388 Easy Desecration

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Easy Desecration”, originally shared on December 11, 2025. It was the 388^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   It’s easier to destroy than to build, it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God, and it’s easier to desecrate the Church than to make it holy. Today, we’re going to find out why.

   The United States of America came into being with the signing of its Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. It will celebrate the 250^th anniversary of its existence next year, though its war for independence didn’t end until September 3, 1783, seven years later.

   Either way, we are a very young country. People who are around 80 years old have seen one-third of our country’s history! People who are around 62 years old have seen one-quarter of our country’s history!

   So’s easy for us to lose a sense of historical perspective, and many countries who measure their histories in the thousands of years have often accused us of doing just that.

   Take Christianity, for example.

   Christianity didn’t begin with the founding of your church. It didn’t begin with the founding of your denomination. It began almost 2,000 years ago on the Day of Pentecost, when people who had gathered in Jerusalem from all over the world received the Holy Spirit.

   But Christian history didn’t go smoothly, and I’m not referring to the hot and cold periods of persecution in our first few hundred years.

   What threatened Christianity the most came from within.

   There were disagreements over what Christianity was and what it believed. There were councils that were held where church leaders debated the fundamentals of the Christian faith. Heresy was defined, identified, and corrected. These were days of definition.

   The faithful representation of the history of salvation was at stake. Salvation itself was at stake.

   As has been said before, theology is not about matters of life and death. It’s way more important than that! 😊

   Participants in those councils listened for the voice of the Holy Spirit among all the voices of those who had gathered, and they wrote creeds, from the Latin word “Credo”, or “I believe”.

   Three creeds are widely recognized as the “ecumenical” creeds, because they contain the core beliefs of universal, historical, Biblical Christianity, going back to the first Christians: the Apostles’ Creed, the Athanasian Creed, and the Nicene Creed.

   It’s pretty common for churches with historical roots to recite the Apostles’ Creed at worship. It’s the oldest among the three. Though it wasn’t named until 390 A.D. it was drawn from much older baptismal rites.

   The second is the Athanasian Creed, written to bring clarity to the nature of the Trinity: one God in three persons. It was likely written in the late 400’s, but it is very long and addresses issues that are settled, so it’s rarely used at worship.

   The third is the Nicene Creed, composed in 325 A.D. and later expanded in 381. It is regularly used in Christian worship today and we have been celebrating its 1,700^th anniversary this year!

   Participants were not there to decide what books would be included in the New Testament. That had been decided by the lived experience of the Early Church. They were not there to discuss whether Jesus was God. That had been established by the words and actions of Jesus himself.

   Church leaders, at least 300 bishops, met in Nicaea, in what is today Turkey, to address the heresy of Arianism which claimed that Jesus was God, but that he had been created by God the Father, and so was less than God. There is a legend that St. Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, the bishop on who our modern Santa Clause is based, was there and got so worked up that he smacked Arius in the face!

   Many were survivors of the brutal persecution of Emperor Diocletian (ruling 284-305) and Maximian (ruling 286-305). One of the bishops had lost his right eye and been given a limp in his left leg because of his profession of faith. One had lost the use of both hands after being burned with a red-hot iron. Others had lost eyes and limbs.

   Those who came to the Council of Nicaea were not there for academic debate alone. They were the defenders of the faith that they had confessed with their bodies and with their will, and their vote resulted with only two votes for Arius.

   There was a lot at stake. There always is when people seek to make God in their own image. God becomes less God and more manageable.

   Who Jesus is, and what his authority is, is what is at stake in the Gospel reading that will be shared this coming Sunday in the vast majority of churches throughout the world, Matthew 11:2-11.

   John the Baptist was the last of the Old Testament prophets. He bridged the gap between the Old and New Testament sections of the Bible.

   He did it without any regard for human hierarchies. In fact, he was kind of harsh, even and especially to those who were among the most respected people of their day.

   He stood at the crossroads of time, the fulfillment of one of the most cherished prophecies among the people of God in the 1,000 years before Christ was born: the coming of the Messiah.

