[Thanks to Roy Brady for playing the part of Christian at the 10:30 service]

In the last edition of the Eagle Notes, I talked about Advent. About how the culture screams "Christmas! Christmas! Christmas!" this time of year, and how we need Advent to prepare, to be still, to be quiet so that we can hear the cry of a baby in the manger. You would think that this season of watchfulness, of quietude, would be introduced by a quiet, reflective, comforting message. I ended my Eagle Notes article by saying, "Shhhh. Be still. Listen."

"REPENT!" In those days this wild man, this man who wore cave-man clothes and ate bugs, this John the Baptist, appeared out of the desert and shouted, "REPENT! Prepare ye the way of the Lord! Wash your sins off of you! You think you’re going to be saved just because you were born into any particular religion? Think again. REPENT! Bear fruit worthy of REPENTANCE! Get ready! One more powerful than I is coming after me! GET READY! REPENT!"

Christian: "Excuse me, ah, sir, Mr. John?, ah, Mr. Baptist?, sir, excuse me, I really don’t mean to interrupt your, um, quite good, uh, — ranting, but it is Advent, and I am trying to be quiet and meditative, and, well, you know, spiritual. So, could you hold it down, please?"

John: "REPENT!"

Christian: "Sir, I don’t mean to be rude, but. . ." John: "REPENT!"

Christian: "Look, I’ve tried to be nice, but. . ." John: "REPENT!"

Christian: "Listen, Buster, who do you think. . ." John: "REPENT! REPENT! REPENT!"

Christian: "Will you SHUT-UP? I am not going to repent, because I don’t have anything to repent of. I am going to sit here and pray and be quiet and listen for the cry of a baby in the manger.

"I am a nice person. I always mean well. I go to church. And I am an American. (We’re the good guys.) So I am not going to repent. If you will kindly hold it down, I am going to pray quietly and listen for the cry of a baby in the manger."

Okay, that’s the end of the scene. This person is like we sometimes are. We sometimes don’t really think we need to change all that much. That’s why John hollering REPENT! at us every year is so jarring. His ranting about justice seems like such a disruption of our effort in this noisy time of year to be quiet and contemplative in preparation for Jesus’ birth. No offense, John, but we’re trying to tune our ears to hear the cry of a single baby; how about shutting up with all this haranguing about justice?

After all, justice and repentance certainly have their place, but they don’t seem to have much to do with Christmas, or with getting ready for Christmas. From a religious standpoint, what we often get ready for is the smell of pine in the church, the fun we have singing carols, the warm fuzzy feeling we get from knowing that God is with us, that Christmas morning Emmanuel. From a cultural standpoint, we get ready for family gatherings, opening of presents, and the coming of Santa Claus.

It’s interesting how our culture has so focused on Santa Claus. You see Santa everywhere this time of year. He’s on giant billboards on the interstate; he’s all over mall decorations; he’s lit up in people’s yards, often with his reindeer. Santa is the icon of Christmas preparation.

Now, I’m not here to insult Santa (I’m no fool), but I hope you won’t mind if I point out that he’s not a religious figure. "You’d better watch out, you’d better not cry, you’d better watch out, I’m telling you why" has nothing to do with Christianity. Santa is so far removed from his namesake, St. Nicholas, as to be unrecognizable.

On Thursday at the 10:30 service we celebrated the feast of St. Nicholas, and since then I’ve been thinking about how things might be different if we had made St. Nicholas the focus of Christmas preparation.

We don’t know much about St. Nicholas, only that he was a fourth century Bishop of Myra who might have been at the Council of Nicea. Almost nothing else is known about the facts of his life. But Nicholas is the patron saint of children and prostitutes. Interesting combination, but not really so strange when you consider that both children and prostitutes are often victims, are often people with little or no power, are often the lowest rung on society’s ladder. Nicholas is the patron saint of the helpless and the exploited.

So, I wonder, if we had kept St. Nicholas as our icon for Christmas preparation, how would we feel when we hear that in the United States, the richest country in history, one child in five lives in poverty? If we focused on St. Nicholas, how would we feel when, in the year 2001, we watched State Senator Donzella James have to fight for a law that would, for the first time, make it a felony to pimp children? Before this, it was a misdemeanor to make children prostitutes. What would St. Nicholas think about that?

How would we feel about knowing that in some neighborhoods, many of our children have almost no chance to break the cycle of poverty, crime, and incarceration? How would we feel about knowing that in some neighborhoods, little girls, our little girls, are raised to see prostitution as an option, sometimes as the only option? How would we feel as we prepare to hear the cry of the baby in the manger if St. Nicholas were reminding us that in this county, Fulton County, the juvenile detention system (according to the Federal Courts) is a disgrace and our children who are sent there are in danger, are not rehabilitated, and are often taught to be hardened criminals? How would we feel when we thought that in our rush to reform welfare, we said that in some cases, we will refuse to support children, even if the family is hungry?

If the patron saint of the helpless and the exploited were on billboards and in malls and lit up in yards, how would we feel when we thought of children in Haiti with heads that look too big because their bodies are too small? Of children in Afghanistan, Israel, Palestine, Northern Ireland, and many other places in the world who are starved or blown up because adults can’t figure out how to resolve conflict without violence?

During Advent, we should work on being quiet, on being still, on listening for that cry from that babe in the manger. It’s not easy; there is so much cultural noise that we need to filter out. But this wild man, John, hollering "REPENT!" is not part of what we should be filtering out.

Because John had heard the prophet Isaiah reminding us that when the messiah comes "with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth." (Isa. 11:4) And John had heard the psalmist say that the king shall "defend the needy among the people; he shall rescue the poor and crush the oppressor." (Ps. 72:4) And Nicholas, the patron saint of the helpless and the exploited, had heard John hollering for justice.

If we let Isaiah, and the psalmist, and John, and Nicholas teach us how to listen for that cry from the manger, I think we’ll discover that when we do hear the cry of that babe, it will be a cry for justice.

Repent.