Sermon 7th December 2014 - 2nd Sunday in Advent

Today, our Honorary Assistant Minister, Gill Tayleur, preaches. 

The Bible reading is from the Gospel of Mark 1 verses 1- 8. 

I wonder if you’ve ever been to see a TV or radio show being recorded? (Or live?!) About 30 years ago, I went with a friend to see the Parkinson Show being recorded – for those too young to know, this was a chat show with a chap called Michael Parkinson, Parky, a well known journalist, broadcaster and author who had a chat show from 1971 to 2007, 36 years! It was a very popular show, obviously. He interviewed famous people and celebrities with skill and humour.

Anyway when we arrived in the studio, instead of getting the show going straight away with Michael Parkinson, first a comedian was sent out on stage before the recording started. His job was to warm up the studio audience! To make us relax and laugh. We were told to laugh out loud, not just titter or smile, at the jokes! I thought it was all a bit silly and it was certainly contrived, but it worked. The comedian was funny. I don’t know who it was but I recently read that Peter Kay was once Parkinson’s warm up act in the studio, so maybe it was him. Anyway, by the time Parky came out on to the stage, we were warmed up, in the mood, laughing and cheering! The warm up comedian had prepared us for Parkinson’s arrival.

John the Baptist prepared the people for Jesus’ arrival. But not for laughter, quite the opposite, for sober news about themselves and their need to repent. It was the bad news before the good news.

The book of Mark we have here starts with the words: “This is the Good News about Jesus Christ, the Son of God” Mark says I have some news, and it’s very good news! It’s about Jesus Christ, whom many people still alive then would have known and remembered when Mark wrote this, as Mark’s gospel was the first to be written, in about AD60.

Mark says right in the very first sentence of his book about Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, that Jesus was the Son of God, the Messiah, the special one the prophets had spoken about hundreds of years before. He quotes two Old Testament prophets, the very last one Malachi (from chapter 3 verse 1), telling of the messenger who will come to prepare the way. “I will send my messenger ahead of you, to clear the way for you”. And then Isaiah, from chapter 40 verse 3, “Someone is shouting in the desert, ‘Get the road ready for the Lord; make a straight path for him to travel!’”

Mark says John is this messenger in the desert, preparing the way for Jesus. John’s appearance, camel’s hair and a leather belt, and his lifestyle, living in the desert on locusts and wild honey, both indicated his prophetic calling. And his message was incisive. The people were to prepare for the Messiah’s coming by repenting and confessing their sins. His message was relevant, necessary and contemporary to his time. And I suggest, it’s relevant, necessary and contemporary to our time too.

John was to prepare people for Jesus by holding up God’s standards and speaking his word, specifically by calling them to repent of their sins. Doing this would be like making

potholed tracks much smoother and straighter for the one coming behind, to travel on with ease. A similar process can take place for us to prepare for Jesus, facing up to the ways in which we don’t live up to God’s standards – not even our own, often! – And it will prepare us for Jesus, especially now in the season of Advent, before we celebrate Jesus’ coming into our world and lives afresh at Christmas.

This week I discovered something about Advent I don’t remember having heard before, namely that Advent is one of the church’s penitential seasons, that is a time of repentance, of turning away from sin.

We know that on the first Sunday of Advent, we are reminded and challenged to be ready and waiting for Jesus’ second coming, before we celebrate his first at Christmas. And that second coming will bring with it God’s judgement, for which we are to be ready.Cameron made up an acronym last week to help us:

BOWBABOG, that is to Be On Watch, Be Alert, Be On Guard. BOWBABOG

/BOGBAKW that is Be On Guard, Be Alert, Keep Watch. BOGBAKW

If you didn’t hear Cameron’s sermon last week, it’s on the website, or ask for it.

But after that Advent Sunday pause, we often rush full steam ahead to thinking about Christmas, and skip the penitential side of the season of Advent. We want to get on with the Christmas celebrations, me too! Decorations are up in shops very early, gift catalogues, work Christmas parties and carol services – they’ve already begun!

