Driving along the other day, the program on the radio was suddenly interrupted by a special bulletin.  You know the kind.  Dramatic background music.  Excited and serious-sounding announcers.  I just knew for certain that we were about to be told that the campaign corner had been turned and we would finally know the identity of the President-elect.  “We’re waiting here any minute now,” they said, “for A-Rod to enter the room.”  “A” who?  I thought for a moment they were talking about a car.  You know, a-hot-rod, or something.  I’m embarrassed to admit that, until this week, I’d never heard of Alex Rodriguez, much less A-Rod.  No question about who he is now.  The highest paid athlete in American history, at twenty-five, he just signed a contract to play baseball for the Texas Rangers worth $10 million for every year he’s been alive.  And, to hear the reporters tell it, none of us will ever be the same because “A-Rod’s” coming.  Really?

Well, the truth is that, more than telling us about the presumed value of one baseball player, his $250 million salary tells us something about our culture’s values that ought to concern all of us.  Tom Hicks is willing to make A-Rod very rich because he knows it will make him even wealthier.  And, he knows that because he also knows we will pay that much to be entertained.  And, since we enjoy the distraction of entertainment so much, that may be one reason we don’t like to read what John the Baptist had to say about Jesus that would crash anyone’s Christmas party.

He never even deals with any of the sentimental stuff around which we form most of our Christmas celebrations.  It would seem that all he wants to talk about is fire.  We’re familiar enough with Christmas carols and Christmas cookies and Christmas stockings.  But, Christmas fire?  In fact, John uses the word, “fire,” three times in his sermon we have recorded here.  In two of them, fire is a metaphor for the work of judgment the coming Christ would bring to this world.  “‘Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown in the fire,” he said and then followed that with yet another reference to Jesus’ work with these words.  “‘His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” 

To say the least, John the Baptist probably wouldn’t be our first choice for guest speaker at any of our Christmas banquets.  But, the odd thing is the way this text ends.  It says that, “With many other exhortations, (John) proclaimed the good news to the people.”  Good news and judgment fire in the same breath?  How can that be? 

Well, before we go any further, we need to deal with a myth that plagues many about this issue of God’s judgment.  Some might argue that a God who loves us enough to send his son could never be a God who judges.  But, the truth is, there is no way God could love us without judging us.  It is his way of saying that how we live has ultimate meaning.  Can you imagine life any other way?

Timothy McVeigh, the infamous Oklahoma City bomber, has now asked that all avenues of appeal for his death sentence be waived.  He not only wants a judge to set a date for his execution, he wants it within 120 days.  He could probably string this thing out for fifteen or twenty years if he wanted.  But, he’s ready to die.  There’s a lot we don’t know about a mind that works like his.  But, maybe his death wish is a sobering way of reminding us that if you ever conclude that your life is going nowhere in the end, the sooner you get there, the better.

What the scripture is telling us is that Christ’s coming means that we don’t have to come to that conclusion specifically because his presence, indeed, his judgment, gives our lives ultimate meaning.  Though John talked about judgment fire, he talked about another kind of fire, too.  “‘I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming . . . He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.’”  So, it was to the very same people who would receive God’s spirit, the Holy Spirit, that John promised God’s judgment as well.  And, that is what makes God’s judgment the good news that it is. 

This is not a judgment, first, in which we will get what we deserve.  If we got what we deserved in judgment we’d get nothing more than what Timothy McVeigh apparently wishes for himself.  “The wages of sin is death,”  the scripture says, but, “the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  (Romans 6:23)  If, in judgment, we got what we deserved, we’d get fair payment for our sin.  The judgment of God does not mean that we get what we deserve.  In Christ, the scripture says, we get God’s free gift of grace.  In Christ, it says, because Christ has taken what we deserve for our sin upon himself. 

