Advent 2

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: Advent 2
PROPER: A
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: December 6,1998

TEXT: Matthew 3:1-12 - "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near. . . . . Bear fruit worthy of repentance . . . . . I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful that I is coming after me: I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire."

ISSUE: John is presented in this passage as the long anticipated return of Elijah. He comes as a coarse prophet of the land to call people to repentance that they might step into the Kingdom of God. The repentance that John speaks of is not to be confused with sorrow, penitence, regret. It is changed lifes that bear fruit. Let us not minimize the preparation of Christmas as mere infatuation with baby Jesus, but more in terms of lives changed to resonate with and in receiving Christ as the way, the truth, and the life for our lives.
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Matthew's gospel passage this morning is eager to convey that God is still acting in the history of God's people. God seeks to save his people and grant them entrance into his Kingdom. It was believed by many of the Jewish people of this time that Elijah, one of the truly great prophets of Israel would return to the world, preaching the message of repentance. For Matthew and the early church that return of the prophet is unquestionably realized in the dynamic prophetic preaching of John the Baptist.
John the Baptist is truly a prophetic character familiar to the people of this time. He was himself a son of a local village priest Zechariah. He had taken to the wilderness, and wore the coarse clothes of a prophet, camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, described in 2 Kings 1:8. He was the fulfillment of Malachi's prophecy (4:5) that God would send Elijah before the terrible Day of the Lord. He was a loner, and like so many of the prophets before him he would be murdered by Herod.
John preached in the wilderness, and attracted groups of people. They made pilgrimages to see and hear him. His message and baptism must have been every bit as challenging and demanding as it sounds. People did not travel much in these times, especially in the wildernesses. Among those who came to hear John the Baptist were the Saducees and the Pharisees. These groups were the leaders and held places of significant honor in their society. It was a time when many of the people of the land suffered at the hand of their leaders, the Jeursalem elite and the Romans. There were exhorbitant taxes, confiscation of property, and shortages of food and life's supplies. John being in a priestly family knew well of the abuses, and of what he spoke. He called for change in a world of unrest, injustice, and oppression. This oppression shaped John's dynamic preaching. When the Pharisees and Sadducees come to him he dared to call these honorable men "a brood of snakes."
To these men and to all who came to John he called for repentance, and immersion in change, and a prepared readiness for God's salvation, for God's Kingdom, for the coming and receiving of their messianic hope. He dares them to be ready for immersion in fiery cleansing, empowering, and the true renewing wind of the Holy Spirit of God.
For John Baptist, he made it quite clear that geneology did not count. Honor in these times was something that a person inherited from family. Honor was in this culture inordinately important. But John clearly claimed that personal repentance was the issue, not what you inherited from family. In fact, there needed to be a clear break at times with the ways of the past to face the coming Kingdom of the present-future.
What is most important for us to understand what repentance meant then and means now. Many people have learned that repentance means being sorry for your sins. Repentance for many people is sorrow, or regret, or remorse. If we do bad things, or we neglect to do things we should, it is appropriate to be sorry, to regret, to feel saddnes for our failings. But that is not what repentance is inspite of all the holy talk dished out by pious preachers. Repentance for John the Baptist and the church meant CHANGE. The hearts and minds and ways of the leadership needed not mere sorrow, but change. The hearts and minds of the people who came to him meant that they did not come to him on a pilgrimage to get their sorrows washed away. They came to be immersed in change. They were now to lead lives that would bear good fruit and not continue in the ways of scandalous oppression and separation from the ways of God. They were to give up affection for honor that came from mere geneology and face up to being honorable as people of God. You surely would be sorry for you sins and bad actions, but "sorry gets you no where." What parent has not said those words to their kids, and had their own parents say it to them when they were children. It was a matter of doing something about it.
In our own culture today we have to deal with how a passage like this speaks to us. When preachers and prophets talk today about repentance they are often seen as weird, killjoys for this for many people is merely the season to be jolly. We Americans like being just plain fat and happy. We make jokes in the proverbial cartoons about the prophet bearing a placard calling for repentance. We like to think that what we do with our own private lives is no body else's business. Leave us alone. But the Gospel does not do that. It does not leave us alone. It calls us to repentance and renewal that we might embrace the way of God's Kingdom that is revealed in Jesus Christ.
One of the issues being dealt with in our culture now is the recent antics going on in the White House. Many American and foreign people simply say this is what everybody does, and every body lies about it. What a person does in private doesn't matter. But it does matter. It matters in every health clinic around the world that is desperately trying to put an end to AIDS and other life threatening venereal diseases. It matters that we can trust one another, our leaders, and learn to be faithful to one another. It matters as to how our children are raised and the climate they grow up and mature in. Sorry isn't enough. It's profound change that matters. Do we have our secret sins? Of course we all do. They matter to our spiritual health and well being. We need in many instances to change the secrets of our hearts. Whether the president is impeached or not is not the issue, but how any of us conduct ourselves as the people of God in public or private has consequences. There are things we need to change, to repent of.
I listened to someone once who had had a stroke tell me how the person had their cholesterol check-up postponed because they had just gotten back from vacation eating many steaks out in the mid west. There are times when we need to change our behavior, repent, or we risk death, we risk diminishing the very thing we all claim to value.
I just buried a good friends's 20 year old daughter last week because someone on the road chose to drink and drive. That's what fat and happy sassy Americans do. Yet the consequences can be devasting to the victims as well as to the lives of the perpetrators. Repentance is required or damnation results. It's just really a matter of sense.
If we are over weight, we know we have to change or repent of our eating habits. If you are smoking, you have to change your life style, or the awful results are damaged skin in old age, emphazema, lung cancer, and a nasty smell. In order to break away from these behaviors we need to change behavior, and as AA people will tell you, you need a higher power in your life than the demons that possess you. Are the fathers of the land taking on the spiritual development of their childrens' lives or leaving them to the fads and fancies of a troubled and sometimes perverse world.
Whether it is our private lives, or our American culture, or even our place in the church, we need to be re-examining who we are and what we do, and what needs to be changed that we step into the Kingdom of God. How do we proclaim true democracy as Americans when we often use our power to threaten or manipulate or use the smaller third world nations of the world? How do we as Christians proclaim the Goodnews of God's love when we are bound up in tradition, ancestry, small impoverished love of ourselves and our closed exclusive communities. Can we take on some of the issues facing the world, and work for healing?
Christmas is coming. It is the season of light and joy, good times to be had by all. We love our carols, our Advent wreathes, the children's service, and dear sweet little baby Jesus. But all that is so trivial, so empty without that human hearts are prepared for the change required in us in a suffering servant savior.
The Advent season is the season of singing and saying "Lord have mercy." It is the season of confession. It is the season of seeking humble access. It is the season of changed hearts and minds that look forward to the coming of God to be our saving higher power to sustain us and lead us into a new order, a new way of sacrificial love, of being forgiving people, of being people with a profound and deep faith in the way of Jesus Christ as the higher power that brings us home to God.
John led those who came to them into the warm water of the Jordon River, immersing them in its cleansing power to help them change their lives and to be ready; ready for the Baptism of the Lord of renewed energy and Spiritedness.