Begin the Journey

Introduction: Making our Way to Bethlehem

Several Christmases ago the Allen family made a journey. It was long journey that took the better part of a day to get there and the better part of a day to return to our home, to Devon. It was tiring and the lines in the airport were particularly long, but it was worth everything we had to endure to be there.

“There” was my family’s home in Texas and “there” was the place where we were surrounded by the love and the closeness of family members of all ages, some of whom, including my sister, we hadn’t seen very often over the years. And when we came back, we weren’t the same people we were before our journey. For though we were tired out from the travel, there was a sense of renewal and life and an assurance for me that even though the location of home had changed as my Mother was living in a different house than the one on Lively Lane Where I grew up, the love we remembered and expected to find was still there and the journey made all the difference.

Each year during the season of Advent, we Christians begin a journey to take us home, to take us home to Bethlehem; to take us home to God. It’s an interior journey, a journey of the heart and we hope that this month-long journey will prepare our hearts for the coming of the Christ-child so that the road to our heart will be clear, so that this time there will be enough room for Him to be born in our lives again or to be born for the first time.

Now most of us think that we know the way to Bethlehem this Christmas. We can find it on the map, just a little way outside Jerusalem. It shouldn’t be a problem. But there is a problem; and the problem is that so much has changed since our last visit, that many of us have forgotten how to begin the journey much less remember where we are going.

A whole year has passed; a year that has brought many changes to our lives some of them good; some of them not so good; some of them heartbreaking. We’re literally different people than we were a year ago. So the starting point of this year’s journey is different, too.

Bethlehem is still there, waiting for us to come, but the geography, the location of our lives has changed so much that we may need a little help starting off on our way that is,
if we’re willing to set aside our fears and go there.

Meeting John on the Way

Now, if you were to ask the Gospel writer, Luke, the way to reach Bethlehem, the way to come home to the Christ-child and to God’s magnificent love for you, he would tell you to go out to the desert, to go out into the wilderness. “Keep going until you get to the Jordan River, you can’t miss it and there’ll you’ll find a man, a strange fellow standing knee deep in the water, just baptizing people as fast as he can.That’ll be John the Baptist. You ask him how to get to Bethlehem because if you want to go there he’s the only one who can help you to find your way.”

All the Gospel writers say the same thing. If you want to go to Jesus, if you want to walk the path that will take you home; if you want to live a fearless, hope-filled life with God then you’ve got to meet with John on your journey there you’ve got to meet John to hear and respond to John’s call to repent to change your life so that the road is open for Christ to enter in.

You see the season of Advent belongs, not to Jesus, but to John the Baptist, it belongs to God’s prophet in the wilderness munching on grasshoppers and wearing a camel hair shirt calling people to repent, calling people to change their lives because the Kingdom of God is at hand, calling us to turn away from the hardness of our hearts so that we can accept God’s forgiveness and find our way home to Bethlehem.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been very comfortable with people

Insisting that I repent of my stubborn, selfish, sinful ways. After all, those ways are not really all that stubborn or selfish or sinful, are they? I’ve attended enough tent revival meetings with one of my grandmothers to last a lifetime, and they always left me unchanged, or even more committed to the way I was living my life. And John reminds me of those tent revival preachers, yelling at the top of his lungs to repent, to change, to turn your life around. And you could probably hear John long before you saw him, hearing his one sermon, “repent”, echoing off the barren desert landscape.

But whether we like to go to the wilderness to see John and hear his one sermon or not, the reality is that John’s message is the start of the journey to Bethlehem. It is the beginning that every one of us must make if we intend to find room for Jesus this Christmas and allow God’s love to bring us home. For it’s when we’re willing to admit that we’ve lost our way, a little or a lot; when we’re willing to admit that we’ve allowed other things to come first in our lives before God, that God will come to us. He will forgive us and will walk with us on our way to Bethlehem,                                             banishing our fears and offering us real life.

Repentance is the first step and the daily step

When we lived in northern Virginia, I had a friend who was Roman Catholic priest who worked in the hospital at Georgetown University. He was a hospital chaplain, visiting the sick, the mending, and the dying. But once a month he made journey to the city jail, and after that to a convent of nuns to hear confessions. He told me that on these days when he journeyed to the jail and the convent, he probably met with thirty people over the course of the day,  hearing their confessions and offered God’s forgiveness and grace. In the jail, he heard a lot of hard things from the people who came to repent of their sins.

He heard people confessing to hurting other people, to killing other people. He heard people confessing to stealing to support their addictions, and to stealing to support their wealthy lifestyles. He said it felt like being hit over the head with a club, because these were such shocking sins. But in every case, with every person who truly sought a different life he offered forgiveness as the sign of God’s love and the promise of new life in Christ. And he told me he could see the look of complete relief and wonder on many faces relief, because their repentance had made room for God to move in their lives and they could begin the journey again with God.

In the afternoon, he heard confessions in the convent. The sisters would come to him one by one and confess their sins in order to move on in their lives with God. He heard the nuns confessing to taking an extra piece of bread at lunch one day when they didn’t really want it and it left too little for the other nuns. He heard nuns confessing to having evil thoughts about another person. And he heard them confessing to letting their minds wander during daily church or during a talk someone was giving.

He said that it felt like cotton balls bouncing off his face after being in the jail, but for these women, who had devoted their entire lives to God, who sought God’s way in all that they did,                       these were real sins and came with all the hardness of heart,  with all the separation from God and the loneliness, of the hardest criminal in the jail. And just as in the jail, he said, when he heard the confessions and offered God’s forgiveness, grace and the promise that they could begin their walk with Christ anew, freed from their sins, the look on their faces conveyed utter relief.

I suspect that most of us here this morning would find ourselves somewhere in between these two groups of people most days—somewhere between being a convicted criminal and a nun. But we do have sins to confess, you and I. We do have patterns in our lives and ways of living that keep us from living with God in our lives, and from beginning our journey to Bethlehem this year.

And so I invite you this morning to repent, to change. I ask you to admit to God where you’re falling short in your relationship with Him, to admit to God where you’re falling short in your relationship with others. Because when you and I confess, when we ask for God’s forgiveness, He promises to forgive us and to touch our hearts with His grace and love. Promises to come to us and lead us by another road in life; a road that offers hope and light and love. A journey that will bring us home.

Repentance, turning, seeking the forgiveness of God in your life is the map to Bethlehem that John the Baptist offers each one of us this morning. And it’s the first step on the journey to Bethlehem the step that will make room for the Christ-child to come this Christmas and every day of our lives.

So when we get to the confession of sin in the service today, don’t just read along; be honest, say it as though you mean it.   For if you and I will confess our sins, we will begin the journey to Bethlehem in earnest where we will find God Himself, the merriest of Christmases, and life that is really life.

Amen.