Advent 2-
The Rev. Bud Sargent came to speak to us on behalf of the Mustard Seed at our 10am service. They are doing wonderful work in Red Deer. Please consider supporting the work they are doing. Click on the picture below to learn more.
The following was the sermon preached at the 8:00 service
Our Gospel reading opens with a list of names, mostly obscure and hard to pronounce. It is completely reasonable to ask why those names are included as a part of the story of Jesus.
What Luke is trying to do is to place this story in history. Ancient historians would often describe time by pointing to the year of an important political or religious person. So, what all this means is that we can place the ministry of John the Baptist sometime around 26 to 28 AD, by our way of measuring time. It would be a bit like saying, “in the 65th year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth the second, and the 3rd year of the leadership of Justin Trudeau as Prime Minister of Canada.”
I know these names and dates don’t mean a lot to us, but Luke wants us to know that the story he is telling has a place in history, with real people and real places. We do this every week when we say the Creed. We mention the name “Pontius Pilate”. Why do we mention that name? He was a pagan. The ancient historian Josephus described him as ruthless and greedy. So, this ruthless, greedy, pagan, and relatively obscure Roman governor who was responsible for having Jesus crucified is mentioned in the middle of the holy liturgy. Doesn’t that seem strange? I think it would be incredibly strange to Pontius Pilate that Christians all over the world in numerous languages for nearly two thousand years have been mentioning his name as they worship. We do that because we believe that Jesus was a part of human history- He encountered real people in real places.
Luke is pointing us to a real point in human history- particularly, the history of God`s people, Israel. At this point it had been 400 years since they heard God’s word from a prophet and now Luke tells us “the Word of God came to John”. The silence has been broken.
John is speaking God’s word in the wilderness. It is a place of testing and purifying, which is exactly what John is about. Many years before, after the Hebrews were rescued from slavery in Egypt they spent 40 years in the wilderness. It was a time of testing and purification. Then they entered the Promised Land by crossing the Jordan River. It was to that same river that John called the people. He called them to come back to the Jordan River to re-enter the Promised Land. They had failed as God’s people and John was calling them back to the Jordan River to cleanse themselves of their sin and prepare for what God was about to do.
John called the people to repentance. We tend to think of repentance in a very negative way. When we hear the word “repentance” our modern minds think of bad self-esteem or medieval monks whipping themselves, but that wasn’t necessarily what was in the minds of the crowd who heard John.
Repentance means to change your mind or change your heart. It is a change of direction. If you are walking into the street and a bus is about to hit you and someone yells at you and you step back onto the curb, you have made an act of repentance. It is about turning away from something bad. So, repentance can also be positive. Maybe you have been in the mall and you have suddenly smelled popcorn and if you’re hungry you will change your direction towards the popcorn- that too is repentance.
Repentance is turning away from what is bad, but it is also turning towards what is good. The turning towards is more important. You can’t live a holy life by just turning away from bad continuously. That is a bit like going to the airport and asking for a ticket to “not Vancouver” (I heard Dallas Willard make this point). Well there are all kinds of places you can go and still not go to Vancouver. It is important to have a direction and a goal.
Or, perhaps think of it this way. You won’t have a garden by just pulling weeds all the time. All you will have is dirt. You have to plant flowers and nurture them. Yes, we want to repent and turn away from the bad, but more importantly we want to turn towards what is good.
When we turn towards God we are turning towards the source of all beauty, joy, and truth. When we turn away from God we are turning away from the source of all beauty, joy, and truth. That path eventually leads to ugliness, sorrow, and deception. When we turn towards God, we align with the very purpose we were created, which is to love God and enjoy Him forever.
As Christians, we live lives of repentance. We are constantly turning towards God. We are called to continuously seek to know more of God and to have our lives adjusted according to His beauty and holiness.
John the Baptist told the people to get ready for God’s coming. Prepare the way. Make it straight, make it easy for God to get to you. Maybe you have valleys to fill in- prayer and study that need to be a part of your life. Maybe you have hills that need to be brought low- sins, or distractions that need to be removed from your life. John’s voice calls us to be attentive to God’s coming. Stop what you’re doing. You’re not too busy for this. There is nothing more important than this. Stop. Re-evaluate what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. God is reaching out to you! What are you going to do about that? The road to be made straight for the Lord leads right through our hearts. If God is going to rule the world, he has to rule our hearts first. AMEN
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