But this morning I’d like to challenge us to press the pause button, to stop and consider the penitential aspect of Advent. We’ll be better prepared to receive the gift of the Christ child at Christmas, if we do! That is, if we stop and take seriously the need to repent, to hear the message of John the Baptist.

Mark tells us that John said, “‘Turn away from your sins and be baptized, and God will forgive you’

Repentance and forgiveness. It’s the bad news before the good news. We need to own up to what’s wrong in our lives and before God, before we can receive and appreciate his forgiveness and love in the face of it!

So what exactly is repentance? We’ve probably all heard before: it’s not just saying sorry, not even just being really sorry. Repentance is about turning around, turning away from one way of thinking, or behaving, to another. It’s turning to move in the opposite direction, replacing one movement with another.

HOW we do this, HOW we repent, can be explained by breaking down the repentance process into steps, and I have personally found this process hugely helpful, not just in theory but in practice. The steps of repentance rather neatly all begin with the letter R:

The first R is for Recognise. First we have to recognise our sin as sin. The word sin is unpopular and unattractive, but if we stop and think about it, we can recognise that a lot of the time we live with ourselves at the centre of our lives instead of God. As they say, the word sin has the letter I in the middle, me in the middle, my life is All About Me.

This self centeredness is played out in both our actions and our motivations, and we need to recognise our sin in both. We’re selfish, we’re greedy, we gossip, we lose our temper, we lie. We get angry, jealous and mean. Critical, manipulative, controlling, lazy – need I go on?! There’s a famous prayer that says:

Dear Lord,
So far I've done all right today.
I haven't gossiped,
haven't lost my temper,
haven't been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish, or overindulgent.
I'm really glad about that.
But in a few minutes, God,
I'm going to get out of bed.
And from then on, I'm going to need a lot more help.

I identify with that! Which of us lives up to even our own standards, never mind God’s? We ALL fall far short of them, and we need to recognise it.

In many ways this is the hardest part, for we’d much rather make excuses for ourselves. I know I would! It’s much easier to say “it’s only human”, or “it’s very understandable”, than to own up to recognising our sin for what it is. We try to fool ourselves that it isn’t really that bad.

For example, I smugly congratulate myself on something kind I’ve done, and how special that makes me to that person. Rather than recognise my wrong attitude, it’s easier to tell myself that feeling like that is only human, everyone does it. And yes a lot of us do think like that – but it’s a self-centred thought, a proud one, puffing myself up, instead of praising God for what’s been done. That’s not Godly, as it should be.

We try to avoid recognising our sin in another way too: we blame someone else! If I am exasperated and rude to the person who has kept me waiting on the phone for 10 minutes, I think “well I was treated badly”. But the truth is simply, I’ve been rude & angry. Jesus didn’t soft pedal this; he said sin had a broader definition than we might want to give it, not a narrower one. He said even to think an angry thought is like committing murder. He certainly didn’t excuse sin in any way. Every single time we fail to live up to the Godly way of living that Jesus came to show us, we sin. We can try and cover it up, saying, “it’s only human”. Of course our sin is “only human” – but Jesus had to die on the cross for us humans!

Another excuse we make for ourselves is by comparing ourselves to others who we feel are far worse than we are. We think, “I’m not that bad; I’m not a drug pusher or armed robber or child abuser.” There’s always someone worse than me. But relative to God’s standards, and relative to the perfect life of love and goodness that Jesus led, we ALL fall a long way short. A person standing at the bottom of the world’s deepest mine, and one on top of the world’s tallest mountain, are both equally far off when trying to touch the stars!

So, with various excuses on the tip of our tongues, we have to be determined to recognise our sin for what it is. But often it doesn’t take much digging to see what’s going on in our hearts. And if we ask God to show us the attitude of our hearts, then it really doesn’t take long! We just have to choose to recognise our sin for what it is.

So that’s the first R, to Recognise. The next one is very straightforward. It’s to Repent. To actually say to God, humbly, I have sinned, I am responsible, I have done wrong. To say, it’s part of what Jesus had to die on the cross for, and I deeply regret it. I’m sorry, I repent and I humbly ask your forgiveness even though I know I don’t deserve it.

