Have I told you how much I love Jonah? The story, yes, familiar from way back in childhood, but most of all, Jonah the character. He is the most real to me of all the characters in the Bible – whoever spun this yarn had a profound grasp of human nature.

In this country we have become accustomed to having an almost unimaginable number of choices. Go into any grocery store and count the number of kinds and brands of cereal; you will be there for quite a while. Even just looking at a restaurant menu – once you have decided which restaurant to go to – is enough to make one’s head spin. This availability of choices is a matter of pride for many residents of this nation – for many, America is all about freedom to choose one’s path in life; one’s job, one’s place of residence, the books one reads, the kind of peanut butter to buy. This assumes that what makes us us, and what makes life worthwhile, is the choices we make, without anyone anywhere limiting or guiding those choices.

On this blessed morning, we celebrate that Love came down and was born all those centuries ago in a land that even now is wracked with violence and death and unimaginable suffering. It is hard to see evidence that the world has been saved; I have been thinking this every Christmas for many years now. If Love has indeed come down, why is the world still so full of hate?

Some things become so familiar that you do not see them for what they are anymore. Christmas is one of those things. It is everywhere in the world with Christians and lots of non-Christians putting up lights in the darkness, singing along with carols on the radio, gathering around trees in their homes, and exchanging gifts with their loved ones. That this is the case is a testimony to the powerful allure that this uniquely Christian holy day has for the human heart, but it is an allure that is easy to take for granted and leave unexamined because it has seemingly always been there. There are not enough remarks about what is distinctive or even strange about what we are celebrating at Christmas.

John the Baptist tends to appear in our readings when something important is about to happen. In the desert wilderness, wearing only a makeshift garment of camel’s hair, and eating nothing but bugs and honey, the great prophet John the Baptist called everyone to repent of their past and begin anew. Notice that he did not go up to Jerusalem to where the people were. He called them to come to him. They were to leave their homes and ordinary lives and journey to where John was in the desert and be baptized in the Jordan River. It is as if that traveling, that change in physical geography, would symbolize the spiritual change that was to happen within. The outward journey was the inward journey–down to the prophet, down to confession and repentance, forgiveness and renewal. But there were lots of people up in Jerusalem who didn’t come….