340 No Fairytale

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “No Fairytale”, originally shared on December 4, 2024. It was the 340^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

    How do we dig below the fantasyland that the world’s celebration of Christmas occupies? How do we prepare the foundation for something that’s real? Today, we’re going to find out.   

   The movie “Wicked” came out recently and is doing very well at the box office.

   “Wicked” is an adaptation of the first half of the play “Wicked”. The second half of the play, a movie called “Wicked Part Two”, will come out in about a year).

   This year’s movie “Wicked” is an adaptation of the 1995 novel “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West”, which was a prequel to the 1939 movie “The Wizard of Oz” with Judy Garland, which was based on the novel “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank Baum, which was published in 1900.

   “Wicked”, like all of the other variations, is a fairy tale. It may contain important messages, but all of it is fictional. It never happened.

   The movie “Gladiator 2” also came out recently and is doing sort of OK at the box office.

   “Gladiator 2” is not a fairytale. But, like a fairytale, it never happened. It’s a fictional story set in a historical context, the Roman Empire in the third century A.D.

   Both movies tell their stories in terms of changed morals and values that have been accepted since the works on which they are based were written.

   Morals and values sometime change over time, but they don’t just change. Change does not require a majority, or even a plurality. It only requires some initiative, and then agreement, acquiesce, conformity, and indifference.

   We have seen a great deal of change in the Church over the years, not all of it necessarily for the better. We can see it in the way we prepare for Christmas this year.

   The faith we proclaim is based on the mighty works of God in history, not on fairytales. The Church is based on real events that took place in real time among real people.

   The reading from the gospel of Luke that will be shared in the vast majority of churches all offer the world this coming Sunday, Luke 3:1-6, doesn’t begin with the words, “Once upon a time…”. It locates events in history with the words, in Luke 3:1-3,

3 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, 2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,

   The people of God are being prepared for the coming birth of God in human flesh, the Messiah who had been promised for 1,000 years, by the last prophet (after an absence of prophets for 300 years): John the Baptist.

   Jesus was coming.

   Today, our Christmas holiday is coming, and we are preparing the way. We’ll soon be making lefse and krumkake at our house, but these are only our ethnic cultural preparations.

   Yet even the Church no longer gets much farther than that.

   We have tree trimming, fund-raisers, dinners, chancel decorating, Christmas events, Christmas activities, and Christmas programs that have a peripheral “birth-of-Jesus” message, but their main messages are “this is who we are” and “please join our organization”.

   Their rationale is that the Church has to attract people in order for people to hear our message.

   At best, this is a marketing strategy and, at worst it’s a “bait and switch” tactic.

   It’s like the parents who think they are enlightened when they say, “I don’t want to force my children to go to church, I want to let them decide for themselves”, but who do force reluctant children to go to school, to get enough sleep, to eat healthy meals, to limit screen time, and to choose their friends carefully.

   Or who, when faced with their children’s indifference to Christianity, say to themselves “I have to pick my battles”.

   In either case, children pick up the message pretty quickly that faith isn’t really all that important to their parents.

   This year, the world is already celebrating its cultural and commercial Christmas, but it won’t celebrate Christ Mass, the worship service that will celebrate the Birth of Christ.

   The world is celebrating a holiday, but it won’t celebrate a holy day.

   But then, this week, Christians aren’t celebrating Christmas, either. Yet.

   We are in the season of Advent.

   “Advent” means “coming”. Today we are living between the two greatest advents in the history of the world, the universe, and everything. The first advent is the birth of Jesus Christ, and the second advent will be the second coming of Jesus Christ in judgement.

   But the world isn’t celebrating that. As Donald Fagan (of the band Steely Dan) said in his lyrics for “Century’s End”, “We just suit up for a game, The name of which we used to know”. We use words like “compassion” but no longer remember their origin. We no longer remember that St. Nicholas was a bishop. Or why we give presents.

   Some in the world justify their indifference by saying things like, “I feel closer to God in nature than in Church”, or “I just don’t get anything out of worship services”.

   Christians experience God in nature, too. But we know that there is more. Christians are also moved by the birth of a child, by our smallness before the universe on a clear night, by the complex depth of family and friendships.

   All people experience all of the goodness of God even when we don’t give it a Name. But all of that became incarnate in in Jesus Christ That’s what we celebrate at Christmas, Jesus born to die, and who rose, and who is now the head of the Body of Christ, the Church, and it is in His name that we are saved. We know and experience that Name in Christian community, in the relationship that is an expression of our relationship with the one true living God. Christianity is personal, but it’s never private. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to draw us together.

   There is no such thing as an individual Christian apart from Christian community.

