Sermon from Sunday 9th December 2007
Today, one of our Lay Readers, Trevor Tayleur, preaches, based on the reading from (Matthew 3:1-12)
John prepares the way
“There’s a hurricane on its way!” In some parts of the world, the hurricane season is a time of great anxiety. The weather forecasters keep a close watch on storms as they start to brew, and if it looks like developing into a hurricane, they’ll issue a hurricane warning. The people living on the likely path of the hurricane get ready for it. They batten down the hatches, or sometimes they leave their homes and go somewhere safer. And then the hurricane strikes, bringing devastating floods to both countryside and cities and causing much suffering. But if the weather forecasters have done their job and issued a hurricane warning in time, at least some of the people will have been able to escape the worst. When danger is on its way, people need to be warned.
And that was the kind of work that John the Baptist was doing, warning the people that an emergency was on its way and that they needed to take action. So what was this emergency that was on its way – that John was warning the people about? To understand this question, we need to look at the historical context.
John obviously caused a stir. Verse 5 tells us that people from far and wide went out to hear him. There hadn’t been a phenomenon like him for many centuries in Jewish life. The spark had gone out of their worship and spiritual life. There had been the terrible days of the exile in Babylon; then came oppression at the hands of the Greeks, and now the Roman Empire dominated; the Roman eagle flew above everything. But all the while the people were waiting for the Messiah, God’s chosen one, to rescue them. It was in this context that the wild man from the desert burst on to the scene. And what was the warning that he was bringing? It was this – that the Messiah, the King, was on his way. Now, unlike a hurricane warning, this was good news, or at least it should have been. Yes, the King was on his way, but the problem was that the people weren’t ready for him. And so John the Baptist was telling the people to get ready, telling the people to “prepare a road for the Lord, (to) make a straight path for him...” (v3). And how were the people to get ready? John’s answer was clear and blunt. REPENT. And many people did repent.
In verses 7-9 he spoke to the Pharisees and Sadducees. I wonder what they made of him; they were highly respectable religious leaders, keeping all sorts of petty rules and regulations. And now here they were, face to face with this wild man whose clothes were made of camel’s hair and who ate wild locusts and honey. John the Baptist was certainly no respecter of persons and he scoffed at the Pharisees and Sadducees. “You snakes,” he called them.
What was it that they were doing wrong? The Pharisees in particular prided themselves on their purity, so it’s unlikely that they were guilty of any gross or obvious sin, the sort of things that would excite the tabloids today. Pride and arrogance were their downfall. They were proud of their purity; they thought they were better than everyone else, but what they really needed was humility. And John attacked in particular their confidence in their ancestry. They said to themselves that Abraham was their ancestor. They had got it into their heads that as they were descended from Abraham, one of the great figures of the OT, then all was well. But John let them know that they had got it all wrong. Like everyone else, the religious leaders needed to repent. “Do those things that will show that you have turned from your sins,” he challenged them. Outward observance of religious formalities wasn’t enough; evidence of repentance was needed. Yes, John demanded evidence of repentance. And what sort of evidence was he looking for?
There’s a parallel passage in Luke 3, a parallel account but a bit more detailed in places, where the ordinary people, not the Pharisees and Sadducees, said to John the Baptist, “What are we to do?” And John answered, “Whoever has two shirts must give one to the man who has none, and whoever has food must share it.” (vs.11)
And the tax collectors also asked, “What are we to do?” And John said to them, “Don’t collect any more than is legal.” And in reply to the soldiers who asked the same question, John said, “Don’t take money from anyone by force or accuse anyone falsely. Be content with your pay.”
John gave them three examples of repentance, and it’s noteworthy that they were all very practical, in fact affecting their pockets. How do we show that we have repented? It will be evident by what we do, by the decisions we make, by the priorities we adopt, by the values we acquire and the way we spend our money. That will be evidence of our repentance. But I’m perhaps jumping ahead a little by looking at the evidence of repentance. Because those people who asked John, “What are we to do?” asked that question as they came to be baptised. Repentance isn’t simply leading good lives. If we look back to Matthew 3:6, the people who were baptised and asked how to repent first confessed their sins. “They confessed their sins, and (John) baptised them in the Jordan River.”
John called on everyone, religious leaders and ordinary people alike, to repent and be baptised. Now was the time for them to admit their guilt and to get ready for the coming of the Messiah, God’s King. And when the people came forward for baptism, that was a sign that they had taken the first step in the process of repentance, which is to recognise the sin, the wrong in their lives.
Before they could repent, the religious leaders had to recognise the pride and arrogance in their lives; the tax collectors who had exploited the poor and the soldiers who had abused the weak and vulnerable had to recognise their callous attitudes and behaviour. And we need to recognise what is going inside us. It’s something we need to do individually; I can’t tell you what you need to recognise and then repent of, but I can give a couple of examples, one from my own life, and one from an article I read in the newspaper.
