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Out on a Limb
DATE: December 6, 1998
SERVICE: Advent II
TEXT: Matthew 3:1-12
"To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN

A terrible ice storm had hit Pittsburgh, making travel almost impossible. At the height of the storm, a church family called their pastor about an emergency. Their little boy had leukemia and he had taken a turn for the worst. The hospital said to bring the boy in, but they could not send an ambulance, and the family did not own a car.
The pastor's car was in the shop, so he called a church elder. The elder immediately got in his car and began the treacherous journey. The brakes in his car were nearly useless. It was so slick that he could not stop for stop signs or stop lights. He had three minor accidents on the way to the family's house.
When he reached their home, the parents brought out the little boy wrapped in a blanket. His mother got in the front seat and held her son, and the father got in the back. Ever so slowly they drove to the hospital.
They came to the bottom of a hill and as they managed to skid to a stop, the driver tried to decide whether he should try to make the grade on the other side, or whether he should to go the right and down the valley to the hospital. And as he was thinking about this, he chanced to look to the right and he saw the face of the little boy. The youngster's face was flushed, and his eyes wide with fever and fear. To comfort the child, he reached over and tousled his hair. Then it was that the little boy said to him, "Mister, are you Jesus?" Do you know in that moment he could have said yes. For him to live was Jesus Christ.
On reaching the hospital, the attendants called him nuts for going out on such a limb to drive in such bad weather.
Climb out on a limb and you must be prepared for potshots from crackpots.
Climb out on a limb and you must be able to take well-meaning but completely wrong-headed suggestions. Climb out on a limb and you must learn how to duck and dodge.
At Christmas, all celebrating Christians are called to "go out on a limb" in order to witness to the world.
Nobody went out on a limb with quite the same audacity and panache as John the Baptist. Called to play the role of Jesus' Elijah, John seemed to take delight in clambering out onto some of the highest and most visible limbs he could find.
First, John climbs out on the limb of personality. Instead of trying to appear like a reasonable fellow with a seasonable message, John decks himself out in an odd outfit that clearly has the "Elijah" designer label sewn into it. While perched on this fashion-statement limb (John wore clothing of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey), no one who gazed and gawked at John the Baptist could miss the theological significance of his peculiar Old Testament prophetic style.
Second, John climbs out on the limb of audacity. He hikes up his hair shirt and scurries out onto the limb that challenged religious authority. From the vantage point of his precarious limb-tip, John taunts and jeers at an approaching crowd filled with movers and shakers from the power establishment - the Sadducees and Pharisees. "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruit worthy of repentance."
Finally, John climbs out on the limb of proclamation. The most important limb John clings to is the way-out-there declaration that God is daring to act now in the lives of the common men and women gathering there on the banks of the Jordan. God is inaugurating a new era of divine presence and purpose. "I baptize you with* water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with* the Holy Spirit and fire."
John didn't take up these high-altitude perches just for the thrill of it. All this "X-treme" limb-sitting served a quite definite purpose. As wild and even witless as John the Baptist's behavior might have appeared to many, it actually followed the soon-to-be established rules of "Christian risk taking."
The first, and most obvious reason that John the Baptist and generations of Christian followers since have clambered out on a limb is quite logical.
Rule #1. You go out on a limb because that's where the fruit is. John went out on a limb because he knew he could find only there the fruit sought by so many of his anxious, weary, soul-starved generation. John gladly dangled from the end of a limb, for his role was to proclaim the coming of the Messiah. In order for the Messiah to come, John, as the new Elijah, had to announce this new age "God-in-the-flesh" to the world. When Jesus finally arrived on the banks of the Jordan to receive John's baptism, the Baptist knew his limb-sitting days were over. He had at last reached out and grabbed the "fruit" he had been longing for. The Messiah had come.
The second rule is more subtle: Rule #2. If you go out on a limb, go out on a big one - there is more support. John invokes the authority of no less prophetic a figure than Isaiah. Convinced of the importance and timeliness of his message, he not only went out on a limb, he started swinging from it. "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near," he proclaimed. The kingdom of God. He could have picked a less audacious limb like "I think you will feel better if you don't cheat on your wife, your income tax, your business partner." Nope, John says, "The entire way we are to look at the world is about to change. And you better get used to it because the world will never be the same after Jesus!"
The third rule of limb-climbing was hit hard by John in today's text: Rule #3. If there is no fruit of the Spirit on that limb, don't go out at all.
