for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. (Luke 3:8)

Every now and then I’ve picked up a hitch-hiker, usually on the road out of a motorway service centre, and I’ve got them a few more stops along the road of their journey. And you get to talking. And sometimes those conversations have been fascinating, because often they come from different countries, sometimes from very different cultures, from Scotland. On a couple of occasions I’ve been able to get folk all the way. Sometimes it’s turned out that we had way more in common than I might have imagined.

This is the third Sunday of Advent and we continue our journey to Bethlehem; our journey to meet the newborn Christ. Today I want to think about who may join us on the road and how we may help them on their way. They may not be the kind of people we expect to be walking alongside. I want to start with the Jewish people of Jesus’s time. They were expecting the Messiah. We say that sometimes, but I’m not actually convinced that lives of Jewish people were full of that much expectation most of the time. For sure there were prophecies of his coming. For sure they had heard the words of Isaiah, like the ones we heard this morning. But how much they thought about it in among the everyday business of life, I’m not sure; certainly in light of John calling them a brood of vipers.

To the extent they were expecting the Messiah, though, they were very much expecting a Jewish Messiah. He was coming for them; to free them; to make Israel a great and powerful nation. They may make God’s deeds known among the nations but this God was the God of the Jews. He was the God of the children of Abraham. He was the God who had singled out Jacob and David for favour. He was going to look after them.

Now here’s John the Baptist saying, “No! Don’t rely too much on being the children of Abraham. God can make new children of Abraham out of these stones.” Then he responds to questions from folk about how they should live. “Share your clothes and food with those who are short of them,” replies John. “Take no more than the required amount if you’re a tax collector.” To soldiers he says, “Don’t use your power to bully cash out of folk.” Live the kind of life that honours God and shows folk what it means to be a servant of God.

Why? What’s the point? What difference does it make? Because God can raise up children of Abraham from stones. He can take the unlikeliest of people and bring them into walking his way - into walking the road to Bethlehem. Classic example - Saul of Tarsus; the guy who was as orthodoxly Jewish as you could want; who went about persecuting Christians. A few years later he’s setting up churches among gentiles like the Philippians. For him they were children of Abraham that God had raised up from apparently stony ground.

God can take the unlikeliest people and bring them into walking his way; into walking the road to Bethlehem. They could be the people we find ourselves walking beside. Is that what we communicate to the outside world? Or do we sometimes suggest that church is for the ‘unco guid’. There’s a story about Samuel Colgate: the toothpaste guy. He was a member of an evangelical Baptist church. During an evangelistic service, the preacher invited those who wished to turn their lives over to Christ and be forgiven. One of the first persons to walk down the aisle was a well-known prostitute. She knelt in very real repentance, she wept, she asked God to forgive her, and meanwhile the rest of the congregation looked on approvingly. Then she stood and asked to become a member of the church. For a few moments, the silence was deafening. Finally, Samuel Colgate arose and said, "I guess we blundered when we prayed that the Lord would save sinners. We forgot to specify what kind of sinners. We'd better ask him to forgive us for this oversight and spell it out for him just which sinners we had in mind.”. 

Do we sometimes come over as judgemental? Do we sometimes come over as knowing, somehow that we know whom God will call to walk in his way and whom he won’t? Do we come over as only wanting the “right sort of people” to walk beside us on the road? Samuel Colgate, you might object, lived in the 19th Century. That wouldn’t happen now, right? Five years or so ago my son was walking down Buchanan Street and he encountered a group of street preachers who spotted his t-shirt, which sported the name of a heavy rock group. So they told him that if he listened to ‘that kind of music’ then he was doomed to Hell. Because God may be able to raise up children of Abraham from stones, but not from fans of heavy rock.

And then there have been those who have suggested that homosexuals can’t be Christians. We have spent so much time arguing over this over the last few decades that I think that we have given the impression, for folk outside the Church, that that’s what being a Christian is all about. The thing is, though, who am I, who is any one of us, to say whom God will, or will not call to walk in his way? If God can raise up children of Abraham from the very stones, then who are we to decide who can, or cannot, walk beside us on the road to Bethlehem?

A wee while ago somebody asked what we could do to get young people into church. I’m guessing, the same way as getting anyone into the church - by making it a place that people want to come to: by communicating that this is a place for everyone. This isn’t a place for the especially good or the especially pious, but for anyone - however messed up their lives might be; however incongruous their lifestyles might seem with what we call the ‘teachings of the church’. If God can raise up children of Abraham from the stones; if we, with all our flaws and weaknesses and failures, are welcome in the presence of God, then let us open wide the doors and shout to the world, “Come in and be welcome!”

See, the central thing about the Christian faith isn’t coming to this place on a Sunday, but about going from this place and walking, for the next six days, in the way of God. It’s about letting the folk we meet know that they matter, that they are welcome in the love of God. It’s about meeting folk who seem different from us in so many ways and finding the commonality with them that reminds us - and them - that we are children of God and are welcome in the love of God. It’s about living in such a way that people wonder what it is about the Christian faith that leads us not to judge folk whose lives seem at odds with what we believe, but to reach out to them in love and care and compassion.

Today, tomorrow, you or I may meet someone so against the church, or so different from us that we may find it hard to believe that they would ever walk through those doors. I was one of those people, once. If God can raise up children from stones then who are we to know will or will not find, in our outstretched hand of welcome, God’s invitation to walk in his way. Who knows who we might help to begin the journey and walk beside us on the road to Bethlehem.

Lord, may we offer your love to those we meet. Remind us, every day, that it is not our job to decide who is worthy of your grace, but to point them in your direction. The direction that leads home to you by following in the way of your Son.

Preached at Gretna Old parish church