   John and Jesus both had disciples, and we get The Lord’s Prayer because Jesus’ disciples heard that John had taught his disciples how to pray. Later on in the Bible, we’ll get the whole “Game of Thrones” story of John’s imprisonment and gruesome death for choosing God over human beings.

   And yet, Jesus says, all Christians are greater than John the Baptist in the Kingdom of God.

   How can that be?

   We begin today’s verses about John the Baptist with one of the most poignant moments in history, in Matthew 11:2-3,

²When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples ³and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

   Jesus, the one for whom John’s role was to prepare the way, was just beginning his public ministry.

   John was in prison for publicly calling out the morality of a major local government official of the Roman empire. John probably already knew that things did not look good for him in prison, and he wanted to know if his life had been wasted, or not.

   It all hinged on the answer to one question.

   Imagine the meaning of your life hinging on that one question?

   Do you know what? It does.

   Is Jesus ”the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

   What is your creed?

   Do you believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the promised one of God?

   Do you believe that Christmas celebrates his birth, God become human flesh?

   Do you believe that he died for us and took his life back again in the Resurrection?

   Do you believe that he is present among us right now and that he is coming again to judge the living and the dead?

   Many of us have longed for the coming of the Messiah, some before we were Christians and some both before and after we were Christians. Sometimes people are longing for the coming of the Messiah even when they can’t articulate that longing or put a name to what they are longing for.

   Maybe you are longing for the coming of the Messiah right now.

   Maybe you know someone who is longing right now.

   All people who do not know God intimately have what has been called a God shaped hole within them. God is right there, knocking at the door to every heart, asking only to be let in.

   So, we don’t bring God to people, God is already there, seeking to redeem them, to save them, to make them whole. We just name the name.

   That is especially true at Christmas, when the message is at least suggested all around us. We have an opening.

   Will you be the one to invite people to open the door to let God come in?

   Will you be the one to prepare the way?

   Will you be the one to name the Name?

   Or will you invite people to worship with you at a time of the year when people who wouldn’t otherwise consider it are open to an invitation.

   I saw a meme some time ago that described “Reality Evangelism”. In the first panel, a girl says to a boy, “Yeah, I go to church.” In the second panel she says, “Wanna come?”

   Will you be the one to invite someone to worship with you this Christmas?

   Jesus’ answer to John’s plaintive question follows in Matthew 11:4-6,
 ⁴Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: ⁵the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. ⁶And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

   Jesus points to his miracles as evidence that he is the Messiah, but what did he mean? What are miracles?

   Miracles are not a suspension of the laws of Nature. Miracles are a moment of restoration of the way God created things to be.

   All evil, all that is broken in this world, comes through human rejection of God. Our rejection of God, our Sin, separates us from God.

   Miracles point to what God intended for us and to what heaven and earth will be like again when He returns.

   The cross is where God restores what was broken. Where God is the One for us. The relationship with God is now restored for all who believe what God has promised and are baptized.

   John didn’t live to see that. He never got out of prison alive. He was beheaded. He died before Jesus gave his life on the cross to usher in the already-but-not-yet-perfected Kingdom of God.

   Jesus spells this out in Matthew 11:7-11,

⁷As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? ⁸What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. ⁹What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. ¹⁰This is the one about whom it is written, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’ ¹¹Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

   We are saints and sinners! We are greater than John the Baptist in the kingdom of heaven!?

   The answer is that, unlike John the Baptist, we live on the other side of the cross. We do not just point to Jesus, we have experienced His grace. We have been made holy.

   But the world doesn’t see it. It often only sees a desecrated Christianity. That is our problem.

   Ross Douthat, a conservative columnist for “The New York Times”, wrote a book called Bad Religion, in which he said that most of Christianity’s wounds are self-inflicted. Near the end of the book, he wrote that Christianity has been near collapse several times in its history, and two things have brought it back: holy living and the arts.

