It's hard to believe it's already the third Sunday of Advent, and it's only December 11.  That's because Advent this year started as early as it can possibly start, making this year’s season of Advent as long as it could possibly be.  (So if you’re not ready for Christmas, you have no excuse this year!)

Advent always focuses on the familiar themes of preparation, waiting, hoping, longing, and, in Advent, we meet the usual people of the Advent story: Isaiah, the Old Testament prophet whom Christians believe foresaw the Messiah; Elizabeth and Mary, cousins and mothers of John the Baptist and Jesus; and, as in today’s reading, John the Baptist.  Of those, this year, John the Baptist gets sort of pride of place in our cycle of Advent readings because we read this story about him baptizing in the Jordan River not once, but twice - last week, it was Mark’s Gospel’s version of this event, this week, it’s John.  John was the forerunner of Jesus.  According to Luke’s Gospel, he was Jesus’ cousin, and when the two men became adults, John sort of laid the path for Jesus' ministry.

All four Gospels give this account of John baptizing at the Jordan River just before Jesus approaches him, but the version that we read today is a little bit different from the other three, and also, my favorite.  In it, as we just read, some religious leaders send messengers to interview John the Baptist as he’s there by the Jordan River baptizing people and preaching repentance.  (It would seem that the religious leaders then, as now, don't like people to do anything without their approval and control!)  So, these messengers approach John and the first question they ask him is “Who are you?”  And his answer – his first recorded words in John’s Gospel – is “I am not the Messiah.”  Contrary to what everyone around him is saying at this point, he denies being the Messiah.

Then they ask him “Are you Elijah?”  Elijah was an Old Testament prophet whom many thought had never died and would reappear one day to announce the coming of the Jewish Messiah.  So, this was sort of the second most audacious person John could claim to be.  But to this, also, he says “No.”  Then they ask “Are you the prophet?” – being intentionally vague but probably possibly to another prophet of the Jewish tradition who was connected in people's minds to the coming of the Messiah, Isaiah.   But to this, too, he says “No.”

So finally they just ask outright: Then who are you?  And he quotes from the prophet Isaiah whom he has just denied being, basically leaving his identity as unknown to them as when they arrived.

As I said, all of the Gospels tell about how John baptized at the Jordan River – first others, and then Jesus – but this is the only Gospel with this peculiar dialogue between John and the religious leaders.  Some people – people who study this sort of thing – say that it’s here because John the Evangelist, who wrote this Gospel (a different John, by the way) wanted to discourage those early Christians who had come to favor John’s memory over Jesus’.  I guess in the early centuries there was a group of Christians who put as more of an emphasis on John than what became the mainstream Christian movement did.  So diminishing John in this way, by having him diminish himself, was a good way to shift the emphasis to Jesus.

I don’t know if that’s the case, but I just love this dialogue, and it seems to me there are at least two ways you could apply it to real life in this hectic season.  First – and especially in a season where so many demands and expectations are heaped on us, by others, by ourselves, and by our culture – we could all learn from John how to say “I am not.”

You don’t need to be completely ready when Christmas comes.  You don’t need to make your brother and mother get along at the Christmas dinner table.  You don’t need to get your kids everything they want – in fact probably shouldn’t.  You don’t need to make that extra pie or do brilliant things with the leftover ham.  You don’t need to guarantee everyone’s happiness – as if you could.  In other words, you don’t need to be the Messiah – or Elijah or Martha Stewart or whomever – this holiday season.  If that seems like too trite an application of John’s story, remember that it takes a lot of faith to be able to say that.  This third Sunday of Advent, let John be your example.  There already is a Messiah, and it’s not you.

In saying “I am not,” John doesn’t just give up control; he gives up a false sense of importance.  Which brings me to another lesson from John: seeing that we’re not the most important person in the room maybe helps us to see who is.  This season, when charity is so important, we think of all the people in whom Christ said we could find him: the poor, the heartbroken, the needy.  We might say, I am not Christ, but the mother who can’t afford even a simple Christmas dinner for her children, is.  I am not Christ, but the child whose parents are out of work and won’t be receiving Christmas gifts this year is.  Or, I am not Christ, but my friend who lost his father this year and is dreading the holidays is.  Once we allow ourselves and our own sense of importance to decrease, like John the Baptist, suddenly others increase and our priorities shift.  

