Rector's Sermon - Sunday, December 15, 2002

First Reading	Psalm	Epistle	Gospel
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11	126:1-7	1 Thessalonians 5:16-24	John 1:6-8, 19-28

     It was always about this time that the children and I would go out to hunt for the perfect Christmas tree. With the exception of our years in Iowa where all Christmas trees were imported from northern Wisconsin, having been cut in October, we would go to a u-cut tree place outside the city, to pick and cut down the tree ourselves. As you can imagine, getting three children to agree on a single tree was difficult enough. Moreover, the truth is that there is no perfect tree. One that looks good from one angle, has a bad side, or a crooked trunk, or yellowish needles, or just isn't tall enough. The process was never finding tree A, then comparing it to tree B, and then to tree C, and then going back and choosing one of the three. By the time we found tree C, we had forgotten exactly where tree A was, and since upon return, we would approach the tree from a different side, it was difficult to tell if it was really tree A or tree D. Hence our foot prints in the snow would never be straight lines from one tree to the next, but rather a crooked thicket of paths that circled round and round with obviously no direction of beginning or end.

     Somehow, we finally compromised on a tree, cut it and started to drag it to the road where we could load it on the car. Of course whatever tree we picked was never close to the road, and usually, having become so disoriented in the hunt, we first had to find the road, any road, before we started dragging. By this time the children were cold, wet and whiny, and I had to drag the tree by myself, as I mumbled something about Scrooge having the right idea before his unfortunate encounter with the ghosts.

     We would load the tree on the car, pay for it, tie it down, and off we would go home to dry clothes. Our mission was accomplished, although I always promised myself that next year we would buy a cut tree at a lot by the gas station. Yet, when next year came, we would forget all those fruitless paths in the snow that went nowhere, the arguments over this tree or that, the children's lost mittens, and my near-hernia and off we'd go again, in search of the perennial perfect tree.

     Somehow I see those zigzagging and seemingly aimless paths of three children and one adult in the snow reflected in footprints in the sandy mud of those who went out to find John the Baptist. People didn't hear John preach as they sat in the local synagogues or gathered at a major festival in Jerusalem. People had to hunt for him up and down the banks of the Jordan River. John the Baptist brought people out to an unmarked river bank to hear the message of change and rebirth. There was no perfect or set spot where John camped out. He would be down river today, and upriver tomorrow. Only a jumble of footprints in the mud marked the spot where John had preached and baptized.

     The hunt for the perfect Christmas tree is an important lesson for Advent, for if you think that the first tree you come to, the one right next to the road is going to do, your children will tell you no! It is a given that you must wander in circles and get cold and wet before you find that tree.

     Advent is saying beware. This is not a time when it is expected that people of faith will get everything in place before Christmas. This may be the message urged by the world, but it is not the good news of the Gospel. The beautiful announcements of angels to the future mother of John and Jesus were a surprise and certainly disconcerting. If you are so comfortable and satisfied that everything for you is in place for Jesus' birth, you are probably in serious denial.

     Advent is telling us that to feel somewhat frazzled or disoriented, or even in dread of the changes you are about to face in your life, is where people of faith are. That's OK. That is the world God seeks to enter. We don't live in a perfect and orderly world where everything is under our control and we can always make simple and easy choices. That is why we yearn and search for a savior and for a genuine spirit of peace to be born among us.

     And I offer this to you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.