Westwood Presbyterian Church

About 15 years ago a couple came to me asking for some help in making their marriage work. Some time during our first meeting together I had them do an exercise in which they were to list all the things they thought their spouse expected of them, and also listing everything they expected of their spouse. There were seven blanks in each category. The husband fined in all seven blanks under "What my wife expects of me" category and added three on top of that to make 10 as a total. He looked very discouraged as the surveyed the list that he had written. Then it came time to compare his list with the list his wife had of what she actually expected of him. Instead of 10 items there were only 2: Help get the kids to bed, and take out the garbage. He looked at his long list - and her short list - and said "That's all you expect, that's easy." The two of them left much happier than when they had arrived and they never scheduled a second meeting.

Expectations trip us up all the time. Not only that we don't communicate what we expect -- but also that we make assumptions about what the other person expects. And so we start aiming for things that are really not what the other party wants us to be aiming for. We need to know what the other side wants so that we can know what we are supposed to be doing.

Over the next three weeks a passage from Micah 6 will act as a backdrop to the sermons. The. author says to Israel, and I am paraphrasing here -- "You think that God has huge expectations of what you are to do for Him - that he wants you to give all the cattle that you own, that he demands that you sacrifice your happiness, that he wants you to empty your bank account. In fact he wants none of those things, this is what God wants: that you seek justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God."

That is good news - instead of the long list of things that we imagine God wants ­God has made clear what he wants - only three things - to seek justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with God. We are going to use three Biblical characters from the Advent-Christmas story to illustrate each of these characteristics. This morning as we think about seeking justice, we will use John the Baptist as our example.

The passage we read from Luke begins the telling of John the Baptist's story with a long list of who was king where. Tiberias was emperor, Herod was king, and so on. The important people are all noted. And then it says, John the Baptist was preaching the baptism for the repentance of sin.

So often when we think about justice, we think about justice coming from on high. If only the government officials acted in such and such a way justice would be achieved, if only the courts acted in such and such a way justice would be realized, if only my boss at work did this then there would be more justice. This text challenges that view.  For this whole passage is about justice coming - but it does not come from the emperor, or the governor, or the king - the voice of justice comes from below, comes from underneath the political radar. Justice, real justice, is not about the actions and decisions of the powerful and the political. The down to earth, nitty gritty, ordinary everyday justice that is the justice that really matters happens in at the grass roots of the everyday decisions of ordinary people. Justice is about the way we interact with neighbours and colleagues, justice is about the way we shop and conduct our economic lives, justice is about walking down the street. Justice is less about what happens in the halls of the provincial legislature and in the courts, and more about what happens at Tim Horton's and in our neighbourhoods. Luke makes precisely this point by the way he opens the passage.

There is a second view of justice that John the Baptist would have us challenge. So often we think that justice is about me getting what I am owed. Think: how often as children we went to parents asking them to make sure that we got our fair share of whatever was going on - time on the swing, equal sized pieces of the last piece of cake. Justice at that level and in the adult world is so often about my getting what I am owed ­what is my right to have.

John the Baptist challenges that view. He was offering baptism for the repentance of sin, in other words he was inviting people to come and deal with those places in their lives not where they had been wronged and wanted to receive justice - but those places where they had wronged someone else and needed to be forgiven. He was offering release and hope to those who had hurt someone else with their actions. That is the whole point of repentance - it is about a turning - we are walking one way in life - and we turn - we do a "U'y and head in the other direction.

The good news is that as we are willing to confess our fault, confess those ways in which we have broken faith with those around us, confess those ways in which we have not acted justly towards others - God's faithful promise to us is that He will forgive us. Our turning, our saying that we want to live as people of justice, bring from God full and complete forgiveness. The old is gone and in its place new life begins. That is what baptism is all about - the old way is washed away and in its place the new way, the way of forgiveness and peace with God and those around us is revealed.

