R.C. Slocum was dismissed as the head football coach at Texas A&M a couple of weeks ago - even though he’d never had a losing season.  Indeed, he was the winningest football coach in A&M history and also had the fourth highest winning percentage of any active college football coach.  Even though they won only three, Slocum had led the Aggies to eleven bowl appearances.  Yet, despite his overall winning record, the highest percentage of his loses occurred in the last four seasons.  So, Slocum is out in part because, as one alumnus of another Big 12 school recently commented, we do live in a “what have you done for me lately” kind of world. 

Far be it from me to question the wisdom of the powers that be at A&M.  Whether Slocum should be head coach is of relative insignificance to me personally and matters at all only because I am a taxpayer and I do know some fine people who graduated from there and who seem to be successful anyway.  But, for the sake of Advent discussion, can we question the question, “What have you done for me lately?”  What happens in our families, our church, our world, if that is the primary question that drives our relationships?  What happens to our faith if the primary question we ask is, “What have you done for me lately, God?”

If we need someone to help us question the question we need look no further than John the Baptist.  It was his life’s calling, the very passion of his soul, to ready the world for the coming Messiah.  But, be warned, if you choose him as your Advent model, your model of how to get ready for Jesus, you will find yourself having to do some real soul searching about what question drives your relationships with God and others and whether it should change.

We have touched down in the gospel narrative this morning when Jesus has just come on the scene and, like John, has begun to preach and then baptize his followers.  However, more people are beginning to follow Jesus than John.  In the competition with Jesus for total baptisms, John’s win-loss record isn’t looking too good toward the end of what will be his last season.  This troubles John’s assistant coaches who point out to John how many more converts Jesus is winning than he.  “‘Rabbi, the one who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you testified, here he is baptizing, and all are going to him.’”  You’d think they were becoming true Baptists just hanging around with the Baptist.  “Rabbi, look what’s happening across the river!” 

Nevertheless, John reminds his disciples that they should know better.  It wasn’t a competition to begin with.  Everything John had ever done was motivated by this one question, “What can I do to get the world ready for Jesus?”  Everything John had, he said, was a gift meant to help him answer that one question; “‘No one can receive anything except what has been given from heaven.’”  Even those who came to him for baptism were the gift of God not pawns in a competition with Jesus for soul-saver of the year.  That Jesus was now succeeding at what John had helped prepare him to accomplish, even though it meant moving John aside to make room for Jesus, only fulfilled John all the more.  It never had been about him, John told his disciples.  It was about Jesus all along.  “‘For this reason my joy has been fulfilled.  He must increase, but I must decrease.’”

For John, getting ready for Jesus meant keeping the question focused on how his life could be used up serving the Messiah, not focused on what Jesus had done for him lately.  For us, getting ready for Jesus, living in this moment, means asking honestly what question drives our lives and whether it ought to change. 

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in Oslo, Norway this past week, President Jimmy Carter sounded like an Old Testament prophet.  He made a compelling case for the fact that “the most serious and universal (world problem) is the growing chasm between the richest and poorest people on earth.  Citizens of the ten wealthiest countries are now seventy-five times richer than those who live in the ten poorest ones (and) the results of this disparity are (the) root causes of most of the world's unresolved problems, including starvation, illiteracy, environmental degradation, violent conflict, and unnecessary illnesses that range from Guinea worm to HIV/AIDS.”  Then, getting to the heart of the matter, literally, he probed and questioned our true values when he said that, “tragically, in the industrialized world there is a terrible absence of understanding or concern about those who are enduring lives of despair and hopelessness.  We have not yet made the commitment to share with others an appreciable part of our excessive wealth.”  (I have to confess that I had to find an encyclopedia.  I had no idea what a Guinea worm is or about the terrible pain it inflicts on people.)

As a matter of historical fact, here is a man who did more for peace in the Middle East than any president in history, whose win/loss record on that score is beyond reproach, but who was turned out of office, in large part, by American voters whose primary question of him, as it is of every President, was, “What have you done for my wallet lately?”  Yet, refusing to be consumed by bitterness, Carter turned the power of his ex-presidency toward humanitarian causes.  In his late 70’s, he wields his energies by doing everything from swinging a Habitat for Humanity hammer to traveling to underdeveloped nations to champion the causes of those trapped on the underbelly of poverty and hopelessness.  By word and example, Carter’s trying to get us to think about what our world becomes when the primary question we ask of each other is, “What have you done for me lately?”  He’s trying to get us change the question. 

John, too, was trying to get ready for Jesus by saying, “‘He must increase, but I must decrease.’”  That’s not a statement of diminished personal worth.  It is a statement of discovering the divine purpose that gives ultimate, eternal meaning to our lives.  It’s a cry of joyful hope.  It means turning from self-centeredness to divine-purpose-centeredness.  Getting ready for Jesus means making room in our lives, in our world, for the one who has come to announce to us that God’s primary question of us is not, “What have you done for me lately?”  In Christ, God is asking, “What can I do to help you find your way?” 

