I’ll never forget my last private lesson with my clarinet instructor in college. For about a year, I had lived the life of a clarinet performance major at the music conservatory. As hopeful performers, we were expected to practice 3-4 hours every day. I managed this for about a semester, but after Christmas break, unrelenting jaw pain and an intense dislike of spending hours alone in the practice room got in the way. Little by little, I began to fall short of what was expected. The more I tried to make myself practice, the more depressed I became. Music, for me, had never really been about excelling at my instrument, but about being a part of something bigger than myself. The more I worked on the solo pursuit of mastering my instrument, the more I didn’t want to work on it anymore.

Not all at once, but rather slowly, I started putting in less effort. I practiced a little less. I spent a little more time with my friends or playing my guitar in the college coffee shop with a band I started. I worked less on my scales, and spent more time playing frisbee. And then I’d come for my private lessons unprepared. I hated being unprepared. Doing my best is important to me. But, I just couldn’t make myself do the work anymore, sometimes because of the pain, and sometimes because I just didn’t want to do what I was doing. I was miserable. But, I didn’t want to quit either. Quitting wasn’t in my vocabulary. Besides, I had traveled halfway across the country to study with this clarinet teacher. What would it look like if I decided it wasn’t for me? So, I kept holding on – trying as much as I could stand, and slacking off when I couldn’t stand it anymore. Looking back on myself, I wish I could assure myself that it’s OK to walk away when something isn’t giving you life anymore, but college-sophomore me wasn’t ready to hear that.

On the day that would be my last private lesson, I sat down next to my instructor ready to play the piece I would be playing for my jury at the end of the semester. I brought my clarinet into position, but my teacher didn’t tell me where to start playing or give me any instructions like she usually did. Instead, she said, “We need to talk.” She told me, in the frankest conversation I’ve ever had, that I was not cut out to be a clarinetist. She told me it was time to stop going through the motions; it was time to choose a different path. Hot tears formed and stung in the corners of my eyes. I felt both humiliated and ashamed. If I didn’t do this I didn’t know what else to do. I also knew she wasn’t wrong.

I struggled to speak, but I thanked her for her honesty. I stood up and walked out of her office, with no idea what the future would look like for me. WIth her words echoing in my mind, I worried about what I would tell my parents, who were 1,300 miles away. How would I explain it to my roommates, who were also music performance majors? And, after I had all those tough conversations with the people I loved most, what was I going to do next? I had no idea, which didn’t feel exciting or liberating to me. It felt terrifying.

As I read and studied our passage for this morning from Matthew 3, I kept hearing the voice of my clarinet teacher echoing with the words of John the Baptist. Even though her words were tough to hear, I needed the wake up call. Even though the walk of shame out of her office felt like I was being crushed, in reality, I was being lifted up into something so much better, so much more life-giving, so much more true to myself. I just didn’t know it yet.

Every year, on the second week of Advent–the week where we focus on peace–we get the jarring words of John the Baptist at the Jordan River, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” Every year when this text comes up, I feel a little anxious. How can we talk about peace and these harsh words from John the Baptist at the same time? And why is it that we don’t get to hear John’s sermon to all the other people who came to be baptized by him? We only get the judgment aimed at the religious leaders. What did he preach to everyone else?

All four gospel writers wrote about John the Baptist and his message of repentance, and all four gospels reference Isaiah 40 as the core of what he preached. In the gospel of Luke, we get a fuller quotation than what we find in Matthew. Luke writes: “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’” For the religious leaders who didn’t recognize their need for repentance, John preached a hard word. He gave them a wake up call. He called them to get real with themselves and with God because that’s the first step to having our eyes opened to the salvation of God.

For the crowd of other people who had gathered for baptism, I wonder if they had already come to recognize their need for grace from God. Perhaps the message they received wasn’t one calling them to repentance because they already knew they needed it. Instead, John welcomed them down into the river to be baptized and embrace a new way of life as people who had received God’s grace. Andy Langford and Ann Langford Duncan, in their book Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus, wrote this about John’s message: “John preached two different sermons to two different audiences. To King Herod, the political authorities, the temple priests, and other religious leaders, John was a sharp thorn in their sides…But for other people, those who were uncomfortable with their lives, wondering about their priorities, and anxious about the future, he proclaimed that the Messiah foretold by Isaiah had arrived.” 