So - we have one more Sunday of Advent and two whole weeks until Christmas to practice saying “I am not.”  And maybe a little more of that and our Advent will be not only more meaningful, but also a bit more manageable than it seemed before.

[This sermon was preached at the 9 am service for the Feast Day of St. Nicholas at St. Nicholas-on-the-Hudson in New Hamburg, NY.  The 10 am service is the children and family service.] 

Today we’re celebrating the feast day of our beloved patron saint, St. Nicholas of Myra, and since it's one of those Sundays where I only preach at the 9 am service, I can do what I did when I talked here about Noah on Vacation Bible School Sunday: give you the uncensored, adult version of a couple of the stories we tell about St. Nicholas.

But first, a little biographical information for those who haven’t been here before on the Feast of St. Nick.  The St. Nicholas that most of us know is filtered down to us through the customs of our European ancestors, who adapted the story of St. Nicholas to their particular context (and called him “Santa Claus” or, in the Netherlands where many of our customs come from, “Sinter Klaas”).  The real St. Nicholas was born in modern-day Turkey in the 4th century.  He became a priest and then bishop and moved to Myra, where he served as bishop until he died, and where he was also buried.  Sometimes you’ll hear him referred to as “St. Nicholas of Bari” (Italy), and that’s because sometime around the 11th century the Muslims conquered Myra and his bones were smuggled by some Christians to Bari, Italy, where they remain today in a small chapel named after him.  And that’s how his story spread out into Europe and became part of our annual celebrations.

St. Nick was the patron saint of a lot of people – in fact, the list seems endless: sailors, pawnbrokers, barrel makers, murderers, students, perfumers, thieves.  You can be sure that, behind this list are lots of stories we would not want to tell our children.  But since he’s best known for being the patron saint of children, I’m going to tell you two “uncensored” stories about his work with kids.

The first is the best known and tamer of the two, the story of St. Nick and the three maidens.  The story goes that, as a young man, St. Nicholas went on a walk through town and heard a bishop preaching on the street about giving your money to the poor.  He was so moved by the sermon that he decided to do just that, but he wasn’t sure how to begin.  

A few days later, he overheard a man in the marketplace telling someone that he couldn’t afford dowries for his three daughters, and so, having nothing to offer any prospective husbands, he would have to sell them into prostitution.  So Nicholas followed the man home to find out where he lived, and that night, he snuck up to the man’s house and dropped a bag of gold coins in the window.  The bag fell into one of the daughters’ shoes, which was just beneath the window.  The next evening, he came back and did the same, dropping another bag of gold coins in the shoe of the second daughter.  And the next evening, he dropped a bag of coins off for the third daughter.  So all three daughters went on to attract husbands and were thus spared a life of prostitution.

There’s really no kid-friendly version of the next story.  According to this one, three boys were lured to the home of a butcher, who then chopped them up and put them in pickle barrels in his shop to sell to his customers.  But lo and behold, somehow St. Nicholas caught wind of what had happened, showed up at the butcher's home, pieced them back together, and sent them on their way.    

These stories are very Brothers-Grimm, aren’t they?  They probably were told to children at one point and, like those fairy tales, had some disciplinary purpose.  In fact I find it interesting that this second story has various versions of who gets put in that pickle barrel.  My favorite is the one where three seminaries studying to be priests are the butcher’s victims!

Anyway, what I like about these stories is not just that they’re fun, but that they remind us that St. Nick lived in the same messy, messed-up world that we live in, and that he wasn’t afraid to confront that world to make it better.  I don’t remember how I lost my faith in St. Nick as a kid, but I do remember sort of skeptically thinking of him as a perpetual child up there at his North Pole workshop  full of elves and toys - not someone I admired or felt a need to carry into my grown-up life.  But in fact, the real St. Nick didn’t just sit up in his snowy cabin inspecting toys by day and chewing candy canes in front of the fire with Mrs. Claus by night.  He was out in the world in places that few of us dare or bother to go - to the homes of the poor, to places where things take place that we’d just as soon not know about or see: like violence against children, the most vulnerable members of our society.

And I guess it’s because of these stories that my faith in St. Nick returned.  I believe in St. Nicholas just like I believe in all people who aren’t afraid to step out into the messy places of this world and offer a hand.  So today, on the feast day of our dear patron saint, may God grant us the courage to both see and help those in need, following in the footsteps of St. Nicholas of Myra.