I want to give you a memory test. How many of you remember these chilling words? “This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. The broadcasters of your area in voluntary cooperation with the FCC and federal, state and local authorities have developed this system to keep you informed in the event of an emergency. If this had been an actual emergency, you would have been instructed to tune to one of the broadcast stations in your area.”
It’s been ten years since the Emergency Broadcast System broadcast its last alert. Recently it has been supplanted by the Emergency Alert System, but for many years the EBS stood ready to warn us in case the Soviet Union launched a nuclear attack. Today, such concerns seem to have gone the way of fallout shelters and tailfins on automobiles but people took them very seriously in the 60s, 70s, and 80s.
Naturally, the U.S. government developed stringent safeguards to see to it that a genuine attack would never be confused with a false alarm or a simple test. To ensure that this would never happen, sealed envelopes containing a set of updated authenticator codes were sent on a regular basis to every broadcast facility in the United States.
Despite these safeguards, however, the unthinkable happened. At 9:33 AM EST on February 20, 1971 the Emergency Broadcast System was inadvertently activated. The signal for a real attack was mistakenly given. The wire services picked up the bulletin and distributed those chilling words, “This is not a test.”
What do you suppose was the response to this inadvertent activation? It was disturbing, to say the least. The majority of the U.S. radio stations that received the bulletin either chose to ignore it, or figured, correctly, that it was a mistake. Even when a second message went out with a special codeword embedded in it signifying that it was not a test but an authentic emergency, still broadcasters ignored it. Only one broadcast station, a television station in Chicago, shut down as required by federal law. Obviously, this false alarm demonstrated major flaws in this system. (1)
I thought of the Emergency Broadcast System when I thought of the role of John the Baptist in the Advent drama. John was assigned by God the task of alerting the people of Israel that the Messiah was on his way. Some listened and some did not.
We think of John the Baptist as the voice of one crying in the wilderness. How appropriate such a view is for this second Sunday of Advent for without Christ the world is indeed a wilderness. Without Christ, the world is a prisoner of war camp and we are enslaved by the power of sin. Without Christ, this is a cold, dark meaningless world.
In the second chapter of C.S. Lewis’ book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, little Lucy stumbles through the back of a wardrobe into the imaginary country of Narnia. Although it’s summer in England (where the wardrobe sits), it’s winter in Narnia. Shivering in the cold, Lucy soon meets a faun, Mr. Tumnus, who tells her what wintertime is like in Narnia. The wintertime is perpetual, says Mr. Tumnus, and is the result of someone called the White Witch. “It’s she who makes it always winter (here),” Tumnus says, “Always winter and never Christmas; think of that!” (2)
What a wonderful description of a world without Christ: “Always winter and never Christmas . . .”
“In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar . . .,” says the Gospel of Luke, “the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the desert. He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. As is written in the book . . . of Isaiah the prophet: ‘A voice of one calling in the desert, Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him. Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low. The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth. And all mankind will see God’s salvation.’”
John’s message was a word of warning, but ultimately it was a word of hope. Repent . . . our salvation is at hand. John’s task was to prepare the world for the coming of the Christ. Today we read his words with joy as we prepare our hearts for the Christmas season and all it means to our faith. John’s message was simple.
The Messiah is coming. That was the heart of his message. One is coming after me who was before me. One is coming whose sandals I am not worthy to latch.
One of the humorous characteristics of the last presidential campaign was the almost fervent messianic expectations that some of Barack Obama’s supporters had about him. John McCain made jokes about it, and about his own lack of charisma. At a dinner for politicians and journalists in Manhattan, McCain declared, “Maverick I can do, but Messiah is above my pay grade.”
Obama also poked fun at the idea. “Contrary to the rumors you may have heard,” Obama said, “I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton and sent here by my father, Jor-El, to save the planet Earth.”
Well, the President obviously is not the Messiah or even Superman. Whenever life gets difficult, people pray for a leader who will lead the world out of darkness into light. Israel had been looking for several hundred years for such a leader. They were under Rome’s steel hand. They were looking for a deliverer. John the Baptist announced that the coming of the Messiah was at hand. Whenever life gets difficult we look for someone to deliver us.