In 1893, Finley Peter Dunne, a journalist and humorist for the Chicago Evening Post wrote a line that has since been applied broadly in many contexts. When he wrote the line, he actually intended it as a scathing take on journalism at the time, but what he wrote stayed with people. He wrote that newspapers “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” And while he wrote it as a condemnation on the state of journalism, I think what he unintentionally wrote is an excellent definition of the gospel message. The coming of Christ into the world is good news, but it is good news that brings with it a reckoning. For those who are comfortable, inwardly focused, and disconnected from their calling to love their neighbors, the gospel comes to afflict the comfortable. For those who are suffering, who are desperate, who are wondering if there is anything better to come, the gospel comes like a healing balm, an ointment to soothe the weary soul. 

As you consider the two groups of people who came to John at the Jordan River, who do you most identify with? Do you connect most with the religious leaders who thought their lives were pretty good and they were already in God’s good graces? Do you relate more to the crowd who had come, desperate for good news and the assurance that God was with them? Or, maybe you’re like me, and you identify with each of these groups, depending on the day. Sometimes I’m pretty sure of myself and what I’m doing, like when I bragged to several people that my microwave peanut brittle recipe was foolproof…only to burn myself on the boiling sugar as I demonstrated to one of my kids how the mixture bubbles furiously when you add the baking soda and vanilla.

No matter who you identify with in this scene with John at the banks of the Jordan, I hope you’ll hear this message: the grace of God is here for you. Whether you’re high and lofty like the mountains, and need to be brought low through repentance, or whether life has already humbled you and you desperately need to be lifted back up, the grace and love and peace of Christ are here for you. Reconnecting with God’s ever-present grace means pausing to admit our need for a Savior, our need for a fresh start. Pastor Jeff preached last week about the grace of God that is there for us before we’ve even realized it. As we confess our sins and have our minds and hearts opened to our need for a Savior, we will find ourselves transformed by grace. I love the way author Anne Lamott writes about grace. She says: “I do not understand the mystery of grace — only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.”

On this second week of Advent, we encounter this camel-hair covered, eccentric preacher in the wilderness, who calls us both to repent and to be healed by the grace of God. This is what peace looks like. In the Greek, the word for peace is εἰρήνη (ay-RAY-nay). This word can also mean wholeness, but at its root, it comes from the verb meaning to “tie up” or “bind together.” Peace is not just about the end of violence, or a quiet morning with a cup of coffee before the kids wake up for the day. Peace is where all the scattered pieces of God’s good world are brought together in wholeness. The mountains will be brought down. The valleys will be lifted up. Those who are overly assured will be humbled, and those who have been crushed by life will be lifted up and comforted. 

Our calling on this Sunday of peace is twofold: first, just like the people by the Jordan River, we are called to repentance and to receive God’s grace. What is holding us back in our lives from being brought nearer to God? Where have we become too self-focused, or too driven to keep up with or maintain things that don’t really matter? For those of us who may already have been brought low, God’s grace is here to hold us close and draw us nearer to God. We are called both to repentance and to receive God’s grace. And secondly, we are called to reach out as peacemakers in the world, binding together all the scattered edges of God’s good world, drawing near the many hurting people who are in need of God’s healing grace. 

Authors Andy Langford and Ann Langford Duncan write about the importance of  works of mercy, as we seek to share God’s grace and peace with the world. This can be as simple as helping serve a meal at the soup kitchen, or as involved as connecting to a community organization that meets needs in the area. Every day, as God extends peace to us, we are also given opportunities to extend that peace to others. 

In just a few moments, we will gather together around the Lord’s table. As we share this meal together, we are being nourished for the journey we will take when we leave this place. We join together as one body, one family in Christ, and we get a taste of God’s peace so that we might be bringers of God’s peace into the world. As we are fed, may God use us to feed the world, so that all might know the peace that passes all understanding. Amen.