What Should We Do?

sermon by Carrie Eikler
Luke 3:7-18, Zephaniah 3:14-20
Advent 3

Two doors down from our house are our neighbors, Steve and Sally. Some of you know Steve from the construction work he has done for the church. He drives a grey pickup truck that has the remnants of his construction jobs in the back bed. Sally has an old beige car. Nothing too impressive. But soon after we moved onto Center Street, I noticed Sally had an unassuming looking bumper sticker on her car. It is so small you almost have to be right on her bumper to read it. It states, simply, “I poke badgers with spoons.”

For the longest time, I didn’t quite get this bumper sticker. I found out Sally, like myself, was from Illinois, so I thought maybe it was some reference to a University of Illinois allegiance. Our neighbors to the north, the University of Wisconsin are the UW Badgers, so maybe she was making some comment about sports rivalries. When I finally got up the courage to express my ignorance, I asked Steve one day as he was tinkering in his yard: “Sorry Steve, but what does ‘I poke badgers with spoons’ mean?.” To which he replied:

“Well, you know about badgers right?” I said, “No not really. Aside from the University of Wisconsin, I know nothing about badgers.” “Well,” he explained “Badgers are the meanest animals in the world. They’ll bite your face off. So if you poke badgers with spoons, you are pretty darn mean yourself.”

Supposedly that explanation was enough. Sally, who I found to be a fairly pleasant person, was expressing to those driving around her…not to mess with her? That she’d bite your face off because she was so mean she could torment badgers with silverware? All in all I thought it pretty funny, though a bit bizarre.

But recently I discovered that the phrase “I poke badgers with spoons” is actually a line from Eddie Izzard, a stand up comic. Eddie grew up in the church and from an early age he apparently heard his fair share of the doctrine of original sin. He didn’t quite get it though. After all, those words together, original sin, are not mentioned anywhere in the Bible. He assumed it meant that priests were bored with the same old confessions, and they just wished someone would confess something interesting, some original sin. So he came up with something he bet no one ever confessed before: Bless me Father for I have sinned, “I poke badgers with spoons.” [1]

It’s true, there’s probably not much original sin out there anymore, the way Eddie interpreted. But lack of originality does not mean that we are each free of our own unique sinfulness. Those dark deeds, or tendencies, or actions that slowly but surely separate us from God and those we love, even separate us from our own selves. We are unique in how destructive forces affect each us. And John the Baptist confronts us with this.

For John, preparing the way for Jesus means getting in our faces and telling us to shape up. For those who gathered around him, he confronts them with names, calling them children of snakes, a brood of vipers. We might question the divine choice to send John as an ambassador, inviting people to join Jesus. But, he had their attention, they gathered around him, being baptized—purified. And then those baptized--and maybe even those who weren’t quite sure they were ready to wade into those waters--they ask the $10,000 question of any terrified, new convert: “What should we do?”

Three times it is asked in this scripture. And John refuses to give a one-size-fits-all prescription for salvation. No simple-in-words, but vague-in-application “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself.” Nothing like our contemporary endorsement to have a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ.” John is not big here on generalities. He is intent on specifics.

To the tax collectors, he tells them “Collect no more than the amount due to you.” To the soldiers, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusations and be satisfied with your wages.” Even when he addresses the entire crowd, he is specific: “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.”

We might shrug John the Baptist off. After all he’s not Jesus. He’s just a wild and wooly prophet. He’s not “the way,” right? But Luke makes it clear that he is here to prepare the way, to get people ready to receive what Jesus would bring. I wonder if the people hearing him were ready to receive it. After all this time, I wonder if we are. We certainly aren’t ready to hear someone like John point out each of our sins, calling us to turn around, to repent.

But then, the real things that point us to the sins in our lives are no less scary than this red-faced preacher. In fact, maybe they are scarier because we are confronted with the consequences in a real way. Broken communication and taken-for-granted attitudes threaten marriages. Addictions point to deeply broken parts of people’s lives. Separating our bodies from activity, good food, and loving attention has brought on a myriad of health issues that our human species has never had to deal with. We fight wars so we may have luxuries that we’re convinced are necessities, leading us to believe the gospel of the Prince of Peace… is nothing but a hoax.

All this points to something broken, something amiss, something that needs repentance. And it’s scary—wild- and-wooly, red-faced-preacher, John the Baptist-type scary. While it’s easy to ignore people on the TV, or in the ancient Bible stories, or on their soapboxes outside the Mountain Lair on University Avenue telling us to repent, it’s not so easy to ignore the “fruits of our brokenness.”

