Sermon Advent 2 C
Bikers = John the Baptist... Yeah, gotta love that.
Proper Advent 2 C Sermon
Jesus is Coming
In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Well, good morning! I can tell that one of two things happened this morning. Either, you REALLY wanted to come and hear the new seminarian preach. Or two, you didn’t hear that Bishop Deana Harrison is gonna be here at the 10:30 service. Now, either way, I want to thank you for being here this morning because we middler seminarians and seminarians in general need all the support that we can get at this time of the year. It’s the end of the semester so we have a ton of work crushing down on us. It’s also the beginning of our Church year. It’s Advent. It’s the second Sunday of Advent to be more precise; the day we celebrate John the Baptist. And, for all you Baruch fans, today is your day as well. In the entire 3 year cycle of lectionary readings, today is the only day we get to hear anything from Baruch. So, I’m excited! I actually think it’s pretty cool.
But, you know, all the hustle and bustle of this time of the year reminds me of one of my favorite bumper stickers. It goes “Jesus is coming. Everybody look busy.” And we do, don’t we? It’s that time of the year when we all run hither and yon finding sales and buying presents and coming to church on Sundays to hear sermons on conspicuous consumption… and we feel guilty about it, but we do it anyway… And then we go out and we buy too much food and we cook every last bit of it and eat even more than we possibly could’ve imagined we could’ve eaten, plus pie… and then we come to church again and hear about conspicuous consumption again, and we feel guilty about it, but we do it anyway. On the one hand we have this God of abundance but on the other we aren’t supposed spread it around because it so easily lends itself to the building up of an idol. It’s easy to point at conspicuous consumption this time of the year as something that we do wrong.
Jesus, however, commanded us to consume. And we do so, conspicuously, every Sunday, because he told us to. In the institution narrative of the Eucharist we say that Jesus took the bread, blessed and broke it and said “Take, eat: This is my Body, which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me.” And there is the difference. “Do this for the remembrance of me.” If only we could conspicuously consume for the remembrance of Him all the time…
Last Sunday, as Jane and Trey and I were driving home from St. Matthews we came across a scene. It was an alarming scene, one that caused traffic to slow to a standstill as people peered cautiously and curiously through the side windows of their automobiles. Before us stood, and sat, and rode, hundreds… of bikers… It was actually scary. Motorcycles were everywhere in this part of the neighborhood. There were bikes parked on both sides of the street. There were bikes blocking in cars in parking lots and as far down into the cross streets as we could see there were motorcycles. As the scene unfurled bikers started streaming past us on the road with the roar of their engines, the smell of exhaust fumes, the black leather jackets, red bandanas tucked in behind their silvery aviator shades. They rolled past us with that distinctive rumble of a Harley Davidson. There was only one thing that was out of place in this scene and that was the toy that each one of them had strapped to the back of his motorcycle. This toy run, as they call it, had started out at a bar on South Congress and ended up at the Helping Hand Children’s Home on 38th Street. These big burley bikers looked the part. They looked scary until you noticed the grin that each one of them had… from ear to ear… as they each carried those toys into the children’s home. It was conspicuous… and it was consumption… and it was good. These bikers had figured something out.
In Romans chapter 2 Paul says “13 For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous in God's sight, but the doers of the law who will be justified. 14 When Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves. 15 They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts.” Do I think the law is written on the hearts of those bikers on that toy run? They were doing what the law requires; taking care of widows and orphans. You bet I think the law is written on their hearts. They have got something figured out. While it wasn’t a sacrament per se it WAS part of a sacramental life and in so doing theirs was the voice of one crying in the wilderness. In a world that would have us believe that heaven can be found in a bottle of shampoo, that community can be found with the right cellular phone company, that happiness can be bought and love can be shown in the twinkle of a diamond, those bikers have taken something that is so easily raised up as an idol and pointed it towards something else. As if to say “prepare the way” they have shown the law written on their hearts. And that speaks to a Christian heart. How can we as Christians do it differently? How then are we to live? I don’t have a perfect answer for that, but I do know that we are to do this for the remembrance of Him; that we are to make His paths straight. And when we do this all flesh shall see the salvation of God. And on this second Sunday of Advent I tell you, Jesus is coming; everybody look busy.
Amen