Prayer: Come Holy Spirit, come.  Take my lips and speak with them.  Take our minds and think with them.  Take our hearts and set them in fire with love for you.  In Christ’s name, we ask it.  Amen.

A couple of weeks ago while I was listening to NPR Morning Addition on the way to the office they were doing a piece on the Peanuts Christmas Special called Merry Christmas Charlie Brown.  Much to my surprise the reporter was saying that CBS was actually quite unhappy with the show before it was aired for the first time.  Apparently the network thought that children, who were the primary target audience, would be displeased with much of it.  First off, the network believed that children would never go for the musical score which was primarily jazz music.  Secondly, the network felt that the themes of materialism and faith which are at the heart of the animated special were to “adult” for children.  Well with much coaxing by Charles Schultz and the other creators of the special and a few adjustments to the script, CBS, with much fear of failure, aired the special in 1965 for the first time.  That night exactly one half of America tuned in to the special making it an instant classic.

Well after hearing this story on NPR, I rushed home to set my digital video recorder in much anticipation of watching the special for the first time since I was a child myself—and I was not disappointed.  I am sure you remember quite well that throughout the first half or so of the show Charlie Brown can’t understand why he feels so sad when everyone around him seems so happy.  Schools out, families are gathering, presents are being bought and wrapped and children are playing in the snow.  But not Charlie Brown, he has a bad case of the winter blues.  In Charlie Brown’s estimation, the season has become about one thing primarily and that is the acquisition of material things and he finds this idea depressing—as I am sure many of us do as well.  As the whole peanut gang is preparing for the Christmas pageant an exasperated Charlie Brown turns to his best friend Linus and exclaims, “What is Christmas all about anyway?”  Wordlessly Linus moves to middle of the pageant stage and a single spot light shines on him.  He’s holding his safety blanket while looking up toward the sky with a peaceful look on his face.  And in answer to his friend’s query about the purpose of Christmas, Linus begins to tell the story, “Then an angel of the Lord stood before them…and the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for see—I am sending you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord…You will find a Child wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.’  And, suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest and on earth goodwill toward men.’”  Charlie Brown is fully satisfied with his friend’s answer.
 
What’s so powerful to me, at this moment in the show, and even brought a tear to my eye is that a small boy who cannot even bear life with out the security of his blank gets it.  He understands the purpose and promise of Christmas.  God became flesh in the Babe of Bethlehem to bring eternal life to all the people of this world…to bring good news to the poor…to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind…to let the oppressed go free…to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.  The unsure, unstable voice of a child gets it.

As in last week’s Gospel lesson, once again today, we encounter John the Baptizer—the one who cries out from the wilderness.  John is a prophet who comes to prepare the people of Israel for the coming of Emmanuel, which means God with us.  John lived in the wilderness far from Jerusalem the center of polite society and proper religion.  He wore a ruff, unfinished camel pelt for clothing with a leather belt around his waist to hold it in place.  The complete opposite of the social and religious leaders in Jerusalem who wore robes hewn of the finest materials created by the most gifted artisans.  John lived off locusts and wild honey.  The social and religious leaders dinned on the finest cuisine.  No doubt, John looked and even smelled as one who lived his life in the wilderness—far removed from the centers of wisdom and cultivation of his day.  Though John was a man, his social and religious standing would not be far from that of an unsure, unstable child like Linus in the Peanuts Christmas Special—but they both get it. 

Luke tells us that people from the whole Judean countryside and even Jerusalem were going out to John, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.  People were flocking to John to hear him preach and receive his baptism despite his social and religious inadequacies, despite the fact that he was not the picture of civilized society, despite the fact that his words may not have been eloquent or educated.  The people came. 

So what was speaking to the hearts of the people that brought them from far and wide to hear John preach and receive his baptism?  Well his message was two fold.  First, he preached repentance.  The people needed to prepare their hearts and minds for the coming of Christ by confessing their sins and living transformed lives—lives characterized by justice and compassion.  Second, his preaching always pointed to the one who was coming after him, Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world. 

As a church and as individual Christians, we are called to take on John’s ministry of prophetic preaching—to communicate with our lips and our lives John’s two fold message.  First to prepare our hearts and minds for the day we will meet our Lord by confessing our sins and by living transformed lives characterized by justice and compassion.  And second to point others to Jesus in all that do we do and all that we say and all that we are.
 
Now don’t be overly concerned.  This prophetic call for us and the church is not to put away our comfortable Christmas sweaters and replace them with camel's hair—unless you are talking about a camel hair blazer of course.  Nor is it a recommendation that we serve locusts and wild honey at all our holiday parties.  Nonetheless there is a lot that we can learn from the unfinished and ruff-edged nature of John the Baptist, especially if we want to join him in preparing the way of the Lord in our world today.  You see John felt free to speak the truth to the people of his day, using his unique power of expression to call men and women to repentance.  He embraced the authority and responsibility that had been given to him by God, and did not worry about how he would be accepted by the religious experts and social elite in Jerusalem.  He was inspired to employ the innovative idea of a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, a life-changing event that proved to be so much more important than routine attendance at traditional worship services.  And most important of all, he pointed people to the coming of Jesus Christ, the one he saw as being much more powerful than himself.  "I baptize you with water," proclaimed John; "but one who is more powerful than I is coming…he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

You and I are called to be prophets in our world today.  People crying out from the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord first by confessing our sins and living justly and compassionately and second by pointing people to Jesus with all that we do and all that we say and all that we are.  Though, you and I do not don the unfinished pelts of wild animals or feast on the delicacies of the untamed wilderness.  We like John the Baptizer before us are unfinished and ruff-hewn people.  Like Linus, we all cling to various forms of safety blankets for security.  Our words might not be eloquent or educated.  Each one of us has a broken song, a quivery voice, a frail pitch.  But, the Christmas message is that one homeless night long ago, in a place called Bethlehem, God wrapped humanity's broken songs and shattered voices with the music of the heavens.  In the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, God gave each of our feeble attempts at crying out from the wilderness a cosmic orchestra of surround-sound spirituality.  That Christmas night, our unsure, unstable, childlike voices were lifted forever to the skies so that we might bear witness to a life of repentance and point all people to the One who came to us as the Babe of Bethlehem, who will come to us again at the end of the age, and who continues to come to us each day and in every moment…Jesus our Lord.  Amen.  

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