Something I realised recently is how my own reaction to past wrongs done to me can have a damaging effect on my own life, even many years down the line. I was badly bullied at boarding school in South Africa; it wasn’t my fault – I was the innocent victim of a vicious bully. Bullying can of course do a lot of damage to people, and can be very difficult to recover from. But in my own case I have sometimes, even 30 and more years after the events, used what happened to me at school as an excuse for doing nothing when I knew I should be taking action, for withdrawing into myself rather than being open to those around me. When someone sins against us and does us wrong, our temptation is to react sinfully and then to justify ourselves; e.g. by saying I felt so hurt that I couldn’t pray. I’m not saying that we can simply undo the past at the drop of a hat and that we should simply gloss over the damage that we’ve suffered. What I am saying is that we do need to reflect on how we respond when people hurt us.
I’ve heard this process described as the principle of the spilled cup. If I’m carrying a cup of foul disgusting liquid rather than a cup of clean pure water and somebody bumps into me, spilling the liquid over me, whose responsibility is it that there was foul liquid in my cup? Is it the responsibility of the person who bumped into me? No, it’s my responsibility. If I’m driving along the road and someone cuts me up and I react by swearing at them rather than responding in a calm and even-tempered way, whose responsibility is that? Is it the other driver’s? No, my bad-tempered foul-mouthed response is my responsibility, because it reflects what was already in my own heart. The other driver didn’t cause the bad temper to be there; it was already there.
The other example comes from a recent article in The Times by Simon Barnes, one of my favourite sports columnists. He wrote recently that when he was a young journalist for a local newspaper, he was in disgrace. It was his expenses claim. He was summoned to the editor’s office. The editor told him, “Take this expenses form away. Have a think about it, and then do it again. This time do it properly. You should be claiming no more than £7.50.” Simon Barnes had claimed just over £3.
He argued, saying that three quid was what he had spent, and therefore three quid was what he claimed. With heavy patience, his editor explained, “Expenses aren’t supposed to be honest. No one expects expenses to be honest. They are a legitimate way of increasing our otherwise pathetic salaries.”
Everybody did it, so that made it all right. So too after persuasion did Simon Barnes. He concluded by writing, “Oh, it’s easy to enter a culture of corruption. A little bit at a time, and soon you are hopelessly compromised.”
It was very easy for him to get sucked into a culture of small-scale, petty, rather pathetic corruption. And it could be very easy for us too. “Everybody does it, so why don’t we,” we say to ourselves. And our hearts get hardened as we compromise our standards.
In January of this year Cameron encouraged us to follow the four ‘Rs’ of repentance. I think the first two should be easy enough to work out from what I’ve said so far. The first is to recognise our sin; we need to take responsibility for it, and then we can move on to the second ‘R’, to repent. And repent means to turn, to turn away from sin and towards God. And John the Baptist was using baptism as an outward sign of the cleansing that was going on inside. And as we repent, we can receive forgiveness from God. And that’s the third ‘R’ – to receive forgiveness. That is one of the great things about repentance; repentance isn’t about beating ourselves with sticks and doom and gloom. It’s making a realistic assessment of who and what we are, and receiving God’s forgiveness. And then our actions must testify to our repentance. We must replace our sin with the fruit of repentance. And that’s the fourth ‘R’ – to replace. The good news is that as we try to replace our old behaviour with new patterns of repentance, we’re not alone. God doesn’t abandon us to get on with it. He’s sent the Holy Spirit to be with us; we have the Bible and we have each other; not only are there the Sunday services, but there also several Bible study groups that meet regularly, as well as the parish time of prayer. If we try to replace our old patterns of our behaviour on our own, we’re going to struggle, but if we look to our brothers and sisters in Christ for support, we’re in a much better position when the going gets tough.
John the Baptist warned the people of his time to get ready for the hurricane that was coming. Jesus, the Messiah, was about to start his ministry, and the people to had to be ready. Last Sunday, as we started the season of Advent, Cameron reminded us that Jesus is coming again. We don’t know when; it could be today; it could be next week or next year, or it could be a long time in the future. I tend to assume a lot of the time that it will be a long time in the future, but that’s a mistake. It could be today, and if it is, we need to be ready. We cannot take for granted that just because we come to church regularly, that Jesus will be happy with us when he returns. He will be looking for serious signs of repentance. Will he find them?
Let’s pray. Father, it’s very easy for us to think that we’re OK, that there’s no hurry and that there isn’t much we need to repent of. Help us to recognise where we’ve fallen short of your standards, to repent and to receive the joy of forgiveness so we can replace our complacency with a sense of urgency. Amen.
