A substantial part of today’s message has to do with being humble, so with that in mind, I want to get something out of the way. I want to brag a little. Specifically, I want to brag on my little brother, Mikey. Mikey graduated yesterday from UT with a Bachelor of Arts in History, and now he’s on to pursuing a career as a high school teacher.

That said, Stacy and I were in Austin yesterday to attend Mikey’s graduation, and to hear my dad speak. Dad was the commencement keynote at Mikey’s graduation ceremony coincidentally enough. All this to say that it was a big day for our family, and a moment that I wouldn’t miss for the world.

We were all set. The graduation would start at noon—this was yesterday—and we were up and ready with plenty of time to spare. Stacy’s parents were watching Mac, so we headed off with breakfast tacos and coffees in our minds. We made that happen and then we found a parking spot at the Texas Aquatics Center. Everything was going great.

Now, we were supposed to sit on the 5^th row of the auditorium, because my father being the keynote came with the perk of us getting those seats. This gave us the luxury of just waltzing into the place and finding the rest of my family front and center with coats thrown over the seats from which Stacy and I would watch Mikey walk across the stage. It was about 11:55am when we darkened the door of the Frank Erwin Center, and we walked down to the floor level and started looking for my family. They were nowhere to be found. Then I recalled that my mother had said so us, “We’re on row E.” Well, that seemed odd, because the rows at the Frank Erwin Center were marked by numbers, not letters.

That’s when my stomach dropped. I hadn’t bothered to look at the program when I got it at the entrance, so I chose to look at it now. The program read, “Commencement for the College of Communication.” We were in the wrong place, and it was now 11:58 am.

We turned around, headed out the door, and I called my mom to find out that they were seated comfortably on row E, front and center, at the Bass Concert Hall. I was livid. There we were walking back the way we’d come, past our car, past the football stadium and into Bass Concert Hall, and did I mention that Stacy was wearing heels?

On the walk over there I envisioned how we’d messed up. We would miss Mikey and the other graduates processing into the place to the tune of Pomp and Circumstance. We would miss the welcome from the master of ceremonies, and her words thanking the families of the graduates for being there on this very important day in their lives. Basically, I was thinking about me and what I would miss on Mikey’s big day. How much sense does that make?

What were even more ridiculous were these words that I spouted off to Stacy about halfway through our walk. I said, “When we get there I don’t know if I even want to sit with my family, because everyone there is going to see us walk in late.” Sure. The thousands of people at Bass Concert Hall who’ve come to their loved one’s graduation are going to notice you walk in late and take your seat. And then they’ll turn to each other and say, “Look at that guy coming in late. I’ll bet he feels like a moron.”

Do you ever have moments like that? Those moments where you are convinced that everyone is looking at you, and that everyone is thinking about what you’re doing?

“It’s kind of cold in this movie theater, but I’d better not take off my coat right now, because that means I’d have to stand up, and make that unzipping noise, and that would take people’s attention away from the movie. And then they’d be thinking, ‘Why didn’t that guy just take his coat off before he sat down?’”

“I really need to use the restroom, but I’d better wait until this speaker comes to a pause. If I get up now, everyone will look at me, and they’ll follow me out with their eyes and wonder where I’m going, and that would just be a big mess.”

I really hope I’m not alone on this, because if I am then your pastor has some issues.

The examples might be completely different for each of us, but the fact remains that to some degree we feel that we are the center of the universe. There are situations in our lives, be it the daily commute to work or attending a commencement ceremony, situations that make us feel like all eyes are on us; and that kind of thinking is proof that we believe we are the center of the universe.

I’m here to tell you that kind of thinking is not all bad. A little selfishness can be a good thing when used with selfless intent. You can’t care for a sick child until you first take care of yourself. In our congregational life, you can’t offer constructive ideas to a committee unless those ideas come from your authentic self; otherwise, we’re an incomplete community. And I would say that often times you can’t pray for others until you first pray for yourself.

Without that embrace of selflessness, however, selfishness can be our shackle. We have to acknowledge that if we are the center of a universe, that the universe is not my universe, it’s our universe. It’s OK to be the center of the universe if we keep in mind that the universe is like an ocean that’s composed of every stream and river and wave of God’s humanity.

Today we look toward God as being our righteousness. The Lord is our righteousness. And on that journey, today’s Scriptures take us into the desert, where we meet John the Baptist. Now, why do we have to step into the wilderness of the desert during these cold-on-the-outside, warm-on-the-inside days of Advent?

