Grace,
mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
The sermon
text for today comes from St Mark’s Gospel. And we read the words:
Behold, I
send my messenger before you face, who will prepare your way, the voice of one
crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths
straight.’
Prayer: Dear
Lord Jesus, send to all us the gift of the Holy Spirit, to me that I may preach
well, and to all of us, that we may hear well. Amen.
Today our Gospel reading focuses
especially on John the Baptist. In the Gospel of Luke, when he introduces John,
we read this: In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius
Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of the region of
Iturea and Trachonitus, and Lysanius tetrarch of Abilene, during the high
priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of
Zechariah in the wilderness.
I have
always found this a very comforting passage. Here Luke tells us about John the
Baptist, but he tells us about all the world leaders who were around at the
time—Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate the governor, king Herod, Lysanius, and
the high priests Anna and Caiaphas. Even though these leaders were important
and powerful, none were as important as John. And even though Tiberius Caesar,
the leader of the whole Roman Empire, was probably one of the most powerful man
alive in the world at that time, in God’s eyes human power is not important.
Human power seems so insignificant because what is important at this time of
history is where God sent his word. And when God sends out his word, then all
the power in heaven and earth is there. Even now, we can look back at history,
and most people—even those outside the church—know much more about John the
Baptist, than they know about Tiberius Caesar. Tiberius is pretty much
forgotten, but John the Baptist, who we might think of as an eccentric who
lived out in the bush, with strange clothes and strange diet—he is remembered.
He is not forgotten.
And St Luke
says something very significant. After listing all the leaders of the time, he
says: the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. When
he says: the word of God came to him, this is the same expression that
is used about the Old Testament prophets. Here St Luke speaks of John as the
last of the Old Testament prophets, preparing the way for Jesus.
Our reading
today comes from the Gospel of Mark. During this church year, we will take most
of our Gospel readings from Mark. And today’s reading is actually the first
verses of the Gospel of Mark. We read: The beginning of the gospel of Jesus
Christ, the Son of God. Isn’t it interesting that St Mark begins telling us
about Jesus by telling us about John? It’s almost like Mark is going to take us
to see a movie about the life of Jesus, but before we go into the cinema,
there’s this crazy man standing there at the door taking our tickets. And there
might be many people who come along for the screening, and they might be put
off by him, and they think: “I don’t know about this. I think I might go and
see a different movie.”
But St Mark
won’t let you in, unless you first have to walk past this man John the Baptist,
hand in your movie ticket to him, walk close to him with all the bad smells
that waft off of his clothes. Often it happens to us that we keep our distance
from Jesus, because at the entrance of the door of the church, God may have placed
there some offensive person that we have to contend with. Sometimes in our
families, we have an Aunty so-and-so, or Grandpa so-and-so, who is the local
religious person. And this is the sort of person that we might think gives
Christianity a bad name. And people say: Be careful of Uncle Jack—if you get
stuck with him, he’ll talk about the bible all day. And so what happens is that
God does not let us into the door of the church, without coming to the terms
that people might think that we’re crazy, just like Uncle Jack. Most of the
time, we’d much prefer to hob-nob and drink tea and coffee with those who are
respectable in the world’s eyes, people like Tiberius Caesar. What an honour it
would be to go to his palace and be treated with a royal feast! Where would you
rather go? To visit the Roman Emperor in his palace, or go out and meet John,
and eat bugs? And yet, the bible clearly states here that Tiberius Caesar is
the nobody that history has forgotten, and that John is the person who prepares
the way for Jesus Christ. This is what we read in the Gospel of Mark: Behold,
I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the voice of
one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths
straight.’
So what is
it that John actually says, that prepares the way for Jesus?
We read: John
appeared, baptising in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance
for the forgiveness of sins. In Matthew’s Gospel we read where John says: Repent,
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. What does this mean? The word repent,
means to turn back, to turn around, to turn your eyes and your heart around,
and to abandon the road that you were walking on previously. Sometimes people
often hear the word “repent” and think that God is requiring too much of them.
Whatever you think that God is requiring of you, he requires 10 times more of
you than you can possibly imagine. Whatever you think that God wants to show
you what is wrong with you, remember that there is a 100 times more stuff that you
don’t even know about yet. Our whole life as Christians is to be a life of
repentance. And to repent means first of all to say to God that he was right
all along, and that I was wrong.
Repentance
isn’t first of all changing everything bad in our lives. There might have all
kinds of good intentions to amend our lives, and we find that we can’t—at least
not as we would like. Sin has become like an addiction to us, and not until we
breathe our life’s last breath will we be free of it.
First of
all, repentance is acknowledging that God has spoken, and I haven’t met the
mark. God’s word is perfect, and my words, my thoughts, my life is far from it.
Without this acknowledgement of our sin, there’s simply no Christianity. And
often this is the missing link for so many people, when it comes to their
faith. They like listening to the bible, they like coming to church, they like
being with Christians, but there’s one thing they can’t stand, and that is
confessing their sins and receiving absolution, the forgiveness of sins. And
here in our church, we begin our church services with confession every week.
And people are all excited about coming to church, and then they sit down—and
they go, “Humph! Why do I have sit through this confession again?” Don’t people
know that this all this talk about how much of a helpless sinner we are is
going to put off all the visitors? It’s like they’re saying, “Let’s skip this
bit in the bible about John the Baptist—I’d much rather just go and listen
about Jesus.” King Herod was also interested in Jesus to some degree, but he
chopped John the Baptist’s head off.
