Sermon 6th December 2015

Today, our Vicar, Cameron Barker, preaches. The reading is from Luke 3 verses 1-6.

Advent being the time to prepare for Christmas, here’s a chance to get in the right mood – by starting with a game. Those who do like playing, especially the intellectually challenging kind, might like to have a go at this identify-the-year game; without using modern technology, please!

People with very good memories may recall that we have played this game here before. But even if your memory’s excellent, the answer is different this time. So can you can work out the year when: Hitler was Chancellor of Germany; Franco was Prime Minister of Spain; Chiang Kai-Shek was Chairman in China; Stalin was Premier of the USSR; Churchill was Prime Minister in the UK; Fisher became Archbishop of Canterbury; and Pius XII was Pope in Rome? …

And the answer is … 1945. And now can begin to know something of how Luke’s early readers felt. Some 30 years on, the Gospel writer was identifying a very specific time in Israel’s history for them: not that anyone remembered it with any affection. 28-30 AD had been truly desperate days for Israel, almost as bad as things ever were: worse even than just before World War Two ended. Tiberius was the second Roman Emperor, and he ruled the known ancient world with an iron rod. He was already insisting on being worshipped as a god. Anyone who refused (as any good Jew would have done) faced execution. Rome didn’t brook any opposition – and Rome ruled Israel, as the people who lived there knew full well.

By then Rome had ruled Israel for about 100 years. In the south Judea it had become direct rule through Pontius Pilate, the Governor. He lived mostly on the coast, but also had a palace in Jerusalem. As we know from the story of Jesus’ life, Pilate did visit the capital to sentence rebels to death in the name of Rome. That was another source of outrage to the natives; but they were a subject people, who therefore didn’t dare to complain, for the sake of preserving their own lives.

And the natives were equally powerless to challenge the status quo in the north of their country. The spoils there were being divided between the half-brothers Herod and Philip. Their father, Herod, the so-called ‘Great’, was one of the most hated people in Israel’s recent history. He had founded the local self-declared ‘royal’ household that had welcomed the Romans in. And his sons were no better than he had been. They too collaborated with the enemy occupier. They willingly did Rome’s bidding, in Rome’s brutal way; and made themselves even richer as they did so.

As I say, this was a desperate time in Israel – as that list of names makes very clear. But for devout Jews it had been desperate for much longer. 400 years had passed since God had last sent a prophet to his people. 400 years of silence and apparent Divine abandonment. And now the Romans were taking charge of even that area of Israel’s life! High priests?! Any Jew knew there could only ever be one of them; and that he had the job for life. But the Romans hadn’t approved of Annas. So they’d put Caiaphas alongside him; his own son-in-law! It was absolutely appalling for the Jews; but, again, nobody could do a thing about it.

Now if this is uncomfortable hearing, that’s fitting for Advent. Yes this is the time to prepare for Christmas. Starting last Sunday we have these 4 weeks to get ready to celebrate the birth of Jesus to be our Saviour. The way we’re meant to do that is by reflecting on the 4 Last Things – death; hell; judgement; and heaven. It may be a far cry from all the Nativity productions, school fares, Christmas trees, present-buying and relative-visiting that often fill our December to overflowing. But Christmas is – or should be – about far more than such things. Of course those are important and often (if not always!) enjoyable. But the focus for Christians must surely be on how we’re preparing to celebrate the rescue plan for all people that God enacted through Jesus.

Most people in 1^st Century Israel were in no doubt of their own need for rescue. The painful evidence was all around them, every day – in ways that we are too comfortable to appreciate perhaps. They had been crying out for God to act for so long. And yet these were the circumstances they’d landed up in. But it was then, at that time, in those straits, that the word of God came to someone again, at last. That Word came not to someone who we might naturally expect – not to some recognised, well-placed, influential leader. No: it came to the middle-aged son of an obscure priest, to John the Baptiser as he wandered around in the desert!

Anyone who’s read any Gospel knows that there’s much more to John’s story. Luke tells how he was a special child, born to his parents in their old age. His birth too had been promised by an angel; his disbelieving father had been struck literally dumb by that. John was then set apart for God from birth. But he had no national profile, or obvious qualifications for this job – nothing except a hunger to hear from God, and to do what He wanted. There’s a challenge in there for anyone who thinks they can’t be used by God of course: we only ever need a hunger to hear God’s Word, and a willingness to do it. But that’s not the main reason for focusing on John the Baptist today. The main reason is because of this message that God gave John to preach to His people – then and now.

