The word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness .

Luke 3:2

You want help with finding just the right tree. And you want someone to go to Nieman Marcus in Atlanta on your behalf and buy all the right lights and ornaments. You've got a vision for how you want your home to look - all festooned with red ribbons and festive wreaths on the outside and angels and candles on the inside.

You look in the Yellow Pages but you're not surprised to find there's no listing for Christmas consultants there. So you put a discreet little add in some nice publication, say Southern Living , noting that you'd like to find someone to help you prepare for Christmas.

Well, it would be interesting to see what kind of responses one might get to an add like that. My guess is if the price were right, you'd get some very talented and creative people to help you realize your dream. To help you prepare for Christmas.

But whoever you might get, one thing is for sure -- the very last person you'd expect, the least likely candidate for the job, would be John the Baptist. But for better or worse, John seems to be God's choice as a Christmas consultant, the man who prepares the way for the coming of Christ into the world.

No matter what year in the lexionary cycle we find ourselves, no matter which Gospel you might use to anchor your own Advent devotions, you cannot get to Christ, you cannot get to Christmas, without first going through John the Baptist.

As often happens in the four different Gospels, he's portrayed slightly differently in each. The stereotypical view we have of him as a wild-eyed, half-crazed, locust-eater comes from Matthew and Mark. The Gospel of John gives us very little biographical information on the Baptizer. It focuses only what John is not - not the Messiah, not Elijah, not the One who is to come.

Luke's account is perhaps the most interesting. Certainly it offers us the most historical detail. The story of the preparation for Christ's coming opens with an A-list recitation of the political luminaries of the day. And not just kings and governors but a couple of high priests are thrown in too, for good measure.

Some scholars claim Luke gives us these references to date the story. Maybe so. But I think the reason runs a little deeper than that. For in the midst of all this power - and believe me, these were powerful figures, the big dogs of first century Palestine - in the midst of all this power the Word of God comes to the unlikeliest of figures.

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

That may be the longest sentences in Luke's gospel, and it's certainly among the most significant. Of course it's long because Luke is trying to drive home a point, one that's hard for modern readers to understand.

Hard, but not impossible:

In the 6 ^th year of the reign of President George W. Bush, when Kofi Annan was General Secretary of the United Nations, and Steven Speilberg and Tom Hanks together ruled Hollywood, and Pope Benedict was the Roman Pontiff, and Mike Easley was the governor of NC, the Word of God, the very Word of God, came to Norman, that strange man from out near Swannanoa.

Do you get what Luke's trying to say? I think we middle class folks, we privileged Americans, genuinely have a hard time understanding a passage like this. The disclosure that the Word of God came not to the Presbyterians sitting comfortably in their fancy downtown church with the tall steeple, or even to us here in this beautiful sanctuary; but came instead to the wild Pentecostals out there in the countryside, dunking people over their heads in the river that runs out back of the church - this is nearly incomprehensible for most of us.

So the Word of God comes to John, and not to Annas or Caiphas, the high priests. But who this word comes to -- this Word that prepares the way for a different kind of power, this Word that heralds the advent of a sovereign who will serve the people and not exploit them -- who this Word comes to is only part of the story.

Where it comes matters just as much. For not only does it come to John and not the high priests, it comes in the wilderness, not in Jerusalem.

It's another gigantic point, and another one that's hard for us to understand. For there is no modern day equivalent to Jerusalem. It's easy to say that Jerusalem was the Washington D.C. of the Jewish world, but it was more than that. It was one part Washington and one part Vatican, except Jewish, of course.

Jerusalem was that place were the two great streams of political power and religious prestige came together, where palace and temple merged. And their combined power flowed through the city of David like some kind of great and terrible river, majestic and impossible to resist or control.

But that mighty river was polluted by the lust for power and the stink of extorted money, money you had to pay to buy a job, or to buy salvation. The water flowing through the holy city was dirty. Not fit to drink or to bathe in.

So God sent a messenger whose name was John, sent him into the wilderness, into the wild country where the water was pure.

