Jack Hardaway
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The small courier plane was flying low, too low, dipping and wavering back and forth over the tree tops, its engine sputtering and popping.
It flew under some tall power lines, but didn’t quite make it.
The tail snagged on the line, jerking the plane to a stop, and the plane plopped to the ground, landing in a field by a small house.
The engine started smoking and making ominous sparking noises.
The door to the cockpit popped open and John the Baptist slowly stepped out. He looked as ruffled and shaggy as usual, the fringes of his beard smoking.
He walked over to the house and knocked on the door.
An older man came to the door and saw John the Baptist with his singed beard and behind him the collapsed smoldering plane in his pasture.
The man said, “That your plain in my yard?”
John the Baptist looked back at the wreckage, “It sure was.” It then exploded.
A tire bounced across the porch and rolled through the door.
John picked up a smoking package and then said, “Have I got some news for you…”
Out of the blue, out of nowhere, falling out of the sky, John the Baptist appears, and interrupts a normal day, with an announcement to get ready.
Like God photo bombing a wedding picture.
Like a bear walking up to a campfire.
An appearing that rudely interrupts.
Unkempt, unmannered, inappropriate, singed beard, smelling of old camel.
John the Baptist, with the message.
There is before John the Baptist, and then there is after, the turning point, the tipping point.
Prepare.
Repent, God is coming.
Repentance is a very deep word.
It isn’t so much about turning away from what is wrong as it is turning toward the one who is goodness, life, and light, who draws and holds our attention, as the Song of Songs puts it, “Like a mare among stallions, you lure, I am held.”
Advent is a penitential season with a different feel from the other penitential season, the season of Lent. In Lent we confront our own mortality, we prepare for our death and the accounting of our lives.
The Repentance of Advent is the sudden confrontation that God is coming, that God’s kingdom is interrupting our best laid plans. In Advent we prepare to welcome the guest, the arrival of God, the long expected, unexpected visitor.
The question is what will we do with this news?
Will we run away?
Will we hide?
Will we collapse in fear and trembling?
Will we ignore and dismiss it?
Or will we run toward the arrival of God with our arms wide open?
As God’s kingdom draws near, the question isn’t if we are welcomed or not. The question is whether we want to be part of it.
It is not about getting to be with all those I miss, my favorite family and friends. It is about will I sit in fellowship and intimacy with those who make me uncomfortable, who aren’t like me, who I don’t like.
Will I come to the door and look in and say, nope, I’m not going to that party, and walk away into the dark looking for something I will never find, growing ever colder, and distant, fading into an ever fainter phantasm?
Or will I come to the door and be amazed at all the curious and weird people who become the great adventure of God?
That kingdom is coming. That choice.
And that choice changes how I live right now.
I live that choice now.
Will I turn toward that now, to the one who lures and holds, with unkempt annoying people like John the Baptist
The appearing, out of the blue, falling from sky.
John the Baptist, with the message.
Get ready.
Sorry about the front yard.