Every time I go to El Salvador, the earth speaks. Salvadorans like for the earth to talk; the more it does, the less they have to worry about some huge earthquake destroying their country. The capitol city, San Salvador, is called the valley of hammocks because there are so many earthquakes that the valley sways back and forth, gently and not gently, like a hammock.
Though I have felt little ones off and on, the one that sticks with me the most is one that woke me up in October 2005. I was on the fifth floor of a hotel in downtown San Salvador. It’s a concrete building, nothing elegant, but a homey place I like because I have stayed there over the years. I went to bed that night, and fell asleep quickly. But then, in the middle of the night, I heard creaking, lots of creaking. It took this New Englander a bit of time to realise that the creaking, coming from a concrete building, was the building swaying in an earthquake. Adrenaline shot up my spine, as it always does when I realise it is an earthquake waking me up, as though someone is viciously shaking my bed. I thought this time as I listened to the squeaking and creaking, ‘Well, if the hotel collapses, at least I am on the top floor.’
The earthquake quickly subsided. Later on the next day, when I checked with my Salvadoran friends if this was something about which I should have been concerned (I always want to make sure I am not being hyper sensitive about earthquakes), I learned that it had been a quake of 5+ degrees on the Richter scale and, yes, they felt it, too. It was a surprise gesture to wake me up. And it did!
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This earthquake was so like John the Baptiser. He came shaking up things, shouting insulting words at the people, shattering the ways they normally thought about their world.
John’s ministry was meant to wake folks up. ‘You brood of vipers, sons and daughters of venomous snakes… who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?’ Off he goes on a verbal tear, excoriating those listening to him — not exactly what we would call newcomer welcoming. The gospel reading then ends with one of the most ironic lines to be found: ‘With other such exhortations,’ it says, ‘John preached Good News to the people.’ The same verb Luke uses to characterise the Baptist’s preaching is used later of the angel’s proclamation to the shepherds as well as at the end of Luke’s story when the risen Jesus tells the gathered disciples that ‘repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in Christ’s name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.’ John is the precursor of much good news that will follow.
Today I want to preach some good news, hopefully in a less vitriolic fashion, but good news, which begins with hard news. The hard news is that to become open to the good news of God's love, to be prepared to welcome anew the Christ-child into our hearts, into our world, we have to deal with the reality that our hearts and world are unprepared and even closed for this gift.
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Part of the preparation begins with repentance, that need to turn ourselves around so that we begin a different journey, a journey that finds energy and hope through forgiveness and rebirth, spiritually. We live in a time in which people are doggedly, earnestly plowing along on their ways, but without much hope, without much joy. Our journeys leave us empty of meaning and of happiness. We fill our days with busyness and with things we accumulate, to keep us from facing the hard truth, the truth that spiritually we are dry. We are wanderers, not pilgrims. And that realisation is difficult to acknowledge. How else do we understand the orgy this season of buying things, often beyond our means, if not that it is an expression of the passionate desire to love and be loved, as it tries to fill empty spaces in our lives?
Often it takes some earthquakes to wake us up, to remind us that there is something more to life, something more for which to journey.
How, then, is a call to repentance good news? How can a call to right living be heard as the gospel? For Luke, repentance and reformation are nothing less than what God has always wanted for human life. Right living is the only evidence of one’s trust in God.
So our question is, ‘Well, then, what should we do?
We can look at our lives and figure out how we can turn them around. Those places in our lives, those crooked, wandering paths of spiritual scoliosis that lead us up and down, in our relationships with one another, with the world about us, with God, — those are sites we must examine to see where we have gone astray. When we find the place that troubles us, we need to ask God’s forgiveness, the forgiveness of any of the parties involved, when possible, and of ourselves. Though we may fail again, we must try anew to follow the Great Commandment of loving God and neighbour alike.
How do we reform our lives? Of all times of the year, when the outside world is inviting us to spend beyond our means, when our schedules are leading us at a frenzied pace, it is so easy to lose sight of what this season is all about. It is about preparing our hearts expectantly, joyously for the coming of Christ, God’s ultimate spendthrift gift of love. We are invited during this season of preparation to look at our lives and see where our priorities might be out of whack with how we want to live our lives. Finding that, then we can try anew to have God at the centre of our lives with everything we do and are flowing from that centre.
What is right living for each one of us? Right living — something very difficult to do sometimes — is finding God in every one we meet, every one with whom we have a relationship. It is mending those places in our relationships that may have gotten a little frayed, a little torn. It is tending to those persons and places in our lives that need nurturing. It is respecting others and our selves. With God at the centre of our lives, we are given the strength and the wisdom to know how to do this — we need not be afraid, for God will show us how. We just need to trust.
A prayer from New Guinea says: Oil the hinges of my heart’s door that it may swing gently and easily to welcome your coming.
Yes, may those rusty hinges of your and my hearts’ doors, shaken up by the earthquake of the good news of reconciliation, burst wide open to greet the Christ child who is coming near soon…very soon.
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