Today we’ve heard ‘only’ the headline of that message; but it’s more than enough to be getting on with! Of the 4 Last Things today it’s judgement that we’re confronted by. Luke was sure that the word of God came to John to prepare the way for God’s Messiah. That was why he quoted that prophecy from Isaiah chapter 40. This was a key, and heady, moment in history; not just for Israel but for all people everywhere, and for all time. The King was coming; and it was time to make straight roads for him. All the valleys needed filling in, the hills and mountains levelling off; everything must be made ready to see God’s salvation for all people.

That was John’s job: to do what it took to get the road ready for this coming King. We might call him ‘God's bulldozer’, then! That’s appropriate, given what John said, and how he said it. We can work that out from the summary of John’s message in today’s short passage. If you’re not yet convinced, just look at verse 7: “You snakes! Who told you that you could escape from the punishment God is about to send? (GNB) / You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? (NIV)” And let’s not forget that this was how John spoke to those who’d come to find him in the desert. This was how he challenged the people who were desperate to hear God’s message of salvation!

Even more shocking was what John told those people to do. His hearers were overwhelmingly Jewish those who were sure that they were God’s people. John told them to be baptised, as a practical sign that they had accepted his message. But in those days it was only Gentiles, non-Jews, who wanted to become Jews who were baptised. Jews didn’t need to be, they thought; until John told them this! His message to them was that if they wanted to be God’s people then they had to get right with Him first. Baptism was a sign of that: the greater sign, though, the one that really counted, was the evidence of a changed life. That was what then had to follow their baptism; if they meant it – radically changed lives.

The word that John used for that was ‘Repent’. That was the only right response to the news he brought, about the king coming to judge, and save, His people: those people, had to live a new and different life, for God instead of for themselves. As I’ve said before, the Greek word is ‘metanoia’: it means a complete change of mind, or direction – literally turning through 180 degrees. That’s what repentance is: both a turning from something, and a turning to something, or someone, else. The emphasis, then and now, is on the turning to, this King, coming to bring God’s long-promised salvation.

This is ground that we have covered here before; and we will do it again; and again; and again. As Tom Wright has noted, the Christian life is more than ‘just’ about repentance; but it’s never less than it. His translation of verse 8 has John saying: “You had better prove your repentance by bearing the proper fruit”; and that’s always the challenge, of course, for each of us: it’s about seeing daily how we fall short of what God wants: in what we do and don’t, do; in what we do and don’t say; and in how we do, and don’t, it – and putting all that right, with God’s help. And we are not going to do that unless we are constantly reminded, challenged, and taught to do it.

At Christmas we celebrate the coming of Jesus, our saviour King. The response that God wants from us today is the exact same kind of changed life that John was calling for back then. What matters for us, then, is this core principle of John’s message: God’s people must be His people, by the way we live: for Him, not for ourselves. That is to be our response to the judgement that Jesus came to save us from – if we want to accept it, and to show that we have done so. So what we have to do is to turn away; from a life focused on ourselves; and to a new life focused on God – as we were also reminded in our recent series from James. And if you have never taken that in-principle step, then today’s surely the day to turn from your sin, and to this new life in God. That is where, and how, any Christian life always begins. But the call to repentance comes to all people, all the time: then and now.

We can tend to think of repentance as stopping doing the major things wrong. Of course ‘major’ is usually defined as anything that’s worse than what I happen to be doing! But in God’s eyes sin is sin is sin – and by His standard we all have things that we need to repent of, every day. Then we must live a life that shows we really have repented: by finding new Godly ways to live for him. And that process begins by us recognising sin for what it is – those ordinary ways in which live for self not for God; and by repenting, turning away from them.

The way in which we show that we mean it is by living a new and different life – for God instead of for ourselves. That is what it means to be a Christian. It’s not about speaking the right words; or coming to church on Sunday (though of course all that is important too!). It’s about living a new, different and changed life; one that’s obedient to God’s way. We’ve also heard before here about the 4 R’s that help to make this real. It starts by us Recognising our sin for what it is – which is often the hardest part, because it’s so easy to make excuses for ourselves. Step 2 is to Repent of that sin, to turn away from it, and turn to God. The third R is then to Receive God’s forgiveness, which is always on offer to those who turn to Him. And then we need to Replace that sin with a new way of living: for God, not for self. It might all sound easy and simple – but it’s anything but that. However, this is what God has always required of His people: if they are to be his people then they must live accordingly, in the everyday detail of our lives. So, as we prepare for Christmas we too need to hear this word of God that came to John; and to obey it; by doing what it means – in other words by repenting. And so now let’s pray that we will do that: starting with the detail of this day …