John's indictment of the Pharisees and Sadducees reminds us that not all trees bear fruit. Trees that can't be depended upon for the good fruit of the Spirit God will cut down and use for other things. Whether it is making a cherry pie or making a blazing bonfire - God doesn't waste anything. Sometimes the best "fruit" a tree can offer is the light and heat it gives off when it is set ablaze. When questioned about why people came to listen to him preach and teach, John Wesley is said to have remarked, "I really don't know. All I can figure out is that the Holy Spirit sets me on fire and people come to watch me burn."
The greatest limb ever climbed was when God came into the world as a little baby. "X-treme" limb-climbing is what Jesus himself did.
Jesus himself went out on an unbelievably precarious limb for the sake of the whole world when he was nailed to those cruel limbs of the cross.
God did it for you. Jesus did it for you. The Holy Spirit now wants to do it through you. William Boggs, in his book, Sin Boldly: But Trust God More Boldly Still (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990), describes how to get the good fruit. He writes: "One hot Carolina afternoon, on a visit home, my family and I were driving along when we passed an orchard of peaches that advertised especially low prices if we were only willing to pick them ourselves. I doubt that any bargain would be sufficiently attractive to me now to lure me out of my air-conditioned car and into a steamy afternoon to pick peaches, but we were younger then, poorer then and in less of a hurry than we tend to be these days. So we pulled over, paid our money, and selected a bushel basket to fill with fresh, ripe Spartanburg peaches.
"As we set off into the orchard, an old fellow, as wrinkled as a peach pit and who was tending the place, said, 'If you want the best fruit, go deeper into the orchard; the peaches along the fringes are picked over, but deeper into the orchard, you'll find the best fruit.' We walked a way, far enough along that I figured we had gone past the picked-over sections. But just as we set the basket down, he hollered, 'Go deeper.' So we picked up the basket, went a little farther, set the basket down, and again we heard him shouting his advice, 'Go deeper. The best fruit's farther in.' Once more we picked up the basket and walked along, finally deciding that surely we were now deep enough, but once more as we prepared to pick the peaches, he hollered, 'Go on. Go deeper.' This time we went a substantially longer distance, and discovered that indeed he was right. The finest, plumpest peaches were untouched and waiting for us" (101-102).
Boggs got the best fruit when he went deeper into the orchard. I'm asking you to get the best fruit by going farther out on a limb. The message is the same: Go deeper, go farther to get the best fruit. Will you climb out on some limbs this Christmas season? Perhaps it is the:
Limb of reconciliation. Is God calling you to crawl and inch your way out to meet someone with forgiveness and love? Perhaps its time to make up with that family member you have refused to talk to for the last 15 years? Limb of intimacy. Is God calling you to let go of your pride and disclose your thinking, hurting, planning, dreaming self to your spouse who's longing to really know you? Maybe its time to stop keeping secrets from the one who has committed himself or herself to you for life. Limb of risk-taking. Is God calling you to take a risk for God's greater glory? Perhaps its time to throw caution to the wind and make a commitment to Jesus?
Limb of service. Is God calling you to Christian service in a way you've been resisting? Perhaps its time to reinvest your time in volunteer service rather than taking yet another weekend trip to waste time? Limb of trust. Is God calling you to believe in someone? Perhaps its time to reinvest trust in your elected leaders or your co-workers to do what is best?
Limb of healing. Is God calling you to accept emotional and spiritual healing for some long-festering wounds? To seek and give forgiveness and let the hurt fall away Limb of witnessing. And after all isn't this, isn't this the bottom line of what we Christians are called to do? To go out and seek the unchurched and bring them into the kingdom.
A long-time member of Dr. Philip Amerson's parish in the college town of Bloomington, Indiana, suffered a terrible bout of depression after her husband's death from cancer. She joined a Wednesday morning healing group, and I'll let Dr. Amerson tell the rest of the story. "At the close of this group each week, we would anoint one another, asking what we could pray for during that week. After struggling for months to answer that question, one week Fay got her words all twisted round but her theology straight when she answered, 'Please pray that my strength with be faithened'" (Dr. Philip Amerson, "The Holy Work of Encouragement," Address given at Wesley Theological Seminary, April 15, 1998, 9).
As we crawl and scrunch and inch and bump and bounce our way out on the limb where God has placed the fruit of life, may our strength be "faithened" and may we strengthen to "faithen" others as they begin their journey - deeper and farther - out on a limb!

AMEN