   Desecration is easy in this world. There is plenty of support for it. Holy living is hard. There are plenty of things pulling us away from it.

   Desecration is treating something sacred with irreverence, disrespect, or contempt. Do we not see that everywhere? Including in the Church?

   Our secular societies in the Western world have had contempt for what is holy for a long time.

   How have we responded? It seems to me that we have mainly responded with embarrassment and accommodation by the particular claims of Christianity in a pluralistic society. They make us sound intolerant, not useful, so it’s easier to drop them and focus on social causes and politics, then maybe some people will agree with us instead of none. We have accepted the accolades of some to avoid the condemnation of all, but this is not sustainable.

   We are like the man in the parable who built his house upon the sand (Matthew 7:24-27). It didn’t turn out well.

   One of my seminary professors observed that all modern-era theology is created in Germany, corrected in Great Britian, and corrupted in the United States. 😊

   That may or may not be true today. It seems to me to be a little extreme, though, especially when one looks at the state of the church in any of those places today. We have all desecrated our theology.

   What do you see in our churches? Primarily performative worship that evokes the Holy Spirit without embodying it. Or, if it does, it merely offers an exotic counterfeit, or a copy of what someone saw on TV, which itself was a copy of the real thing. They are trying to find some experience again by one’s own efforts.

   Do we communicate any expectation for keeping the sabbath holy?

   What is our public witness? Which of our public statements is a full-throated proclamation of the gospel, and not a political or social statement pointing to the coercive power of our members who vote?

   The Church is being persecuted daily in Nigeria and elsewhere for its faith right now! Where is the outcry? Are we afraid to be labeled “intolerant”, exactly as the early Christians were?

   We are, and where has that gotten us? The world knows when we are not being real, that we are so much like the world that we have nothing transformational to offer to it.

   A staff member of our synod, who was Japanese, once told of a visit there where he was met on the street in Tokyo by a man selling “Rolex” watches. Five dollars!

   He knew they were counterfeit, but he thought it would make a fun souvenir, so he bought one.

   Then, when he was back in the United States and he found himself near Beverly Hills, he decided to find a place that sold Rolex watches.

   He went into one to see what would happen and showed a salesperson his watch and said, “You know, I was thinking about selling my Rolex and I wonder if you could tell me about how much it’s worth?”

   The salesperson barely glanced at it and said, “About five bucks.” 😊

   Most people can tell if something is real or not, but sometimes they are preferring the “not”.

   Both the Nicene Creed and the Apostles’ Creed we recite at worship contain our belief in the holy catholic (meaning universal Christian) church.

   That is not a statement about our buildings but about our identity.

   When I studied in Israel for a semester in college, I was impressed with how well the Jewish and Muslim holy sites were kept up, while the Christian sites were kind of run down.

   When I asked our guide, a post-graduate student from my college, about that he said that he had been distressed by that too when he first came to Israel. But then he realized that Christianity has no holy places. The only holy place in Christianity is the human heart when God comes to dwell there.

   We don’t find our way to Jesus. Jesus is the way. We just open our hearts in repentance and new life, for life transformation.

   We have been called to repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand, and to live as a holy people set apart, as Peter reminds us in 1 Peter 2:9,

⁹ But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

   We have been given good news to share, and we are the only ones who will share it. If not us, who?

   Are you the one?

   The world doesn’t give Jesus a second thought at Christmas, but we can name the name.

   Are you the one?

   We are not the light of the world, but we can be reflectors of that light.

   Are you the one?

   I am certain that your church has prepared printed materials to help you invite people to know Jesus, God with us, the Word made Flesh, the light of the world at Christmas. Who will share them? Will you put them on public bulletin boards? Include them with your Christmas cards? Hang them on doorknobs? Hand them to friends and neighbors with a personal word of invitation?

   Are you the one?

   Maybe people are looking for a gift that is real this Christmas and need someone to prepare the way.

   Are you the one?

   All that some people will need to hear from someone this Christmas is, “Have you heard about Jesus?”

   Are you the one?