The desert recalls God’s chosen people, the Israelites, and how they were in the wilderness, cast out into exile. So, sisters and brothers, this morning, let’s take that journey into the wilderness, because God is calling out to us from that desert with these words, “Return to me. Return to me.”

Once we gather in that desert, we meet the man of the hour: John the Baptist. We know that the figure, John the Baptist, was sent into the world to proclaim the coming of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. What we seldom recall is his message.

What was the message of John the Baptist? John’s ministry, let’s call it, was a ministry of baptism. And the baptism he offered was all about preparation; it was about getting your heart, soul and life ready for the coming of the Lord. Other acts of baptism of the day were more about cleansing your body, but John the Baptist preached a baptism that required something of us before we would be baptized: repentance.

Repentance is a word that we rarely talk about in Christian circles, because we chalk it up to other unpleasant words, like ‘sin’ and ‘submit.’ But the Greek translation of the word ‘repentance’ means “to change.” To repent is to change.

John the Baptist’s message was essentially saying that those of us who can’t imagine a different future are condemned to be prisoners of the present. If we can’t envision a future beyond this present day, with all its brokenness, then we’re doomed to live a lackluster, incomplete, woulda-coulda-shoulda life in a world that sighs over hazy thoughts of what could have been. And John the Baptist says that what releases the power of transformation and change is the spiritual discipline of repentance.

Now, follow me on this: Repentance is an act that hungers and thirsts for righteousness, and Jesus says that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled. The Lord is our righteousness. Are you hungry for God today? Do you thirst for the Lord?

When we hunger and thirst for righteousness, then we’re given the strength and the power, not of our own will, to look toward God’s salvation. God’s salvation is over there and you and I are right here in the wilderness. We can look over there all we want, but without righteous living, we’ll only be able to see our understanding of salvation. Without repentance, we can only see a fraction of what God hopes for us, and what God hopes for the world.

That salvation is coming, my friends. It’s what Advent is all about. God makes us a promise so that we would respond out of righteousness to receive that salvation. And it takes a loud, obnoxious, unorthodox character like John the Baptist to wake us up to that truth. But here’s the catch for us today: We are not supposed to just remember John the Baptist’s ministry anymore, we are supposed to reenact it and make it real today.

We are the agents of preparation, and our ministry, let’s call it, is a ministry that can’t rely on simplistic, passive aggressive, happy go lucky methods. In a culture that is plagued by millions of persuasive messages each day, 99% of which are trying to convince us to buy something so that I will be happy, we can’t just rely on a nice worship service on a Sunday morning to change our lives, let alone change the world. Advent calls on us to be loud, obnoxious and unorthodox if anyone’s going to really prepare for the coming of Christ.

A woman walks into a fabric store and says to the salesperson, “I’m making my own wedding dress and I’m looking for two particular pieces of fabric to get started.” The salesperson says, “Oh, we have any number of fabrics that might work. What exactly are you looking for?” The woman says, “Well, I need two of the loudest, most obnoxious, unorthodox colors you have, preferably colors that clash against each other.” She said, “You see, my fiancé is blind, and I want him to hear me coming down the aisle. I want him to know for sure when I’m coming.”

That will get your attention, won’t it. I think God has a way of placing those different fabrics in our world so that we, too, would pay attention and know that God is on the way. When I was in Austin yesterday, I couldn’t help but notice that at every busy intersection there is a homeless person holding up a cardboard sign, “No family, nowhere to go. Anything helps. God bless you.” That will get your attention.

There are plenty of things that can seize our attention. The line three hundred-strong of women and men pouring into the soup kitchen out of view of a high-rise downtown area. The HIV/AIDS patient who has perhaps been ostracized by not just society, but even his own family. The child whose parent is incarcerated, who looks around at everything that other children have and will receive more of given the time of year and wonders, “Why do I go without?” Or, as Nancy and Rob reminded us last week, the child with the cleft pallet who looks different and is therefore treated differently.

These are the fabrics of God’s design. And when we have no hunger or thirst for righteousness, we might look upon these fabrics and think, “That’s too loud. That’s obnoxious. That’s unorthodox.” Well, if our vision is so hardened that we can’t see the design of God’s world, then maybe we’d best perk up our ears to the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord.”