   Worship, like Christmas, isn’t about what we get, but about what we give, and we give in response to what God has first given us.

   Sally and I and James and Nicole were at UCLA’s final football game of the season last Saturday.

   At one point, a UCLA receiver on a long run stretched forward to reach for the ball. It looked like he had it, but it slipped through his hands. A little girl sitting behind us said, “Mommy, why was everybody so happy and then so sad?”

   That is a mystery of our faith. They crucified Him. But no one killed Jesus. He gave his life and then he took it back again. Today we are preparing to celebrate the birth of that life.

   That’s why it’s necessary that we, the Church, be more than programs.

   That’s why it’s necessary that we know that we are a Church in mission, that we have something to offer, that we, like John the Baptist, have a message to proclaim, a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

   At Advent, we call people to prepare to celebrate Jesus’ first coming and to prepare for Jesus second coming with the same mission as John the Baptist, seen in the conclusion to this coming Sunday’s reading from Luke, in Luke 3:4-6,

4 as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,

    “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:

    ‘Prepare the way of the Lord,

    make his paths straight.

    5      Every valley shall be filled,

    and every mountain and hill shall be made low,

    and the crooked shall be made straight,

    and the rough ways made smooth;

    6      and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’ ”

   Something big is coming. And what do we offer? Changed lives, new life in Jesus Christ, becoming a new Creation, the gift of being born again in our baptism.

   We have more to offer the world than a limp, “Merry Christmas.” We proclaim God’s offer of total life transformation.  A baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 

   Christmas Day will be here in three weeks. Did you just tighten up a little bit? 😊

There is a lot to do. We’re getting ready and almost all of our preparations are totally beside the point.

   We see the point in our call to ministry, reflected in the call of John the Baptist.

   John the Baptist was a relative of Jesus. They were almost the same age, so he was around 30-years-old when he “appeared”. He preached out in the boonies and people from all over, from all walks of life, came out to hear him.

   His message was simple, and it’s the only way we prepare for Christmas. He proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

   Jesus had been born and was now beginning his public ministry. The history of salvation was coming to its fulfilment, the kingdom of heaven had drawn hear. Believing that, is why we do what we do to prepare the way for Jesus to enter the hearts of people we know. Repent, the Kingdom of God has come near to you.

   Jesus brought the same message when he began his public ministry. Jesus sent his 12 disciples out with that same message. It was the theme of the first Christian sermon. It was the first word Paul used when describing the Good News. “Repent.”

   It’s not a word we use much anymore because it has been associated with a manipulative “turn or burn” approach that obscures the meaning of the Gospel, the good news. “Repent.”

   And it’s widely misunderstood as only saying, “I’m sorry.” That’s not what it means to repent.

   Repentance means life transformation. It is a gift. It comes from the Greek word “metanoia.” It means to change one’s way of thinking. It means to turn around. It means receiving the gift of new birth, of becoming a new Creation, of turning toward the new life God gives through faith in Jesus Christ. It means becoming a new self.

   Have you ever made popcorn?

   My mom used to make it by pouring the hard popcorn kernels into a pan, then covering the kernels with oil, then covering the pan and putting it on the stove. Now we pull out a package and put it into a microwave oven. Some microwaves come with a “Popcorn” preset.

   Popcorn turns inside out under heat. Heat causes the moisture in the hard kernel to expand and then explode, transforming the kernel into something that can bring nourishment.

   The Holy Spirit is the fire that transforms the hardened hearts of human beings.

   Author and theologian Leonard Sweet describes the popping process as completely transforming the kernel’s purpose. What was hard becomes soft. What appeared lifeless explodes into something that can feed people.

   That is what it means to repent.

   Our relationship with God is broken. Our rebellion against God is what brings evil into the world, as it has since the beginning. Sin is separation from God. Repentance is God’s gift that leads to the reconciliation made possible by Jesus’ death on the cross.

   Repentance is turning toward God and, as we who are Christians are at the same time saints and sinners, we all need to repent. Regularly.

   It’s our best preparation to celebrate the first coming, or advent, of Jesus and to be ready for his second coming to judge the world.

   There were wildfires in Fontana, not far from us, last week. Fires get our attention. They cause us to think about what is important.

   Advent does the same. It is the beginning of a new Church year and a reminder that we too were born again. It’s the message we have to share as we prepare for what’s coming, the gift from God of a new beginning in Jesus Christ, who was fully God and fully human being in flesh.

   There is no Wizard behind the curtain, but there is the King of Kings. Not a triumphant gladiator, but a suffering servant. Not a fairytale but a living being in a specific place at a particular point in time, born to die, to rise, and to save the world! Prepare the way.