And that’s when the bad news makes way for the Good News!  The wonderful news is, that God loves us so much, that He does indeed forgive us, as John the Baptist reached (repentance and forgiveness). God’s forgiveness, His mercy is freely available to everyone who asks for it. All we need to do is to receive it. And that’s the next R, to Receive. Our sin can be forgiven, thanks to Jesus’ death on the cross, as we’ll be celebrating in Communion shortly. When Jesus died, he took the sin of the whole world, and that includes yours and mine, on to himself, and took our place so that you and I might be free from the punishment we deserve. So that we can be forgiven. How wonderful to know we are deeply loved by God and to receive His forgiveness! We don’t have to earn it, we simply have to receive it.

As William Barclay’s lovely invitation to Communion – that Cameron introduced  here – says:

“Come [to God],

not because you are strong,

but because you are weak.

Come, not because any goodness of your own gives you a right to come,

but because you need God’s mercy and help.

Come, because you love the Lord a little

and would like to love him more;

Come, not because you are worthy to approach him,

but because he died for sinners like you and me;

Come, because he loves you and gave himself for you.”

We recognise, repent and receive.

The next steps are to Refute and Realign.

To Refute the powers and the lies of evil and realign ourselves with the truth. You don’t have to look very far to see the power of evil; pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV. The powers of evil want us to trick us with lies, and we can refute those lies and the liar who encourages us to believe them.

So for example, it’s a lie that I’ve the right to be angry with someone because they’ve treated me badly. The truth is, Jesus says we’re to treat everyone well, even to love our enemies! It’s a lie that I have to fight my corner all the time and insist on my own way, to feel safe in the world. The truth is, God can be trusted and I’m safe in His love, no matter what dreadful things happen. So the fourth step is to Refute the lies and the liar, and we do this by simply saying so. And we Realign ourselves with the truth by choosing to believe and speak the truth in that situation instead.

And finally, after we’ve recognised, repented, received, refuted and realigned, the last step in this repentance process: to Replace. We replace the old sinful way of thinking, and behaving, with the one that goes in the opposite direction. In the turning around picture, this is when we start moving in the opposite direction. Instead of thinking about how we can get our own way, we consider how to put others first. Instead of prioritising our own comfort or fulfilment, we give our energies and love to serving others. Replace.

So, the Rs of repentance. Recognise, Repent, Receive, Refute, Realign and Replace.

To show you what I mean, here’s an personal example of what this process is like in practice. One of my failings or sin is that when under pressure, my natural inclination is to try and take control, and boss everyone around in a rather unpleasant manner. It happens mainly behind closed doors with my family, as is often the way isn’t it, that the people we’re closest to are on the receiving end of behaviour we’d be embarrassed for others to see. It’s not pretty, and afterwards, I feel very sorry and need to apologise, to those involved – and to repent, to God.

My prayer of repentance might go something like this:

Dear God, I recognise that I’ve been rude and inconsiderate and tried to push everyone around. I Recognise this as sin, part of the sin that put Jesus on the cross.I Repent of it. I’m truly sorry and wish I hadn’t done it. But I Receive your forgiveness, gratefully!I accept its cleansing power. And now I Refute the lie that I have to feel in control when things are all going wrong and difficult. I Realign myself with the truth that you are in control and I can trust you instead. Lord, help me and empower me to Replace this controlling behaviour with gracious, considerate, kind words & deeds in future. I pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

That’s what I do – and I can honestly say it has made a big difference in my life!

To finish then, the Bible describes repentance as a gift, and it’s a powerful gift. It’s a gift because it comes from God’s wonderful love and mercy for each one of us. And it’s powerful because it’s the way we get free from the sin we’re stuck in. The way we turn around, and move in the opposite direction, so that we can live as God intends, changed. That is a gift indeed, and we’ll be best prepared for the gift of Christ at Christmas, if we pay full attention to John’s call to repentance first.

So this Advent, let’s be serious about repentance, so that we can know the assurance of God’s wonderful love and forgiveness, and its great joy this Christmas.

And now let’s pray...