Sermon for the Lord’s Day

December 6, 2009

Second Sunday of Advent

Luke 1:67-80

Luke 3:1-6

Rev. Lorelei Hillman

May I see a show of hands, please – how many of you, when you were children, wanted to play the role of John the Baptist in your ‘make believe’ games?  How many of you wanted to grow up to be John the Baptist?

Oh, come on, not even a few of you gentlemen?  Isn’t John’s life a young boy’s dream: toughing it out in the wilderness, eating wild honey and bugs?  Wearing rough clothes and animal skins?  Your hair in a tangle, no need for shaving or bathing?

John was certainly no shrinking violet!  He was ‘in the face’ of just about anyone who had power or prestige.  He called the leaders of his day “vipers.”  He took King Herod to task for improper behavior with his brother’s wife.  Then quite romantically, he is beheaded by a drunken Herod on a whim, after that unpredictable man made a promise to his stepdaughter.  Not an attractive lifestyle?

The gospels begin by making a lot of John.  In the gospel attributed to Mark, John appears before Jesus himself, and it is clearly at his baptism by John that Jesus is announced as the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Jewish people were waiting for.  Mark tells us the story of John’s end, a victim to the manipulations of Herod’s wife Herodias and her devious daughter.

Matthew puts John a bit further back into the story, after the narrative of Jesus’ birth, and the flight of the holy family to Egypt.  Here John confronts the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the two most prominent Jewish religious groups in Jerusalem, and then proclaims the coming of the One who will judge all people.

In Luke, in the passage we heard read this morning, John is given honor even before his own birth – he is the miracle child of Elizabeth and Zechariah, both of priestly families.  Zechariah sings a beautiful song about his baby son, declaring he will one day become “the prophet of the Most High” who will “go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins.”  A high calling indeed!

By the time we get to the gospel of John, our John the Baptist very clearly states that he himself is not the Messiah; in fact, in the first chapter of this gospel, John makes 10 separate statements clarifying his role as “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,” and not the Savior himself.

So John’s role was to “prepare the way of the Lord.”  But what does this mean?  How exactly does one prepare the way for a Messiah?  For a Savior?

I know what some folks think – I’ve seen the bumper stickers that say, “Jesus is coming, look busy!”  Well, what would you do if Jesus were coming to your house this afternoon?  Clean up the kitchen?  Bake some cookies?  Put away your romance novels and your Hunters’ Weekly magazines?  And that is our instinct, isn’t it, to try to look busy, look productive; to try to impress, to look like we really matter.

But John says, “Repent.”

Now I think repentance has gotten a bad rap.  What are some of your favorite repentance caricatures?  [Mea culpa, mea culpa.  O, what a worm am I!]  How about movies that include plotting and murder in the confessional?  One of my personal favorites, “Ballykissangel,” a British series about a small town, has an episode where the local ‘big cheese developer’ installs an automated confessional in the church – complete with computerized doors and a fax machine!

So what is repentance?  Many of us have heard that the word itself means ‘to turn around.’  I think that’s a good image, but I have another one I think is even more helpful – what if we describe repentance as a chance for a “do-over.”

It’s an opportunity to talk to God, to talk through with God those things we’ve been doing wrong, the things that hold us back, that break us down, that destroy us from the inside out.

It’s a re-evaluation, the first step to figuring out how to ‘do it right’ – both practically and morally.

Let me ask you a question – what is the single most important characteristic you can teach your children?  A lot of folks, especially when their children are small, would say, “Obedience!”  But obedience as the primary trait of a 45-year-old, say, is not so healthy.  A 45-year-old needs more than obedience in their repertoire.

Others might say, “Happiness.”  But a person who cannot make their way in the world will never be happy.

Ah, yes, and you might say, “Love.”  And love is very important.  But even love relies on a strength that we rarely talk about – perseverance.

Perseverance is the confidence to try, to fail, and to try again.  In terms of our faith, perseverance means we don’t give up our relationship with God at the first sign of difficulty or doubt.  And repentance plays an important part in our developing spiritual perseverance, for when we repent, we take a good hard look – at who we are and at what we’re doing – to see if it is reflective of who we are in Christ.  It is the first step to a new direction, a preparation to walk more faithfully the path of Christ in our own lives.

John came to help the people of his day prepare for the arrival of their Messiah.  How do we prepare for the birth of Christ, our Savior?  We repent, we re-evaluate, and we ready ourselves for the new life which comes every day through Jesus, our Lord.

How do we know what to repent?  I’d like to give you two questions you might ask:

1)    What in yourself is keeping you from a fully-realized, fully-lived relationship with your God?

2)    And, what in yourself stands in the way of your loving your neighbor in Christ?

Today, we get a ‘do-over’!  We begin by repenting, by speaking with God, working out those break-downs and road-blocks, preparing the way ahead, the way of our new life in Christ, so that:

By the tender mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace. (Luke 1:78-79)

Amen.