About fifteen years ago I was called to the hospital where a two-year-old boy in our church had just been diagnosed with spinal meningitis.  By the time I got to the hospital he was hanging by a thread physically and the family was hanging by a thread emotionally.  The child finally pulled through.  But, before we knew he would, as we stood by his very sick little body, his weeping mother said, “I just wish I could do it for him.”  In Christ, God didn’t just stand over our sin-sick world wishing he could do our suffering for us.  In Christ, God entered our suffering with us and did the worst of it for us.  John’s gospel says it this way. “‘God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.  Those who believe in him are not condemned.’”  (John 3:17-18a)

So, the judgment to which John is referring is not a judgment where we will get what we deserve but in which everything we do with our lives will be proven for what it is.  That which is of eternal value God will gather to himself to preserve forever.  That which is worthless will be burned for what it is.  So, the good news is that, you can live a life that has ultimate meaning, meaning beyond just this moment.  Meaning for eternity.  Or, you can live a worthless life.  A life that means nothing more than the breath you’re breathing now.  Which it will be is really up to you.  Which is why I think the people who first heard John say these words asked, “‘What then should we do?’”  Tax collectors wanted to know.  Some soldiers who happened to be in the crowd wanted to know.  They all asked the same question.  Knowing that our lives have ultimate significance, “‘What then should we do?’”

So, John told them.  The soldiers should learn to be content with their salaries.  And, both they and the tax collectors should not take advantage of those over whom they had power or enrich themselves at the expense of others.  And, those who have more food and clothes than one person needs should give to those who don’t even have enough for one.  It’s all there.  John sounds like the Old Testament prophet he kind of was.  Social justice.  Economic justice.  Generosity.  Contentment.  All said, getting ready for God’s judgment is as much as anything a matter of learning to live our lives more concerned about giving than receiving because we know God is taking account.

Ron Sider is a Christian who writes on matters of social justice.  When he spoke at Baylor University recently he said,  “God measures societies by what they do for people on the bottom.  God acts in history to pull down the rich and powerful who do not express concern for the poor.  If we claim to be God’s people and don’t care for the poor, we’re kidding ourselves.”  (“Sider: Both Liberals and conservatives wrong on poverty,” The Baptist Standard, November 27, 2000)  Sounds a lot like John the Baptist.  And, both have basically said that, you can know you are beginning to live aware of the judgment of God when the question about who wants or needs what begins to turn around in your life. 

A newly released movie, What Women Want, is about a man who gains a strange power to read women’s minds by actually hearing what they are thinking before they say it out loud.  So, he always knows what women want before they tell him.  Wouldn’t that be something?  A man who understands what a woman really wants?  Nancy said that, if they ever made a movie about what men want it would be a very short movie.  You can know that you are getting ready for a judgment that is sure to come when the primary question of your life changes from what you want to the question about what others need and what God expects you to do about it. 

I invited George Mason, my colleague at Wilshire Baptist, to come and take a tour of Mission Oak Cliff with me the other day.  While we were walking through the clothes closet he said that it made him think about how little there was for those who live so close to the brink.  So, he went home and made some mention of that in his next sermon.  And, some of their folks have been cleaning out their closets and bringing clothes over here.  And, all of that made me go home and take a look in mine.  I have two light jackets, a golf jacket (if you can believe that), two heavy winter coats, one for casual and the other for dress occasions.  And, we’re not even talking about all the sweaters or shoes.  It made me wonder how ready for judgment I’ve been getting when there are some people in this city who have not even one coat.  It’s not that I’ve robbed them.  Or, have I?

A-Rod’s not doing anything unusual by taking a huge salary to play baseball.  People come to this city to get rich every day.  What we are celebrating this time of year is that Christ came to us, not to enrich himself at our expense, but to impoverish himself in order that we might be made wealthy in God’s mercy.  And, that same Jesus will someday judge the acts of our lives based on how much of them we’ve spent doing the same for others. 

For far too many, that judgment is perceived as the time when God finally crashes our party.  But, the truth is really something else altogether.  About twenty years ago, a dear friend of mine was sitting in a rocking chair, nursing her baby.  She got up and walked across the room, no more than five or six steps, when a car came crashing through the wall where she had just been sitting.  A young couple, pulling out of a driveway across the street, had gotten into a fight.  Maybe he didn’t know what his woman wanted.  But, as it turned out, he was drunk and she was mad.  And, as they took it out on each other, their car took out my friend’s living room and the rocking chair where she had just been sitting with her newborn baby in her arms.  If she had not gotten up when she did both she and the baby would have killed.  There was no warning.  There was no way she could have known to prepare herself for what was about to happen.  The car just came crashing in. 

And, for some, that is the way God’s judgment is perceived, as the ultimate party pooper.  But, Jesus said, “‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.’”  (Mark 1:15)  We like to speculate about whether this nearness of which Christ spoke was a matter of time or space.  In fact, it’s both.  In both time and space, he is very near.  So that, when he comes in judgment, he won’t have to crash the party.  If you think about it, he’s already in the room.