John prepares the way
“There’s a hurricane on its way!” In some parts of the world, the hurricane season is a time of great anxiety. The weather forecasters keep a close watch on storms as they start to brew, and if it looks like developing into a hurricane, they’ll issue a hurricane warning. The people living on the likely path of the hurricane get ready for it. They batten down the hatches, or sometimes they leave their homes and go somewhere safer. And then the hurricane strikes, bringing devastating floods to both countryside and cities and causing much suffering. But if the weather forecasters have done their job and issued a hurricane warning in time, at least some of the people will have been able to escape the worst. When danger is on its way, people need to be warned.
And that was the kind of work that John the Baptist was doing, warning the people that an emergency was on its way and that they needed to take action. So what was this emergency that was on its way – that John was warning the people about? To understand this question, we need to look at the historical context.
John obviously caused a stir. Verse 5 tells us that people from far and wide went out to hear him. There hadn’t been a phenomenon like him for many centuries in Jewish life. The spark had gone out of their worship and spiritual life. There had been the terrible days of the exile in Babylon; then came oppression at the hands of the Greeks, and now the Roman Empire dominated; the Roman eagle flew above everything. But all the while the people were waiting for the Messiah, God’s chosen one, to rescue them. It was in this context that the wild man from the desert burst on to the scene. And what was the warning that he was bringing? It was this – that the Messiah, the King, was on his way. Now, unlike a hurricane warning, this was good news, or at least it should have been. Yes, the King was on his way, but the problem was that the people weren’t ready for him. And so John the Baptist was telling the people to get ready, telling the people to “prepare a road for the Lord, (to) make a straight path for him...” (v3). And how were the people to get ready? John’s answer was clear and blunt. REPENT. And many people did repent.
In verses 7-9 he spoke to the Pharisees and Sadducees. I wonder what they made of him; they were highly respectable religious leaders, keeping all sorts of petty rules and regulations. And now here they were, face to face with this wild man whose clothes were made of camel’s hair and who ate wild locusts and honey. John the Baptist was certainly no respecter of persons and he scoffed at the Pharisees and Sadducees. “You snakes,” he called them.
What was it that they were doing wrong? The Pharisees in particular prided themselves on their purity, so it’s unlikely that they were guilty of any gross or obvious sin, the sort of things that would excite the tabloids today. Pride and arrogance were their downfall. They were proud of their purity; they thought they were better than everyone else, but what they really needed was humility. And John attacked in particular their confidence in their ancestry. They said to themselves that Abraham was their ancestor. They had got it into their heads that as they were descended from Abraham, one of the great figures of the OT, then all was well. But John let them know that they had got it all wrong. Like everyone else, the religious leaders needed to repent. “Do those things that will show that you have turned from your sins,” he challenged them. Outward observance of religious formalities wasn’t enough; evidence of repentance was needed. Yes, John demanded evidence of repentance. And what sort of evidence was he looking for?
There’s a parallel passage in Luke 3, a parallel account but a bit more detailed in places, where the ordinary people, not the Pharisees and Sadducees, said to John the Baptist, “What are we to do?” And John answered, “Whoever has two shirts must give one to the man who has none, and whoever has food must share it.” (vs.11)
And the tax collectors also asked, “What are we to do?” And John said to them, “Don’t collect any more than is legal.” And in reply to the soldiers who asked the same question, John said, “Don’t take money from anyone by force or accuse anyone falsely. Be content with your pay.”
John gave them three examples of repentance, and it’s noteworthy that they were all very practical, in fact affecting their pockets. How do we show that we have repented? It will be evident by what we do, by the decisions we make, by the priorities we adopt, by the values we acquire and the way we spend our money. That will be evidence of our repentance. But I’m perhaps jumping ahead a little by looking at the evidence of repentance. Because those people who asked John, “What are we to do?” asked that question as they came to be baptised. Repentance isn’t simply leading good lives. If we look back to Matthew 3:6, the people who were baptised and asked how to repent first confessed their sins. “They confessed their sins, and (John) baptised them in the Jordan River.”
John called on everyone, religious leaders and ordinary people alike, to repent and be baptised. Now was the time for them to admit their guilt and to get ready for the coming of the Messiah, God’s King. And when the people came forward for baptism, that was a sign that they had taken the first step in the process of repentance, which is to recognise the sin, the wrong in their lives.
Before they could repent, the religious leaders had to recognise the pride and arrogance in their lives; the tax collectors who had exploited the poor and the soldiers who had abused the weak and vulnerable had to recognise their callous attitudes and behaviour. And we need to recognise what is going inside us. It’s something we need to do individually; I can’t tell you what you need to recognise and then repent of, but I can give a couple of examples, one from my own life, and one from an article I read in the newspaper.