   The people of God are a holy nation. Open your heart today so that God may come in and make you holy.

   Being a Christian doesn’t mean to make God the most important part of your life. It means to make God your life.

   Be holy. Live a wholly holy life. It can be hard, but you are not alone.

   Be love in action, in human flesh. Be the one to share the Good News for all people this Christmas, and may this Christmas be holy. 

387 Kind of Blue

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Kind of Blue”, originally shared on December 3, 2025. It was the 387^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   “Kind of Blue”, the best-selling jazz album of all time, has a lot in common with John the Baptist. Today, we’re going to find out why.

   The other thing, other than knowing that I would become a Lutheran pastor (something no one in my family had ever been before), that I knew from my earliest memory, was that I would be a drummer.

   I started learning as soon as I could and, among many other settings, I played in jazz bands all through college and seminary and beyond.

   I come from a musical family and I found a personal affinity for jazz from an early age. When most people my age that I knew were listening to Top 40 rock ‘n roll radio stations, which I listened to too, I was listening to jazz wherever I could find it.

   I had one of those little transistor radios with a little earplug when I was around 12, in Wisconsin, and I’d listen to jazz under my bedcovers when I was supposed to be asleep from a radio station in Chicago and, when the weather was right, WBZ in Boston. Often, in those days, you could also find jazz on television and in the movies.

   I subscribed to Downbeat magazine. I bought records.

   I was especially drawn to the music of what some would consider to be the classical era of jazz: Straight-ahead, Bebop, Hardbop, Cool, and even what some derisively referred to Chamber jazz, and later Crossover styles.

   One of my favorite musicians from that era was Miles Davis, whose sometime drummer and collaborator was Tony Williams, a major influence on me.

   The tunes from one of his albums, “Kind of Blue”, with drummer Jimmy Cobb, were ones that I played over and over, over the years.

   And, as it turns out, I was not alone. “Kind of Blue” is the best-selling jazz album of all time.

   If I could only listen to one musical sound for all eternity, I would pick any random tone from “Kind of Blue”.

   Blue is also the color of Advent, the first season of the new Church Year, the four-Sunday season that is the preparatory season for Christmas. 

   It is a season of great depth. The days are getting shorter and darker. Something seems to draw us forward and inward at the same time. Yet, in this darkness, there is light. Within our current uncertainties there is hope. In the midst of death there is life. We’re getting ready for something.

   “Advent” means “coming”. What’s coming? For what do we prepare? Jesus.

   Jesus, the logos, or “order”, the Word, the one who brings order out chaos. Chaos is Greek word for the natural state of the world without God.

   John says it in the first chapter of his Gospel, the entryway to Christianity for so many, as “Kind of Blue” has been the entry to the world of jazz for so many, and Advent is the point of entry for the new Church Year, in John 1:1-5,

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was in the beginning with God. ³ All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being ⁴ in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

   And the very next thing that John talks about is John the Baptist, the subject of this week’s main reading from the Gospels, Matthew 3:1-12, and the entry point for Jesus’ public ministry.

   How do we prepare ourselves for what is coming? How do we prepare the world? John the Baptist shows us how, beginning with Matthew 3:1-3,

3 In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, ² “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” ³ This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said,

“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:

‘Prepare the way of the Lord,

make his paths straight.’ ”

   How do we prepare? One word: Repent. That is John’s calling to us, and that is John’s calling to the world.

   Christmas Day will be here in a little more than 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.

   Today, we’re getting help on how to prepare for Christmas from a guy known as John the Baptist because he was the guy that Jesus came to for baptism, along with many others. It might be the best worst news ever, and we’re hearing it from a guy who was pretty much homeless. And a little weird.

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

   His message was simple, and it’s the only way to prepare for Christmas, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

   Jesus had been born and was now beginning his public ministry. The history of salvation was coming to its end, the kingdom of heaven had drawn hear.

   How would you get ready if you know that God was coming? John tells us: Repent.

   Jesus brought the same message when he began his public ministry. Repent.

