Scripture References:  1 Thessalonians 5:12-28 & John 1:6-14

Many of you know that I used to be a teacher.  7^th and 8^th grade language arts (English).  Straight out of college, this is what I did for five years—not quite long enough to have considered myself a true veteran or anything like that, but long enough to know that teaching middle school the week before Christmas vacation presented certain challenges. 

The kids were squirrely and ready for a break, and weren’t necessarily as concerned about predicate nominatives or the difference between “lay” and “lie” as they might ordinarily have been.  Those days were always fun, but they required some strategic planning.  One of the many things I loved about teaching was coming up with writing prompts for the students.  To begin class on a Monday, maybe, or to end class on a Friday… something silly, something thoughtful—sometime to think about and write about that required some creative thought, some creative writing:  Your dog buried your homework somewhere in the backyard.  Thinking it was easier to dig it up than redo it, you went out in the night with a shovel and a flashlight, but what you found was…  Things like that.  Always fun and interesting to see what students could come up with. 

This week I’ve been thinking about our two Scripture passages in terms of a creative writing prompt.  This would be the point where I ask you to please get out your journals and get ready to write, but we’ll make this one optional.  Ready?  Here’s your creative writing assignment for the third Sunday of Advent:

Pretend that the stories of Jesus were removed from the Bible and even from your mind.  Based on what John the Baptist said was going to happen in the gospel of John and on what Paul wrote did happen in his first letter to the Thessalonians, recreate the life of Jesus as best you can.

Right about now you could be excited to get started, or you may be feeling grateful and happy that I have no authority to enforce such an assignment and that there will be no parent-pastor conference at the end of the semester.  That’s ok.  It might interest you to know, though, that in the early Christian church, people received Paul’s letters before they had the gospels as we know them today.  It’s not unreasonable to think that there were communities of faith that had heard about Jesus but hadn’t read about him until Paul wrote them a letter.  In my mind this makes Paul’s description of Jesus pretty meaningful and important in the formation of the church.  Even if you don’t plan on finishing your homework, it’s worth wondering about.

And actually, before you start writing, it might interest you to know that both John the Baptist and Paul came into ministry during a time when the world felt like it was falling apart.  The Roman Empire hadn’t reached its height in power yet, but it was getting close.  In 63BC, a couple generations before John the Baptist, Rome swept around the east end of the Mediterranean Sea and conquered Jerusalem. 

So by the time John was born, Rome had secured a foothold in Israel, and its presence there—Roman law, Roman government, Roman control, and Roman taxes—was all part of everyday life for the Jewish people.

John the Baptist has always had a reputation for being a little “off.”  Out there in the wilderness, wearing camel hair and eating locusts and wild honey.  Of course, we could wonder if that’s what the cool kids were wearing those days, and, hey, one man’s insect is another man’s kringle, right?  Well, maybe, but I’ve begun to wonder if people like John weren’t out in the wilderness out of necessity.  You know, John might have been one of those kids who fought authority from day one.  In middle school, he was the one in the back of the class coming up with his own writing prompts—subversive stories, underground poems and rants… things the Roman officials wouldn’t approve of.  Stories about one who was coming soon—about the long-awaited Messiah who would come, full of grace and truth.  John said about this Messiah that he would give the people power to become children of God.

And again, before you start writing, might it interest you to know that Augustus was the Emperor of Rome when John was born?  The thing that makes that interesting is that Augustus, at the age of eighteen, was adopted by his great uncle, Julius Caesar.  Caesar himself was declared by the Roman senate to be a god, and so during his reign, Augustus would refer to himself as the “son of a god.” 

“I am the son of a god,” said the Roman Emperor, but here in the Judean countryside, out on the edge of the Roman Empire, was John the Baptist, maybe twenty-some years old, surviving in the wilderness and sharing the subversive good news—that One was coming soon who would give everyone the power to become God’s children. 

So I don’t know—maybe John didn’t favor life in the wilderness, but the city was probably too dangerous a place for such a message. 