Every true follower of Jesus, in time, is confronted with changing the question they ask of God and others from “What have you done for me?” to “What can I do for you?”  It’s saying to God, “I’m here for you, no matter what.”

It’s Job, after indescribable loss and suffering, changing the question, asking it by saying, “‘Though (God) slay me, yet will I hope in him (Job 13:15).’”  It’s Isaiah, when confronted with the heavy weight of the prophet’s message, answering God’s call, “‘Here am I; send me! (Isaiah 6:8).’”  It’s Jesus himself, at the end of the wilderness temptations, rebuking evil by turning the question, “‘Away with you Satan!  For it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only (Matthew 4:10).’”  It’s Jesus again, just before his crucifixion, facing his last temptation to protect himself at all cost, saying to his Father, “‘not my will but yours be done (Luke 22:42).’” The people who make the most eternally good difference in this world are the people who change the question from “What have you done for me?” to “What can I do for you?”

Kent Skipper is the executive director of the Salesmanship Club across the street.  He gives leadership to an organization whose primary mission is to help some of the wealthiest and most influential people in Dallas find a way of changing the question.  That job demands living and working in a constantly changing environment that gravitates around their core value of confronting poverty by empowering the underprivileged.  It’s a non-negotiable commitment to change people’s lives and it creates an environment that proves too overwhelming for some who want to work or serve there.  He told me just this week that they have adopted a saying at the Club.  “All are welcome to stay; those who stay change.” 

It is impossible to follow Christ without changing.  If we are not changing from self-centered purpose filled lives to divine-centered purpose filled lives, we are not following Christ.  If we are changing, it will be most evident in the fact that, over time, the primary question we ask changes from, “What have you done for me lately?”

to “What can I do for you?”  If it is truly a core value of ours to make disciples of Jesus Christ, then people who become a part of this church will discover an environment in which they are constantly challenged to change the question.  Whether we ever formalize it as a slogan, our spirit will be, “All are welcome to stay; those who stay change.”  The happiest, most fulfilled people I know are those who’ve changed the question.  The converse is also true.

If you live in a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately marriage, your marriage will probably not last.  Even if it legally does, it will almost certainly feel like a marriage that was made anywhere but in heaven.

One of the most awesome responsibilities of parenting is that of leading another human being from the infancy-centered question, “What have you done for me lately?” to the psychologically, emotionally and spiritually mature God-centered question of “What can I do for you?”  A leading that is done more by example than by anything else.  Servant-minded parents tend to raise servant-minded children to become servant-minded adults.  There are exceptions to that rule.  But, they are the exception.  Often, when I’ve been privileged to meet the children who have grown up in this church and gone on to be servant-leaders in their churches and communities, when I look closely, I see mirror images of their parents who, by example, modeled what it means to change the question and who, by example, said of their relationship to Christ, “‘he must increase . . . I must decrease.’”

By the way, if you’re looking for models of how to change the question, you can look at Job and Isaiah and Jesus.  But, you can also look around.  Come next Saturday to our Christ in Christmas program for neighborhood children.  Come Christmas morning to our Christmas Day dinners.  You’ll see the most thrilling, heart-warming and soul-stirring example of small armies of people who give of themselves, their time, their means to help others get ready for Jesus by changing the question.  Literally hundreds of families will hear someone from this church ask them, “How can I help you?”

The people we will help this next two weeks are different from most of us, however, only in that their poverty is more visible.  It’s easier to see what they need and, at least in some ways, easier to see how they might need our help.

Life is hard for most everyone, though, in one way or another.  And, life is hard in part because none of us has what it takes to make it alone.  We are all of us impoverished in some way.  Emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, we’re all lacking one way or another, just, more often, not as visibly as some of our underprivileged neighbors.

Anyone can stand at a distance and critique and judge.  The people who are making the eternally good difference in their families, their communities, their churches, in their relationships and in their world are the people who’ve changed the question and who courageously and lovingly come alongside and, without judgment, simply ask, “What can I do to help?”  Where would any of us be if it weren’t for those people who came into our lives, sometimes with what can only be called providential timing, simply to ask one question, “What can I do to help?”

It is true that we live in a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately world.  And, if you’re going to coach football, or work in a bank, or teach school, or drive a tractor, hold a scalpel, or run a business you’d do well to remember that.  But, if you’re going to follow Jesus, whether you coach football, work in a bank, teach school, drive a tractor, hold a scalpel or run a business, get ready to change.  Because the way Jesus is changing this world is by gathering an army, one person at a time, of people who are committed to changing lives by first changing the primary question they ask of God and others.