   Jesus sent his 12 disciples out with the same message. Repent.

   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 sounds like a manipulative “turn or burn” approach that obscures the meaning of the Gospel, the good news.

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

   Repentance means life transformation. It means to change one’s 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.

   It doesn’t mean to make God the most important part of your life. It means to make God your life.

   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. Something that is dead to us becomes something that gives life by turning inside out.

   That is what it means to repent.

   Our relationship with God is broken. Our rebellion against God continues to bring evil into the world, as it has since the beginning.

   We are naturally separated from God by our Sin (with a capital “S”). Repentance is God’s gift that leads to the reconciliation with God made possible by Jesus’ death on the cross. It is the beginning of the Good News!

   And we who are Christians, who are at the same time saints and sinners, we all need to repent. Regularly.

   That is our best preparation to celebrate the first coming, or advent, of Jesus at Christmas and to be ready for his second coming to judge the world.

   John is not subtle when he speaks to the crowds that have come out to hear him.

   Most people don’t like to hear that they are wrong, and John really piled it on. But people were drawn to him. They had been longing for God’s promised Messiah, the deliverer, for 1,000 years, since the time of King David. Yet their rebellion had  continued. The one nation of 12 tribes split into two, Israel and Judah. Israel had been conquered and assimilated by the Assyrians in 722 B.C. Judah was conquered by the Babylonians and taken into captivity in 586 B.C. The Babylonians were conquered by the Persians, the Persians were conquered by the Greeks, and the Greeks were conquered by the Romans, who were still occupying Israel when Jesus was physically present on earth.

   God had not spoken through the prophets for 300 years, and a prophet was supposed to appear to prepare for the coming of the Messiah. Could it be John the Baptist? Yes!

   That’s why the next verses in our text from Matthew carry so much weight, speaking about John the Baptist in Matthew 3:3-6

 ³This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” ⁴Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. ⁵Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, ⁶and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

   My dad had a nice camel hair sport coat. It looked good on him.

   That was not what is meant about John’s appearance. John wore roadkill, skin from the carcass of what he found in the desert. He foraged for what edible things were available in the wilderness to help him survive.

   Can you imagine what it was like for John’s mother when she gathered with the other women at the public well to draw water? When she was asked how John was doing? I wonder if she dropped her head and said, “He’s living in the desert, wearing skin from dead camels. He’s eating bugs! We’re so worried!”

   Yet people were coming out to hear him speak! Was he the prophet for whom they had been waiting for 50 generations? Were they the generation that would see the Messiah! They were getting ready! They were confessing their sins!

   But John wasn’t currying their favor. He wasn’t doing any marketing at all.

   If fact when what we would call today the “influencers” came out, he said this to them, in Matthew 3:7-8,

⁷But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? ⁸Bear fruit worthy of repentance.

   That shocked everybody!

   It’s not enough to say we have repented. Repentance means a new direction and movement toward a new life in God! Paul describes the fruit of the spirit in Galatians 5:22-23,

22 By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.

   That’s what the Christian life looks like!

   And yet, we fail to be the people we have been created to be, equipped to be, and sent to be: the people who we are in Jesus Christ. We are saints and sinners.

   I often think of Pastor Ingqvist, the pastor in Garrison Keillor’s mythical Minnesota town, Lake Wobegon, who began an Advent sermon with a proposal. “This Christmas, I propose that we resist the temptations of our world to make Christmas about the things we can buy. Let’s make it less about the gifts we give and more about the gift God has given us in Jesus Christ.” And just then his gaze fell to the row in front of the pulpit where his five children were mouthing words at him. “No! Dad, no! No!”.

   We all get sucked into the preparing-for-Christmas machine and come out of it slightly more processed by the world and the worse for wear, pledging to do better next time.

   When that happens, all we can do is to remember that we are God’s redeemed, and that our preparations for Christmas are not always the best, but that the calls to holy living from John the Baptist and Paul may seem like the worst news we can get, but are in fact the best news of all: Christ is born, Christ is Risen, Christ will come again.