And as we hold a bushel barrel of all those fruits, we shake our head ask, “What should we do?”

***
This week the eyes of the world have turned to the cold and snowy Scandinavian countries for two monumental occasions. The first occasion, the granting of the Nobel Prizes for which our own war-time President accepted the Nobel Prize for Peace. And the second occasion, the gathering of the world’s most powerful politicians in Cophenhagen, at the UN Climate Change Conference, where nations seek to reach a comprehensive climate agreement.

There are many voices represented at this Conference. Some will not want climate change policy to affect nations’ right to produce and therefore, pollute. Some think it won’t do much to really address the problem. But the world has quickly been made aware that the earth is warming, and humanity’s behaviors has had something to do with it.

Copenhagen stands as a decisive moment for international cooperation. which prompted Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, to write an article in the most recent Newsweek magazine. I never would have guessed the future king of England to be an environmentalist, but apparently Prince Charles has taken seriously the threat of tropical deforestation, and its contribution to climate change.

Regarding the cooperation that we see in Copenhagen, Prince Charles writes: “While initiatives like this will need to be a part of the solution, they are not, I believe, the whole answer. In some ways the climate [challenge] is not first and foremost due to an absence of sound policy ideas or technology, but more a crisis of perception. As we have become progressively more separate from Nature…we have become less able to see our predicament for what it really is—namely as being utterly out of balance, having lost any sense of harmony with the earth’s natural rhythms, cycles, and finite systems.” [2]

I think Prince Charles, as strange as it may seem, has a good understanding of John the Baptist’s call. Maybe sin is being utterly out of balance with God’s intention. Have you become separated from God’s hope for you? Where is our sense of harmony with the divine desire to move us through the rhythms, cycles, and systems of incarnational love? How are we to repent, to turn from sin? Can we regain balance and unity with God? What should we do?

Well, I can give you the easy to say, hard to apply answer: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your strength, all your mind, and you neighbor as yourself.” But I bet if John the Baptist was here, he’d pop up behind me, pointing over my shoulder at each of you…and at me, saying “You, Carrie, do this.” “You, Mike, do that” “You, Sue, this is what you’ve got to do,” poking us with spoons, the volatile, holiday-weary, uniquely sinful badgers that we are.

The call to attend to each of our own out-of-balance relationships with God--our sinfulness--is terrifying. Artist Jan Richardson reflects “Forget fire, forget winnowing forks, forget threshing floors: amid our daily lives, is there anything more unsettling than receiving a clear word about what it is that we’re meant to do in this world? Is there anything that risks taking us deeper into our insecurities, into our fears, into the dark unknown / than when someone who sees and recognizes and knows us…challenges us to be the person whom God has created and called us to be? And is there anything more full of wonder and hope?”[3]

John the Baptist brings hope in the midst of terror…a reason to rejoice. As Richardson says “This, finally, is what John the Baptist, this preparer of the way, is offering to his hearers: wonders. Possibilities. The invitation to be [welcomed] into a relationship with God’s own incarnate self. As ever, John in his fierce fashion is pointing to—making the way for—the One who comes. And this One comes not for the purpose of terrifying us but of loving us.”

Rejoice. Repent. Today we light the pink Advent Candle, reminding us to rejoice, Christ’s coming is near, the way is being prepared for us.

So what is it in your life that is out of balance, out of harmony? How is sin manifesting itself in your broken relationships, broken health, broken environment of home and church? And take a clue from John the Baptist. Being vague doesn’t help us get to the heart of our brokenness. Take a spoon and poke that very real, very angry badger that is the sin that most affects you this day.

Use the cut out of the Earth to dwell on the balance that you need to bring you’re your life, the sins you need to turn from. Feel free to write them down on the Earth or leave them blank--take them with you, or leave them for our Cosmic Collage. Settle in now, and begin poking.


Prayer
God, bring us back to you. Help us find the harmony you intend for us. Reconnect us with your hope and your intention for our lives. We repent. We rejoice. And we bring these prayers to you, in the words that your son Jesus taught us: Our Father...

[1] Ortberg, John. “Living by the Word,” Christian Century. December 15, 2009
[2] “Green Alert” Newsweek. December 14, 2009.
[3] Jan Richardson, “The Advent Door” www.theadventdoor.com