Those examples may be attention-getters, but if they only seize our attention to the degree that we feel sorry for them, then we are missing the mark. And do you know what missing the mark is translated from? To miss the mark is translated from the Greek word ‘hamartia,’ which means ‘sin.’

Sisters and brothers, it’s time to listen to our lives speaking to us, because the Holy Spirit, God’s Holy Spirit, dwells in us. Let’s pay attention to those multi-colored fabrics that compose the design of God’s world, and let’s repent, for the coming of Christ is upon us. Feeling sorry for someone isn’t going to cut it. To repent is to change. To repent is to step outside of ourselves. To repent is to get over ourselves. To repent is to take us out of the center of our universe and put Jesus Christ there.

See, to feel sorry for someone is to hold them at arm’s length. And as we hold the other out here, we look them up and down and have a feeling of sympathy. Compassion is good, but it’s only a spark. It’s an invitation to repentance. What we need to do is let our arms become unlocked so we would embrace the other, not just hold them at a safe distance. I mean if Jesus were to come back right now, would you run up to him, grab his shoulders and say, “JC, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes”?

When we repent, then we step outside of ourselves and we embrace the other, and the result is that there is no other anymore. There is only one. God did not send Christ into the world so that we would feel sorry for him hanging on a cross. God sent Christ into the world out of empathy, not sympathy. God sent Christ into the world so that we would celebrate Christ’s victory over death itself, and that we would live our lives in thanksgiving for that victory. God sent Christ into the world as an example of one stepping outside of one’s self for the sake of the world. We are the fabrics of God’s design, and we are supposed to model our lives on that kind of empathy. That is Christian living. That is righteous living.

When we step outside of ourselves and embrace one another, then we can treat the message of Christ as more than just an ideal, but as reality: “for there is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, we are all one in Christ Jesus.” We are God’s fabrics, and our calling is to weave our lives together to make one garment, one garment that would wrap around the infant Jesus and keep him safe and warm lying in a manger.

There is a megachurch in the Dallas metropolitan area called Potter's House. It is an Episcopal church. T. D. Jakes is the bishop at the church, and he can be seen on TV every now and then. He's very well spoken. I've head a lot more about this guy after I had gone to the Episcopal seminary. The church has a huge congregation, and a couple of the members are the former Dallas Cowboys players Michael Irvin and Deion Sanders. Michael Irvin had a pretty checkered past, as we all know. Michael Irvin was brought to the Lord, as they say, by his friend, Deion Sander. "Prime Time" brought him to Jesus.

Michael was going to be baptized in Potter's House by T.D. Jakes. T. D. Jakes invited Michael, Deion, and Michael's wife to be with him right there in that baptismal pool with everyone, thousands of people in the church and the televised audience, watching. As I said, everyone knows where Michael Irvin has been. So, it's only fitting that T. D. Jakes, an out-spoken, very vocal pastor, would point out the elephant in the middle of the room. In fact, this is a baptism and you need to do that. So, T. D. Jakes says to Michael Irvin, "Michael, everybody knows where you've been, son. Are you still relying on drugs to hold up your life?"

"No I'm not."

"Michael, have you ever cheated on your wife?"

"Yes, I have."

"Michael, how many times have you cheated on your wife?"

"Oh, a couple of hundred times, I suppose."

"Ma'am, have you forgiven your husband for these transgressions that he has committed against you?"

"Yes, I have. Long ago. I love my husband, and I have forgiven him."

"Michael, have you forgiven yourself?"

"Yes, I have."

"Michael, are you ready to let Jesus Christ be the Lord of your life?"

Michael didn't respond.

It seems all these facts we can answer really quickly, but 'Michael, are you ready to let Jesus Christ be the Lord of you life?' --- he paused for a moment and finally said, "Yeah. Yeah, I guess I am."

And just like that, he was baptized.

Someone asked me a couple of weeks ago, “How will we know when Jesus is coming back?” And I held on to that. I carry that thought with me during this Advent season, “How will we know that Jesus is coming back?” I think that when we take that leap of faith in our lives; when we stop and step outside of ourselves long enough to simply say, “Yes, God, I think I’m ready,” that’s when we’ll know.

But I also think that what’s more important than the answer to that question is us being willing to change the question itself. The new question could be, “How will the world know that Jesus is coming back?” Every one of us is part of the world. And each of us hears the voice of John the Baptist crying out from the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord and repent, change…not for your sake, but for the sake of God’s world.” As we approach Christmas, what does that repentance look like for you?