   We are saved by faith, through God’s unearned love for us simply given.

   That faith comes as a gift, one that we are reminded of at Christmas.

   We prepare by abandoning all pretense that we are getting only what we have earned.

   What is the result of claiming some presumed status before God? We hear it as out reading continues it in Matthew 3:9-10,

 ⁹Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. ¹⁰Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

   I once heard a story about the development of the Christian Church in Indonesia. The seeds of the Church were planted by missionaries, but it had grown into an independent church, with its own schools and seminaries. It was financially independent and had developed its own cultural identity.

   During the pre-Christian era, Indonesians were identified as having the religion of their parents by birth. God stood above the parents, and the children below them.

   But when the Indonesian church composed its statement of faith, they included the words, “We believe that God has no grandchildren.” That is, that we are not Christians because our parents are Christians. We are Christians because we have received the gift of reconciliation through faith. We been reconciled to God through Jesus’ death on the cross. Each of us. Each of us has had the relationship with God for which we were Created, restored. Our attitudes and actions are the fruit are produced from that relationship with the one true living God. God has only children.

   Why is this the worst best news? Because our cultural association with the word “repent” makes this text from Matthew seems harsh, but in fact it is the key to life, “for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

   John’s relationship to the coming new reality in Jesus Christ is made clear in the concluding verses from today’s text, in Matthew 3:11-12,

 ¹¹“I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. ¹²His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

   We are not who we were created to be, but we are no longer the people we used to be. We have been redeemed by Jesus Christ at the cross. How do we get ready for Christmas?

   The day after Thanksgiving is called “Black Friday” because people spend so much that day that merchants hope that their finances will turn from being “in the red” to “in the black”. They hope to be profitable this year, and some will likely offer Black Friday-like deals all the way up to Christmas. Nevertheless, some people were shopping around the clock on Thanksgiving night through Black Friday. Are they prepared? Not at all.

   We prepare for a different Christmas.

   We prepare our hearts to make Him room. We prepare by living the redeemed life that is our gift from God, begun in the manger and fulfilled on the cross. We prepare for the inbreaking Reign of God, the already here but not yet perfected Reign of God. We long for its perfection and for our eternal salvation in the new heaven and the new earth that is to come. The Kingdom of God has come near. We see it in Jesus Christ, and we stay ready for his coming again.

   We prepare for it in Advent with the color blue, but only “kind of blue”. We aren’t “blue” and we don’t sing the blues.

   Our culture celebrates a Christ-less Christmas. Even the word “Christmas” is disappearing. Some churches will precede their Christmas services with a “Blue Christmas” service for people who are sad or lonely or especially burdened when they compare the Christmas of their present with the Christmases of their past. I don’t know why.

   Maybe I’m missing something, but it seems to me that sorrow is exactly why Jesus was born. Having a separate service for the sorrowful denies the power of Christmas. In fact, it is a repudiation of it.

   The color of Advent in many of our churches is blue, but only “kind of blue”. Some churches will have dinners, or half-hearted service projects they will beg people to take part in, they’ll do stewardship programs and fundraising, they will decorate the church that no one new sees, and appeal to the church’s traditions that young people see no need to support.

   But there is more.

   Advent blue is the color of hope. It is the color we see when we look up in the light. It is a royal color. It is the color of the new life that follows repentance.

   Advent blue prepares us. We sing victory songs, one victory that is already in the manger and one victory that is to come at the Judgement.

   Advent is a season of preparation.

   We prepare this Advent season, between the two Advents, by sharing the best worst news; the beginning has come, and the end is coming, but we have been fully prepared by the love and the grace of God on the cross.

   Do you know someone who sits in darkness this Advent. You have good news for them, as the prophet Isaiah says of the coming mighty acts of God, In Isaiah 9:2,

²        The people who walked in darkness

have seen a great light;

those who lived in a land of deep darkness—

on them light has shined.

   From now until our celebration of Christmas, join John the Baptist and be preparing people you know for the coming of Jesus.