I invite you to take an imaginative journey with me. Imagine, if you will, a movie camera that is focused now on you. It sees you sitting here in this sanctuary. The camera lens now extends outward to include those sitting around you - your family and friends and fellow church members. It goes upward and pulls back and from above we see the places that we live and work. Still further, and we see the Quad Cities in focus. But it does not stop there. This camera extends into space and we see our country. Then it goes 50,000 miles out and there is our world, the creation in all its stunning glory. From out there we are no longer seen, but we are there - a part of that global view. The view from 50,000 miles gives us a new feeling for our common humanity. Geographic boundaries and ancient rivalry seem petty. We then can see that we are a small blue ball floating in space with 6 billion people on board. We are in this together, all God’s children, one world, one people.

This is a true perspective. You could see this if you had the ability to raise yourself above the earth. We have not had this perspective very long - only since we landed on the moon. Some people think it has had a fundamental impact on our consciousness as world. But we do not think of life from this perspective much and even with it, our day to day focus remains very much on what we can manage to see with our own two eyes.

Now there are at least two possibilities when you see the world from so far out. One is that you can notice that you are no longer visually in the picture and find yourself lost in despair. You can feel you no longer matter that much. You may think that in the larger scheme, your life is a speck of unimportance, a temporary flake of enlivened dust - here today and gone tomorrow.

This is the way many people live. They do not realize their significance. Sometimes they say, “Well if this is the way life is, then I might as well just worry about myself only.” The ancient saying says it all, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow I die.” This is a real temptation, even for those of us who believe that God has called us to something more.

But there is another way of looking at yourself: you are a part of something much larger than yourself. Your life does matter because it is connected to the whole. Rather than lose yourself in the vastness of it all, you begin to see you have a particular place and role to play. It may not seem like much sometimes, but regardless, those around you are more connected to you than you know, you make more difference than you know. How many of you have seen the movie, “It Is a Wonderful Life?” Why is it that the little movie continues to have such a dedicated following? Every year so many, like myself, find a way to see that movie because it reminds us that our lives are deeply connected and have a hidden valley we may never be aware of. In the movie, a man is about to kill himself, but his guarding angel comes to the rescue and helps him to see that his life has had a profound, far reaching impact on others, far beyond what he or anyone would have imagined. We really never know how much we matter.   It is more than we imagine.

When God looks at the world, God sees the whole of creation. God looks on this little blue ball in space and has a deep abiding love. God created it all and cares for it all. As John’s gospel says, “God so loved the world, that God sent his only son.” God loves the whole of it. When the Bible talks about salvation, it does not just talk of salvation of the individual soul, but of the creation. Jesus reconciles the world to himself. He brings a New Creation. God is concerned with saving that which in the beginning God declared as “very good.”

But God also looks out and sees the particulars. God sees you and God sees me. Jesus says, “But even the hairs of your head are all counted. Do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.” You have a place in the whole and that place matters. The question is: what do we do within that space we occupy?

Marianne Williamson talks about our interconnection when she says, Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?” Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.

I have read the story of John the Baptist many times and preached it often, but this time when I read it, I realized that it has something to tell us about how important each of our actions are. At the very heart of John’s message is the idea that how we live, the actions we take are enormously important to everybody else.

John said that the Christ is coming to bring us back into a deeper community with one another. Christ comes to level the playing field. “The valleys are lifted up” which means that those who are deprived are put on level ground. “The mountains are brought low” which means that those who have all the advantages in this world are brought to a level of equality with those who have been beaten down. The landscape is changed so that we meet one another in the merciful middle. This is a vision of justice. This is a vision of peace.

And John preached a baptism of repentance. Repentance is not moping around feeling sorry for petty sins. Sometimes the church has been guilty of keeping us self-absorbed and preoccupied with our guilt. Nor is repentance only a change of mind and a change of heart. The repentance John proclaimed was a complete metanoia, a complete turning around from self to God. In today’s gospel we see that this includes taking very specific action to make clear changes in our behavior.

When John’s words begin to sink in, the people began to ask, “What must we then do?” John does not say, “Well I want you to feel real bad, really bad about yourself and your life and the way you have lived it.” Nor does he say, “Just believe in Jesus” and all will be well. It is much deeper than that. It involves an ethical change in the way we live our lives. John says, “If you have two coats, give one to someone that does not have one.” Level the playing field. Create a loving community where all are cared for. John says, “if you have plenty of food, share what you have with someone who does not have any.” How you live your life, matters! Others are depending on you.

John speaks to two groups of people who in Jesus’ day were most guilty of using their position of power to take advantage and abuse the poor. To the soldiers he said, “Don’t extort money and falsely accuse people to fill your own pockets with money at the expense of the weak. Be satisfied with your wages.” To the tax collectors he said, “Collect only what you are assign to collect - don’t rob people for more.” John is telling us, “Use your positions of power, your place in the world, to benefit, not harm those most in need.”

Way back during the Great Depression, there was a farm family struggling just to make ends meet. It is fair to say this Iowa family were practically subsistence farmers - making it by on what they themselves were able to produce. Whatever extra they had, they sold and used the cash to pay for the few items they could not produce themselves.

As hard as life was, they were somewhat more fortunate than many. They had a house, land, and were able to produce what they needed. They did not have a mortgage on the house or the land as many did - though every month remained a struggle to get through. In the larger scheme of life, their position in the world was not so very important.

One day a middle aged couple came by knocked on the door an asked for food, saying they would be glad to do anything to work for it. She gave them a small job that members of her family could have done. Reached up to the cookie jar in the kitchen where the family kept its money, and forked a couple of dollars. This is not the first time she had done this. The young teenage son had seen this before and this time he decided to protest: “Mom, you cannot keep giving money away to these people. You are going to make us poor like them.” His mother looked at him, put both of her hands on his shoulders and said, “Michael, God has given us what we have and the day we do not give to a family like that, is the day that we are truly poor.”

No matter how little we believe we have or how small we believe we are - we are a part of the whole, we share what we have. We do not play small in this world we play very big. We share in God’s economy of the kingdom of God - where the playing field is made level.

One more story from the book, "It Was On Fire When I Lay Down on It".  When I was a small child during the war, we were very poor and we lived in a remote village. One day, on the road, I found the broken pieces of a mirror. A German motorcycle had been wrecked in that place.

I tried to find all the pieces and put them together, but it was not possible, so I kept only the largest piece. This one. And by scratching it on a stone I made it round. I began to play with it as a toy and became fascinated by the fact that I could reflect light in to dark places where the sun would never shine - in deep holes and crevices and dark closets. It became a game for me to get light into the most inaccessible places I could find.

I kept the little mirror, and as I went about my growing up, I would take it out in idle moments and continue the challenge of the game. As I became a man, I grew to understand that this was not just a child's game but a metaphor for what I might do with my life. I came to understand that I am not the light or the source of light. But light - truth, understanding, knowledge - is there, and it will only shine in many dark places if I reflect it.

I am a fragment of a mirror whose whole design and shape I do not know. Nevertheless, with what I have I can reflect light into the dark places of this world - into the black places in the hearts of men - and change some things in some people. Perhaps others may see and do likewise. This is what I am about. This is the meaning of life.

From the perspective of God, it really does not matter what our position is in life. The only question is: what are we going to do with what we have been given? John says, “Repent and prepare the way for the Lord.” Prepare the way for the child born to peasant parents who revealed by his life just how precious all our lives really are.