There is a challenge at the heart of the Christian faith, and it is summed up neatly in this truth - Jesus is our Saviour and Jesus is our Example. Jesus offers us forgiveness full and free - that is what the cross is all about, we have not done a thing to earn this good and gracious gift -- it comes to us out of God's love, that is the only explanation for it. Jesus is our Saviour.

That truth does not mean that we have nothing to do - we are called to follow Jesus who is our example. Now our following of Jesus' example is not what saves us. We can not earn heaven by our own ability - by our good works - but we are called to do good works following the example of Jesus Christ. The way we say "thank you" to God for the gift of Jesus Christ is by living our lives following the example of Jesus.

It is all about grace - God's good and perfect gift. We are called to do good works in response to God's grace, and as a sign of God's work in our lives.

And that is exactly what John points to. He has harsh words for those who came to be baptized - he said, "It is not enough for you to recognize that you need to be forgiven, you are now called to bear fruit of repentance in your lives." The sign that we are the forgiven people of God is to be seen in how we live our lives. Christianity is practical, and John the Baptist is extraordinarily practical.

To those who have two coats he said, "Give one away to the person who has none." It was December in Flin Flon and Lee was driving home from work wearing the winter parka he had bought two weeks earlier. Lee had a heart for those who had few of this world's resources. As he left Flin Flon to drive to Creighton - for those of you who don't know the two communities are three kilometers apart Lee saw a native man hitch-hiking. Lee picked him up. Just on the edge of Creighton the man asked to be dropped off and Lee did, but before the guy left Lee gave him is new parka. Lee said, "He needed it more than I did, I still had the old one at home."

To those who had food, John challenged them to share what they had with those who had none.

Now we want to say, "Wait that does not sound like justice - that sounds like charity."

But isn't a lot of the demand for justice in this world linked to the fact that the rich have too much and the poor do not have enough. Might not sharing, true and genuine sharing of the resources of this world respond more effectively to the demands for justice that so often dominate than recourse to the courts. At core justice is about an equitable sharing of what this world has to offer.

John will not let us off in thinking only about sharing, he calls on all who have power over someone else to not use that power for personal gain. He was speaking to tax collectors who were in the habit of adding a bit to the tax bill and keeping the difference between what was owed the government and what they collected. To soldiers he said don't take advantage of your role to take what is not yours.

We may say to ourselves, "But I have no power over anyone else." But if we think about it for awhile I think we will recognize that we do in fact have power. An employer obviously has power over an employee, employers must not act in ways that seek their personal good at the expense of the employee's good. But employees have opportunities to take advantage of their role for personal gain.

The story is told of the person who worked at a gold mine, everyday for 25 years he left pushing a wheelbarrow full of dirt out the gate of the company. Everyday the guard went through the dirt looking for gold or other things that the man was stealing. Both men retired, a couple months after their retirement they ran into each of in a bar. The guard said to the miner, "I know you were stealing something, but I never could find anything. We don't work for the company any more. Please tell me what you were stealing." The miner said, "Wheelbarrows."

As consumers we have power over cashiers and store workers, we are called to not seek personal benefit. As people who care for others, friends, children, grandchildren, etc., we have the opportunity to misuse our relationships, John the Baptist calls us to seek justice. To not use our position or authority for our personal goals, for our personal benefit.

The passage from Luke ends with a promise - seeking justice in this way - from below, rooted in practical caring for others, growing out the knowledge that we have been forgiven by God to live this way - that kind of justice seeking will threaten the power elites - will scare those who are in power. For this kind of justice seeking challenges the ways in which they view the world. It calls them to be people who live seeking justice in the most basic aspects of their lives, it calls them to be people who share resources of this world that they have, it calls them to not abuse their position and authority. The kind of justice seeking that God has in mind, that John the Baptist called for will produce a response from those who have power, from those who think they are in charge. This justice coming from the grass roots is a revolution far more frightening than marches and demonstrations for this kind of justice smashes the box into which they want to put things.

What does God require of us - to seek justice. A justice rooted in the forgiveness offered to us by Jesus Christ, a justice that is lived in the everydayness of our lives, a justice that is practical in its commitment to share and to not misuse power.