Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen

“... and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” (Luke 3:6)

This is what we are living towards, dear congregation, not only now in this season, in these four weeks of Advent but really all our lives long. “...all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

Many of us already have seen the salvation of God come into their lives, - in those intense and glorious moments of life and faith when our own beginnings and endings seem to overlap, melt together and become one. This can be a prayer answered, it can happen in the encounter of people, the encounter wtih a piece of art or music. It happens at the bedside of the sick and of the dying. The fulfillment of time, the end of that time which can be counted, has touched you and me before. But we can never hold on to it in a permanent way. It slips away again. If we allow ourselves to remain open for God’s presence in our lives, however, and do not let us get cluttered, then we are able to continue to yearn for more of just such glorious moments, that we “shall see the salvation of God.”

Advent is the time the church has set apart for expectant looking forward, looking ahead, preparation for the mystery that God indeed did not regard Godself as something to be kept in cosmic lonesomeness, but decided to reach out, and down, and “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness,” as Paul explains to the Philippians. (Phil 2: 6-7)

Preparation for such a God can never be finished, can never be good enough, noble enough, honest enough. Therefore Advent preparation will also include a good deal of repentance and personal accounting. It helps to sometimes stop, not rush ahead and to leave out the Glorias for a while.

I live in a house where this Advent mix of rushing joy and trying to hold back is very intense. The boys wrap all kinds of boxes and containers in gift wrapping paper, most of them empty though because there is nothing to wrap yet. Augustin sat in the car with me the other day to pick up one of his brothers from school and seeing a front yard with lots of decorations that apparently were pleasing his eye, he exclaimed, “They are all ready for Christmas!” And then he said to himself, “Why is it not Christmas yet?!”

It seems a lot of people are all ready for Christmas, with all the stuff and clutter and balloons in the front yards. It’s all fun (well, actually some of it is quite appalling, excuse me) as long as all the stuff doesn’t clutter the yearnings of our hearts and the sure knowledge of what it is we are looking for.

Luke reminds us today exactly of this intersecting of the different time spheres we live in and only can try to manage, sometimes better, sometimes rather poorly, because we will never be able to reconcile the time of God and the time of this world.

All that Luke does in the beginning of his introduction of John’s ministry as the messenger announcing the Messiah, is to contrast the mighty of his time with God almighty. Nobody makes straight the paths for Emperor Tiberius in Rome and governor Pontius Pilate in Judea and ruler Herod of Galilee (son of Herod the Great), nor for his brother Philip in Iturea and Trachonitis or for Lysanias in Abilene; also not for the high priests Annas and Caiaphas. Nobody prepares their ways but feeble armies; and the word of God does not come to them, but it comes to John, the prophet.

John proclaims God almighty who on the mountains and hills made low and the crooked made straight will enter as a defenseless child and a slave who does not ask for armies nor needs them.

How can we not only expect but also begin to prepare for such a God?

One way, the way to prepare for such an almighty savior is by baptism. And that is what John came for. He proclaims a baptism of repentance and forgiveness of sins.

It just so happens that today is the ninth anniversary of our oldest son’s Franz baptism. When Matthias and I look back on this first time of our marriage and becoming a family, it still takes our breath realizing in what kind of a whirlwind we lived at that time. Within less than three years Matthias and I had met, quite surprisingly (for me anyway) decided to move to the United States for Matthias’ PhD, I finished my education first and was ordained, we married, then we moved, I became pastor of a New England Congregational church, in the beginning not able to speak English quite in complete sentences, and if all that wasn’t enough, we were also expecting our first child. How can one prepare for something like that?
How can one prepare for a child?

Always only half way, if even that much. We are never fully prepared, neither at the time of exciting new beginnings, nor at the time of birth nor at the time of death, however predictably it draws near.

Baptism is therefore the greatest gift of all, because in baptism we do not have to prepare, we are being prepared. It is God who takes over and comes, even now that the mountains and hills are still pretty high and the paths are not made straight. God sends Christ, the Messiah, our way and prepares us for a life that wants to be a testimony. A testimony that, as John’s father Zechariah sings, “by God’s tender mercy, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” (Luke 1: 78-79)

It is the lives of fellow Christians who testify to us that by definition we will always be unprepared for God’s advent, and yet we make way for the dawn from on high to break upon us. We do not need to let a sense of unpreparedness overwhelm us, dear congregation, and become a passive, stoic people. For we were already prepared in our baptisms to be able to live in this wonderful and yet unfinished world. And we are still being prepared, each time when we remember our baptism at the font, and by making the sign of the cross. And we gladly continue to receive into our fellowship of a blessed unprepared people more of the same kind, as we go about our task of ongoing preparation for our God’s coming.

For this is what we are called to do and to be. As strange as it may sound, we are called to the task of ongoing preparation for the coming of God in this time, our own time as the names of the rulers and the mighty change; we are called and enabled to announce that salvation is near and will give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and guide our feet into the way of peace.

When we baptize, we give a light to the baptized for their ongoing task of preparation with the words, “Let your light so shine before others that they may see your good works and glorify your father in heaven.” And we welcome the baptized into the body of Christ as workers with us in the kingdom of God.

Today we will be celebrating among us the second class of graduates of the Community of Hope training here at Christ the King. You will be commisioned in a short while to your new task of helping to prepare our world and its people in whatever unfinished but blessed ways, one step at a time, for the Lord’s coming, God’s advent.

Our annual meeting today after church will take place in that same spirit, the congregation preparing itself, yes, just for the next year, but mindful of the much larger context in which we live, namely in the time of God whose advent we expect.

Have you ever noticed that while we always like to look back and remember, sometimes with much piety and nostalgia, in the New Testament people always only looked forward? And do you remember Lot’s wife in the Hebrew Bible, what happened to her when she looked back? There she stood, and there she stayed, and there she is still today.

Advent is about looking forward, not worrying about our own unpreparedness in the past and in the present, but as baptized workers in the Kingdom of God helping to prepare for the time of fulfillment that is so close we can almost grasp it.

Amen.