And yet,
surely we know, that without the confession of sins, we simply can’t meet
Jesus. Now, we might sense that week after week, all we ever do is confess our
sins, but changing our life around never happens as we would like. Maybe we
fear the consequences of what God might expect of us—but our good works are the
fruit of repentance. Let the tree be planted first, let the tree be watered,
give it some time, and then let the fruit grow. People think, “I haven’t turned
into the Angel Gabriel yet—this Christianity stuff doesn’t work for me.” Give
yourself time, be patient. Everybody will realise what they need to change
about their life in God’s time, but it will happen at different times for
everybody. What is important that we come to God realising that we are sinners,
and that he is right, and that we were wrong.
John says: Repent,
for the kingdom of God is at hand. The direction which people were going in
in those days was a direction that was leading them away from God and from his
kingdom. They didn’t realise that the kingdom of God was not in their control,
it was not in their power. They thought that the kingdom of God could be
squeezed completely into their way of thinking and into their imagination. What
was actually needed was a completely new birth. Jesus was about to enter into
the world and take charge. And his birth and his life and his ministry would be
a completely new era in history. It would be a time which was filled with
something new—it would not be a time filled with despair and hopelessness. It
is a time which is filled with to forgiveness of sins. We read: John
appeared, baptising in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance
for the forgiveness of sins.
This is what
John’s baptism was for. He was preparing the way for Jesus, who would be our
Saviour, our Lord, our forgiver. So why does John baptise?
In the Old
Testament, there were all kinds of washings. Sometimes of hands, sometimes of
feet, sometimes of the whole body. When people entered into the sanctuary, the
dirt of the world was not allowed to enter there. Now John was pointing the
people to something new. There was going to come a new time, a new era, a new
kingdom—and the dirt and the dust of the world was not allowed in this new
kingdom. In fact, there is a certain sense in which our whole body needs to be
washed, and not just our whole body, but our whole spirit, our soul, our minds,
our hearts. And so, John shows this—if only, he says, my baptism would not just
wash away what is dirty on the outside, but also on the inside.
So he says: After
me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy
to stoop down and untie. I have baptised you with water, but he will baptise
you with the Holy Spirit. John’s baptism points to the real, Christian
baptism, where Jesus actually uses not just water, but adds his word and sends
his Holy Spirit. In the church, a pastor only baptises with water, but the
words that the pastor speaks are the words of Jesus. The words of Jesus are the
thing that give baptism its wonderful power. It is Jesus who comes here and
baptises with the Holy Spirit, and washes us clean not on the outside of our
body, but everywhere within us. And Jesus pours us through the Holy Spirit the
complete and total forgiveness of every single one of our sins. What a
wonderful gift it is that Jesus should enter into our midst and baptise us here
himself with the Holy Spirit!
There’s two
more things I would like to mention. Today in our church, there are two young
women, making their journey from childhood into adulthood, who are going to be
confirmed. And there’s two things in our reading that I would like to encourage
them with, and not just them but everyone.
It says in
the reading: All the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to
him and were being baptised by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Isn’t
it strange that here there was something new happening, and everyone was
interested in it! Everyone went out to be baptised by John. And people are
always interested in something that is new and that has never happened before.
They had a real desire for something new—they looked at their lives and they
realised that there must be more to life than this. And yet, when Jesus dies on
the cross, all the disciples has run away, and there were only a few people
there.
I would like
to encourage you today not to be taken in by the crowd, but to listen with
every fibre of your being to the word of God—and to realise that Jesus’ death
for you, his resurrection, all those things about Jesus that we might think we
have heard before, always have something new in them. It’s easy to get excited
about something, but eventually we stop we get excited. Our moods and our
emotions change from one day to the next. Who knows what happened to these
people in our reading? They weren’t there when Jesus died. And yet, Jesus, and
his love and his faithfulness towards you never changes. Hebrews 13 says:
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
But the
second thing is this: Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a
leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey. Now how on
earth is this little verse an encouragement to us today? This shows us that
there is a special calling from God upon people to go against the culture of
our day. John the Baptist embodied this like almost no one else. Even though
the rest of the world says: I need this, I need that. I need my nice clothes,
and I need my nice food—John’s example here shows us that we can very well do
without them. When we don’t have Jesus, we have nothing. And when we do have
Jesus, we have everything. There are so many pressures in our lives today that
can so easily cloud our faith—people think the greatest tragedy in their life
is when they’ve run out of milk for the Weetbix in the morning. The Christian
faith is not a whole lot of comfortable talk, easy, empty speech—it is a word
that cuts right to our heart, and divides our flesh from our spirit, and
separates marrow from the bone. It is a word that is sharper than any two-edged
sword—let God cut, and let God heal. You need protection in your life. You need
God’s angels to come and guard you, but from evil. There is one thing that you
don’t need protection from, and that is the holy and powerful word of God.
So as we
prepare to receive our Lord Jesus today, and also as we prepare for Christmas,
let’s come into God’s presence, not as people who think that we’ve got
everything together, but as people who need to be washed clean. And let’s
rejoice and be glad in the good news that Jesus is one who has baptised us with
his own Holy Spirit, and forgiven us from every single one of our sins. Amen.
Lord Jesus,
we thank you for calling us to repentance and faith through your word.
Strengthen us with every gift of your Holy Spirit this day, this week, and all
throughout our lives, so that we can be faithful unto death and receive the
crown of life. Amen.
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