Where you could drink it and not lose your soul. Where you could bathe in it and come out clean. Where you could be baptized in its depths and come out forgiven rather than corrupted.

This story is particularly meaningful to me because I understand the allure of the temple and the palace. When I first came back from Africa, I wanted to make a difference in the world. I was young and idealist and I had lofty ambitions, so where did I go?

Washington, DC, of course. I called my one connection there and got an interview for a job that was perfect for me, and for which I was a strong candidate. Maybe the strongest candidate.

But I didn't get the job. You see, my dad was a simple farmer turned motel owner. For a long time I thought I lost out because my dad wasn't wealthy or well-connected. Because he didn't understand that if he wanted his son to get a job on Capital Hill, he had to pick up the phone and promise to make a sizable campaign contribution. Because my sweet farmer dad did not understand that such an expense was as essential to my career development as paying for my college tuition.

It took me a long time to realize I was wrong. The reason I didn't get that job in Washington, the reason I didn't find myself strolling through the corridors of power, was not because of my dad. I suspect it was because God was somehow working overtime to save my soul.

Little did I know when I got that disappointing phone call -- Hi, Steve, the Senator's sorry, but you didn't get the job -- little did I know that my own best future, the path to a life that was truly my own, was waiting for me out in there in the wilderness, far away from the big powerful city.

It's a tough message to learn. And a tough one to preach. Probably most church folks would rather we just skip over John the Baptist on our journey, our rush, toward Bethlehem, toward Christmas. We don't like his language, or his clothes, or his tactics. That whole deal with repentance and baptism for the forgiveness of sins, it's just too harsh, too old fashioned, too, well, too Baptist.

But if you think about it for a minute, something's gotta be wrong with that picture. When you come across a street preacher downtown, say, the kind with the wild eyes, the kind that smells funny and wears a sandwich board with warnings about the end of time. The kind with a bullhorn announcing just what a miserable sinner you are, and that you need to repent -- well, when we meet that guy, most of us have the good sense to get out of the bullhorn's reach.

Not here. Not in this story. Why do you suppose those crowds streamed out of Jerusalem to hear this desert preacher? Why did they line up to be dunked by John in the waters of the Jordan?

None of us was there so it's hard to know for sure, but I'd wager big that it's not because they were in the market for bad news, or for a harsh word of judgment. Or because they were anxious to feel rotten about themselves, like they didn't measure up to the standards of the high priests.

Maybe they streamed out because they were in fact tired of bad news. Tired of feeling rotten about themselves. Tired of feeling like they didn't measure up and didn't deserve God's grace. Maybe what they wanted and needed was exactly what John offered them: Good News.

See, the problem nowadays is that when we hear the word "repent," our skin crawls. We think of that crazy street preacher downtown, or that weird tv preacher trying to sell us God if only we'll repent - oh, and send the preacher a check for $25.00.

And we import those feelings into this story. But the crowds out in the wilderness, they didn't hear the word "repent." They heard the word "metanoia," Greek for turn around and head in a different direction. They heard an invitation to let God into their hearts and to be changed, to be filled with new life, to be transformed.

Nowadays we think "repentance" is for losers, for people who are ready to give up on themselves.

But metanoia , what if it's the opposite of that? What if that's for people who won't give up on themselves? People who, yes, are willing to give up on power when it corrupts them, or who are willing to give up on the temple when it excludes them and makes them feel rotten about themselves.

People who are willing to head out into the wilderness and leave the trappings of temple and palace behind, and instead dance their way into the kingdom of God.

People who are willing make their own statements of faith:

I have traveled into this wilderness because I will not give up on me! And the way I will do that is to turn away from a life that is not my own. I will turn instead to the life God offers me.

And yes, I will do that on God's terms. I will surrender. I will confess. I will bathe in the waters of baptism. I will rejoice. I will sing. I will love. I will dance.

I will prepare my heart and my home this Advent to receive the living Christ. I will hire John the Baptist as my Christmas consultant, and I will festoon my home with red ribbons and my heart with candles and wreathes.

And I will receive the greatest gift of all. I will receive the gift God has for me. The gift of new life.

Thanks be to God!