Pretend that the stories of Jesus were removed from the Bible and even from your mind.  Based on what John the Baptist said was going to happen in the gospel of John and on what Paul wrote did happen in his first letter to the Thessalonians, recreate the life of Jesus as best you can.

Even if you didn’t know a thing about Jesus, you know that John the Baptist is setting the stage for something big—something that will upset the status quo and that will threaten to bring the wrath of Rome down on this little corner of the Empire.  Even if you’ve never read a gospel story, you know from the message of John the Baptist that the life of Jesus will come as a threat to the powers that be.

Let’s take a look at Paul for a moment.  When Paul put pen to papyrus, Jesus’ life was over.  Scholars generally agree that this was Paul’s first letter, written in about 52AD, just 50 years after Augustus called himself a god and maybe 30 years after John started preaching in the wilderness.  If Jesus Christ has been anybody other than Jesus Christ, Paul’s advice to the early church might revolve around armed resistance to Rome and surviving a protracted war with a foreign power, but instead listen to what Paul had to say to the early Church:

Be at peace among yourselves… encourage the faint hearted, help the weak, be patient with all of them. See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all.

Does this sound like good advice for resisting a Roman Empire obsessed with power?  Paul continues:  Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

Rejoice always?  Give thanks in all circumstances?  Sometimes I wonder what John the Baptist would have thought of Paul’s letter had he been able to read it in advance of Jesus’ ministry.  I can imagine John taking Paul aside and saying, “Paul, kiddo, you write well, you really do.  But I think you’re underestimating what Jesus is going to do.  He’s going to overthrow the powers as we know them.  You know–make the rough places plain and all.  But you—you might be a little naïve about what’s coming, my friend, with your advice, ‘always seek to do good to one another and to all’ because after Jesus gets done, there’s going to be a whole world of not-so-good coming down on his followers.” 

“Be at peace among yourselves, rejoice, give thanks…”  Does this seem like sound advice for a minority movement facing discrimination and persecution at the hands of the Roman Empire?   Not really. 

Pretend that the stories of Jesus were removed from the Bible and even from your mind.  Based on what John the Baptist said was going to happen in the gospel of John and on what Paul wrote did happen in his first letter to the Thessalonians, recreate the life of Jesus as best you can.

Knowing what we know about the Roman Empire, we could say that in many ways, Jesus failed to meet expectations.  There was no bloody revolution, no overthrow, no message to Rome:  “and stay out!”  Instead Jesus did something that led an early Christian Church movement to value Paul’s message—a message of perseverance in peace, of being content, even in the midst of adversity, of praying without ceasing, even when your faith made you a target for persecution.

So ok.  Maybe you’re ready to get started.  Maybe you’re itching to put pen to your own papyrus and start creatively thinking through the life of Jesus, based solely on the way he’s described by  John the Baptist and Paul.  Maybe you’re ready to work through the afternoon and evening, forsaking lunch, a nap, and the Packers game.  Or maybe not.  But hopefully you have some sense of the urgency with which these faith ancestors of ours described the ministry of Jesus. 

They looked at the world around them and they were urgent about Jesus’ life, his love, his mission, his relationship with power.  John and Paul were urgent about Jesus’ message to the religious elite, his non-violent resistance to Rome, and his uncompromising commitment to the poor. 

I feel sort of sad that the Christian Church seems to have lost some of that particular urgency today.  Today it would seem that if you’re urgent about Jesus, it must mean that you have a “We keep Christ in Christmas” sign in your front yard.  Urgency about Jesus these days unfortunately manifests itself in whether or not you say “Happy Holidays” or “Merry Christmas” or what you happen to call a particular tree.  I think that if we were to interview John or Paul, they might just say to us, “That’s not the kind of urgency we had in mind!” 

Here’s what they might say, and this is urgent:

Be at peace among yourselves.

Encourage the faint hearted,

help the weak,

be patient with all of them.

See that none of you repays evil for evil,

but always seek to do good to one another and to all.

Rejoice always,

pray without ceasing,

give thanks in all circumstances;

for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

Do not quench the Spirit.

Amen.