Many of you are familiar with the 1957 motion picture The Bridge Over the River Kwai starring Alec Guinness. It was selected as one of the 100 great films of the 20th century. It is the story of a group of British prisoners of war during World War II held by the Japanese in northern Burma in very difficult circumstances.
Ernest Gordon, at one time chaplain at Yale University, wrote a book called Through the River of the Kwai, which shared his experience as a prisoner in that camp. It is a story of utter degradation and desolation.
Gordon says that when the young soldiers in that camp realized that they were going to be there for a while, they began to have Bible studies and to pray diligently that they would be delivered from their circumstances much as Israel prayed for deliverance from Rome. He said that, at first, their praying for deliverance was shallow and superficial. They railed against God for letting them be in that situation. As time went on, however, something happened and their railing against God disappeared. They began to move toward a more mature faith. They began to pray about their relations with one another. No longer was it “Why, God?” but it was “How should we act, God?”
Gordon said the most spiritual moment of that experience was Christmas 1944. Out of deference to the holiday, the men were not given work detail that day and were given a bit more food. He said that as they moved around the prison yard, they sensed that things were somehow different. In one of the barracks (basically a thatched hut with a dirt floor and open sides where the men slept), one soldier began to sing a Christmas carol. It was echoed over the infirmary where men were dying. Then all around the camp, the men began to sing, and those who could, those who were ambulatory, came to the parade field and sat there in a great circle. Gordon said, “God touched us that day.”
He called it the most sacred event that he had ever been involved with. No preaching, nothing of the usual church paraphernalia, just men united by their common misery, singing of God being with them and God’s sovereignty. And he said, “We were touched by God.” (3)
In a sense those soldiers experienced the coming of the Messiah to their prisoner of war camp there in Burma. They experienced a momentary shining of light into their darkness. Maybe you have experienced that sometime when you had a difficult time in your life. You had gotten to a point where you were about to give up, but suddenly you felt the touch of God in the same way those soldiers experienced God’s touch. That is part of what Christmas is all about. It’s not really about glitter and expensive gifts. It’s about people in all kinds of circumstances experiencing God’s presence. John’s message, first of all, is a message of hope. The Messiah is coming.
John’s second message is prepare the way. In the words of Isaiah, he was the “voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’” Now how do you prepare for the coming of the Messiah? You do so first by repenting. John preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Beginning with the seventh verse of this same chapter John speaks very explicitly about ways people are to prepare. The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same. Tax collectors were told not to collect any more than they are required to. Soldiers are told not to extort money and not to falsely accuse people. People needed to prepare their hearts and their lives to receive the Messiah through repentance, for his was not a kingdom of the flesh, but of the spirit.
Patricia Greenlee tells a story about her son who is a West Virginia state trooper. Once he stopped a woman for going 15 miles an hour over the speed limit.
After he handed her a ticket, she asked him, “Don’t you give out warnings?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied. “They’re all up and down the road. They say, ‘Speed Limit 55.’” (4)
People have a tendency to disregard the warning signs, don’t they? sometimes with dire consequences.
Roger Cyr is national director of Operation Lifesaver, an organization in Canada that is seeking to decrease accidents between cars and trains. Cyr puts most of the blame for the fatalities on drivers who are risk-takers. “Studies have shown that when people hear a train whistle their minds tell them to accelerate their speed,” says Cyr. About 43 percent of the accidents involving cars and trains occur at crossings equipped with flashing lights and bells or gates. Cyr says that many drivers “have the audacity to drive around or under gates.” They take the risk, thinking they can beat the train and somehow miss the collision but often with tragic consequences! (5)
It is amazing how deaf people are sometimes to warning signals. John warned the people of Israel that the Messiah was coming. John wanted the people to repent and be baptized because he wanted them to experience the richness and the joy of that coming. Remember how Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God”? God wants to break into our lives and fill us with His love, but without our willingness to repent, God is kept out.