Something I realised recently is how my own reaction to past wrongs done to me can have a damaging effect on my own life, even many years down the line. I was badly bullied at boarding school in South Africa; it wasn’t my fault – I was the innocent victim of a vicious bully. Bullying can of course do a lot of damage to people, and can be very difficult to recover from. But in my own case I have sometimes, even 30 and more years after the events, used what happened to me at school as an excuse for doing nothing when I knew I should be taking action, for withdrawing into myself rather than being open to those around me. When someone sins against us and does us wrong, our temptation is to react sinfully and then to justify ourselves; e.g. by saying I felt so hurt that I couldn’t pray. I’m not saying that we can simply undo the past at the drop of a hat and that we should simply gloss over the damage that we’ve suffered. What I am saying is that we do need to reflect on how we respond when people hurt us.
I’ve heard this process described as the principle of the spilled cup. If I’m carrying a cup of foul disgusting liquid rather than a cup of clean pure water and somebody bumps into me, spilling the liquid over me, whose responsibility is it that there was foul liquid in my cup? Is it the responsibility of the person who bumped into me? No, it’s my responsibility. If I’m driving along the road and someone cuts me up and I react by swearing at them rather than responding in a calm and even-tempered way, whose responsibility is that? Is it the other driver’s? No, my bad-tempered foul-mouthed response is my responsibility, because it reflects what was already in my own heart. The other driver didn’t cause the bad temper to be there; it was already there.
The other example comes from a recent article in The Times by Simon Barnes, one of my favourite sports columnists. He wrote recently that when he was a young journalist for a local newspaper, he was in disgrace. It was his expenses claim. He was summoned to the editor’s office. The editor told him, “Take this expenses form away. Have a think about it, and then do it again. This time do it properly. You should be claiming no more than £7.50.” Simon Barnes had claimed just over £3.
He argued, saying that three quid was what he had spent, and therefore three quid was what he claimed. With heavy patience, his editor explained, “Expenses aren’t supposed to be honest. No one expects expenses to be honest. They are a legitimate way of increasing our otherwise pathetic salaries.”
Everybody did it, so that made it all right. So too after persuasion did Simon Barnes. He concluded by writing, “Oh, it’s easy to enter a culture of corruption. A little bit at a time, and soon you are hopelessly compromised.”
It was very easy for him to get sucked into a culture of small-scale, petty, rather pathetic corruption. And it could be very easy for us too. “Everybody does it, so why don’t we,” we say to ourselves. And our hearts get hardened as we compromise our standards.
In January of this year Cameron encouraged us to follow the four ‘Rs’ of repentance. I think the first two should be easy enough to work out from what I’ve said so far. The first is to recognise our sin; we need to take responsibility for it, and then we can move on to the second ‘R’, to repent. And repent means to turn, to turn away from sin and towards God. And John the Baptist was using baptism as an outward sign of the cleansing that was going on inside. And as we repent, we can receive forgiveness from God. And that’s the third ‘R’ – to receive forgiveness. That is one of the great things about repentance; repentance isn’t about beating ourselves with sticks and doom and gloom. It’s making a realistic assessment of who and what we are, and receiving God’s forgiveness. And then our actions must testify to our repentance. We must replace our sin with the fruit of repentance. And that’s the fourth ‘R’ – to replace. The good news is that as we try to replace our old behaviour with new patterns of repentance, we’re not alone. God doesn’t abandon us to get on with it. He’s sent the Holy Spirit to be with us; we have the Bible and we have each other; not only are there the Sunday services, but there also several Bible study groups that meet regularly, as well as the parish time of prayer. If we try to replace our old patterns of our behaviour on our own, we’re going to struggle, but if we look to our brothers and sisters in Christ for support, we’re in a much better position when the going gets tough.
John the Baptist warned the people of his time to get ready for the hurricane that was coming. Jesus, the Messiah, was about to start his ministry, and the people to had to be ready. Last Sunday, as we started the season of Advent, Cameron reminded us that Jesus is coming again. We don’t know when; it could be today; it could be next week or next year, or it could be a long time in the future. I tend to assume a lot of the time that it will be a long time in the future, but that’s a mistake. It could be today, and if it is, we need to be ready. We cannot take for granted that just because we come to church regularly, that Jesus will be happy with us when he returns. He will be looking for serious signs of repentance. Will he find them?
Let’s pray. Father, it’s very easy for us to think that we’re OK, that there’s no hurry and that there isn’t much we need to repent of. Help us to recognise where we’ve fallen short of your standards, to repent and to receive the joy of forgiveness so we can replace our complacency with a sense of urgency. Amen.
posted by Parish Administrator at 11:48 am
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