorities and get with the program. And this is John’s approach. It is a wake up call to us.

To take it seriously leads to reflection on those internal preparations that I spoke of earlier. To take it seriously leads to the question uttered by the crowd, “What then should we do?” Now it is not my place to tell you specifically what you need to do. You have to identify those hills and mountains in yourself by spending some time with God so that you may bear fruit worthy of repentance.

These moments are important because we are forced to admit that we are not who we ought to be, who our gracious God wants us to be. John holds up a mirror to us and chastened we go on our knees and ask God to take an axe and cut us down so that we may be cleansed and changed. Get ready, God is coming, “the Lord is near”. This was John’s message. You can’t get to Christmas without first meeting him in the wilderness. The crowds have. By God’s grace you will.
THANKS BE TO GOD, AMEN.