What do your eyes see around you these days? What do your ears hear?
My eyes see a world that is easily distracted from reality. A friend of mine calls it “ooooh, shiny!” syndrome. The work of living can be hard sometimes, and so it’s no wonder we sometimes look for what makes things momentarily better, easier, happier. Last night at the play we heard Solveig tell the cast that she was going to rewrite Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and make it happier because “people like to be happy during the holidays.”
As you’ve looked and listened to the world around you recently, there has been much to make you happy. These are good things, and I hope there are many things to see and hear which make you happy in the life God has given you. But I hope you also remember that your eyes and your ears won’t tell you the whole story. Sometimes our eyes and ears deceive us and make us think that the world all around us are the reality, when in fact much of what we see is illusion and disguise. Happiness is a mask many of us wear to hide the brokenness within, and this time of year we grow especially susceptible to falling for the illusion of happiness and holiday cheer that covers much that is not right.
John the Baptist knew the masks that the people around him wore. He knew that many of his listeners needed to be called out from behind their masks into the light. Matthew’s gospel tells us that John preached a bold word to all his listeners: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near!” Even the Pharisees and Sadducees, the most pious members of the church in John’s time, wore their masks to hide their sin. But John called them out from behind the mask: “Do 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.’” Nothing, not even the lineage of Abraham, can hide our sin from God, who knows all and sees all and hears all and is in all things. We can be deceived by what our eyes see and our ears hear: God can not be so easily deceived.
What have we seen here this morning? We’ve seen children singing songs to Jesus – a wondrous, good thing. It’s the same thing we’ve done every year, at least in my time with you, and I know there have been Christmas programs here for years and years and years. But even this good thing can become a mask. Even these good things we cherish and celebrate can become masks to hide behind. These are some of the things John might have to say to us if he were here today:
“Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We brought our kids to the Christmas program…’
“Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We made meatballs for the church supper…’
“Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘Our grandparents built this church in 1908…’
“Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘I always teach Sunday School…’
“Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘I come to worship every Sunday…’
It’s not that these things are bad: far from it. It’s a good thing to bring your kids to the Christmas program. It’s a good thing to make meatballs, to teach Sunday School, to remember your family’s connection to a congregation, to hear God’s word regularly. But these are not masks behind which you can hide. You can’t fool God by bringing your kids to Sunday School, or making costumes for the play, or stuffing bags of candy and serving cake after worship. You’re still the sinner behind those masks, and God knows it better than you do.
What’s the answer, then? When we can’t trust our own eyes and ears, where do we turn? We turn to the one who made those eyes and ears, the one who was knitting us together in our mothers’ womb. The God who made you is the God who sees behind all your masks and loves you still. The God who made you is the God who calls you to repentance; not out of anger or spite but out of a desire to let repentance reveal the true person who lives under all the masks behind which we hide. When the kingdom of heaven draws near, all of us will be revealed and none of us will be able to hide: God calls us to repentance so that God can shape us and mold us into what we were always meant to be: saints who live in God’s love and mercy and light. In this life we struggle in darkness and in our bondage to sin, but as the kingdom of heaven breaks in, our sin is overcome by God’s righteousness and our masks are shattered in the light of God’s mercy.
In this Advent season, as the world around you gets noisier and busier and jollier to hide its brokenness and despair, don’t let your eyes and ears be deceived. Enjoy the good things around you, but remember their source and our ultimate destination: the God who created all good things. Come to Him, worship and adore only Him, and you will know what it means to be truly merry, truly joyful, truly at peace. Repent, friends, and drop your masks: the kingdom of heaven draws near.
Nice work, sir. I like what you are doing. I'm taking a similar tack this Sunday. The sermon is done. I'll post it another day this week. Suffice it to say that if God's light is to shine in darkness, there is darkness involved.
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Pax.