It’s like a little girl named Stephanie who was orphaned after both of her parents died. With no other relatives to care for her, she was put into foster care. Eventually she came to live with the Weavers. Mrs. Weaver found Stephanie sullen, withdrawn, and uncommunicative. She asked to see her records. The first foster family wrote, “Stephanie is a quiet, shy girl.” The second family wrote, “She obeys, but she doesn’t participate much in the family.” Mrs. Weaver doubted if Stephanie would be with them long; she seemed so unreceptive. Still, she decided to keep Stephanie through the Christmas holiday and then talk to her social worker about a transfer to another home.
At Christmas, the Weavers exchanged a number of lovely presents, including gifts for Stephanie. Then Stephanie handed Mrs. Weaver a brown paper sack with a rough drawing of a Christmas scene on it. Mrs. Weaver opened it to find a rhinestone necklace with a couple of stones missing and a little bottle of perfume, half empty. As she put on the necklace and dabbed perfume behind her ear, Stephanie said, “Mom’s necklace looks good on you. You smell good like she did too.” Mrs. Weaver’s heart melted. She vowed to renew her efforts to love Stephanie, and she succeeded! By the following Christmas, Stephanie had become her adopted daughter. (6)
God seeks to break into our dark worlds, just as Mrs. Weaver sought to break into Stephanie’s. One way we can help that happen is through repentance. John’s message was, “The Messiah is coming, prepare the way for him through baptism and repentance.”
When we’ve repented and been baptized, we will be ready for God’s salvation. “A voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him. Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low. The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth. And all mankind will see God’s salvation.’”
Salvation is what the Christmas story is all about. God enters the manger of Bethlehem in order to save God’s people from their sins. When we receive that grace, that peace, that love then we are empowered to live new lives.
In Kansas City, there is a tradition simply known as the “Secret Santa.” Every Christmas, this “Secret Santa” seeks out people who are down and out, and he quietly slips them an envelope with a crisp, brand new $100 bill slipped inside. The recipients are usually astonished at this unmerited act of generosity.
A few years ago, someone tracked down this “Secret Santa” and asked him, “Why do you do this?” The man replied how life had blessed him with an extremely successful business venture. But this was not always the case. In 1971 he was an out‑of‑work salesman who was reduced to living out of his car. One morning he had not eaten for two days. He was incredibly hungry, so hungry that he walked into a diner in Houston, Mississippi to order breakfast with no intent of paying for it. He couldn’t! He had no money, but he was so hungry.
As he hungrily ate his breakfast, he wondered how he was going to pay for this meal, or how he was going to get out of paying for this meal. When the check came, he fumbled around in his pockets pretending to have lost his wallet. The owner of the diner had already sized him up and knew he didn’t have the money.
The owner came around the counter, approached the man, and bent down as if to pick up something. The owner said to the man, “Well, looks like you dropped this $20 bill.” Now the man had enough to pay for breakfast and a little more to keep for the road. He never forgot this totally undeserved act of generosity and goodness. He now gives to others as someone once gave to him. (7)
This Advent season we need to reflect on the entire Christ event. Christ came into the world to save us from the power of sin. The Messiah is coming. Repent and be baptized. Then you will surely see God’s salvation.
1. Don Hawkins, Never Give Up (San Bernardino: Here’s Life Publishers, 1992).
2. Cited by The Rev. Melissa Skelton, http://www.stpaulseattle.org/sermons/122508.html.
3. Rev. Dr. Bill Self (http://www.day1.net/index.php5?view=transcripts&tid=528).
4. Contributed to “All In a Day’s Work.” Cited in MONDAY FODDER.
5. http://preceptaustin.org/hebrews_9‑10_sermon_illustrations.htm.
6. God’s Devotional Book for Mothers (Colorado Springs, CO: Cook Communications Ministries, 2005), p. 111.
7. Rev. Grant F.C. Gillard, http://www.1stpres.homestead.com/Sermon010205.html.