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Sermon preached on 11.12.2005 at 7am.
The CSI Cathedral, Madurai.
This Sunday we are asked to meditate on the life and message of the John, the Baptist. The title of my message this morning is:
SANTA CLAUS, MEETS JOHN THE BAPTIST
Sermon on Matthew 3:1-12
The scene unfolds near the mouth of the river Jordan late one afternoon two thousand years ago. According to today’s calendar the year was 28 or 29 C.E. A crowd of men and women, simple people, are listening intently to a strange figure, wiry and ascetic, dressed in animal skins and rumored to subsist on nothing but wild honey and locusts he finds in the desert. His name is John. He is preaching the impending judgment of God and is calling for conversion. There was a tone of urgency: St. Matthew 3: 10 reads “Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
He practices a baptism of repentance for sin, as do the Essenes of nearby Qumran, with whom he may once have been associated. John’s impact was tremendous. The Gospel says that multitudes went out into the desert to hear John’s message and receive his baptism. St.Luke 3: 15 says, “And the people were in expectation, and all men questioned in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah.”
Coming to Jesus, now a young man, after the death of Joseph, left Nazareth for the Jordan valley. He was gripped by John’s grim message of impending doom and his call to repentance. It was not enough, Jesus heard, to be a child of Abraham, a son of the covenant sealed with circumcision. It was not enough to obey the Law and honor Yahweh with one’s lips. The heart had to change. When the respected Pharisees and Sadducees, the pillars of Judaism, came to the Jordan to hear what the Baptist was preaching, Jesus was struck by how John railed at them for their Smugness:
You brood of vipers! Who has warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit that befits repentance, and do not presume to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham for our father.” For I tell you that God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham! (Matthew 3 : 7 & 8)
John’s message was simple and bare: The judgment is coming now, not in some distant future, and it demands personal decision. The fire he spoke of was not a cosmic conflagration but a flame that sears to the heart of a person, enlivening the humble and damning the unrepentant.
It was the message of a prophet and like the ancient prophets, John called for radical acts of justice and charity as the fruit of faith and repentance. When the people asked him what they must do to turn to God, John demanded not prayer or rituals but deeds. “He who has two coats, let him share with him who has none, and he who has food, let him do likewise.” To the tax collectors who came for baptism he commanded, “Collect no more than is appointed you.” And to the soldiers, “No intimidation! No extortion! And be content with your pay.” (Luke 3: 10 – 14)
Jesus, we may imagine, was pierced to the heart by this message of John. He also repented and was baptized.
To accept John’s message and enter his community meant to break in some degree with the prevailing religious orthodoxy. In John’s day Judaism, like Christianity today, was in profound crisis, and the Baptist deepened the sense of uncertainty. John turned the knife against the very members of God’s covenant. And Jesus followed in John’s footsteps. He is one with John the Baptist in his condemnation of those who locked man’s relationship to God inside the narrow confines of the Law. In fact, Jesus began to catch the attention of the ever-wary Pharisees, who had already disapproved of John’s anti-establishment preaching. Being a prophet in those days was dangerous business, and both John and Jesus were soon to pay the price.
We have seen crib sets with the figures of all the characters of the Christmas story and not one of them, not one of them, has John the Baptist as part of the story. Maybe they shouldn’t either, for after all, John was only an infant himself when Jesus was first born in that manger.
In the wisdom born of experience, the church has kept John the Baptist in the Christmas story. Year after year, when the church gathers in these days leading up to Christmas, we retell the story of this wild prophet dressed only in a garment of camel's hair and a leather girdle around his waist, preaching his message … “Repent or die!” Without him, we would run the risk of having a cuddly Christ, a feel-good faith that makes no demands upon us. John’s proclamation of our need to “Repent” is an important reminder that the baby of Christmas grows up to be the Jesus of the cross and the Christ of the empty tomb.
So in the midst of the holiday shopping and the smell of cookies baking and the mailboxes full of greeting cards and the choirs practicing their carols we read again the words of the prophet who preached by the banks of the Jordan.
“Get ready! God is coming! Don’t think that just because you’ve got ancestors who declared their religion as Christianity you can escape the wrath of God’s judgment. You must bear fruit. You must come to God. You must repent. You must change. Even now, God is getting ready to thin out the branches that do not bear fruit. God will gather the wheat and leave the chaff to be burned.”
We listen to John’s words because in our hearts we know that Christmas is more than that cuddly little baby. We may not like it, but we know that God's salvation involves our repentance. Amidst all of the symbols and signs of Christmas, we need to change. This Advent season is a time for preparing for the Christ event in our lives. That doesn't mean it is four weeks only to hang decorations and send cards and buy presents. Rather, it is a time for self-examination, for the confession of sin, and for repentance.
We listen reluctantly to John’s message, often thinking of it as a little bump on the road to Bethlehem. We know that John the Baptist is in the story somewhere, but he's not in our nativity sets and so he must not be all that important, right? If that's the way we think, I mean, we who understand a little about spiritual growth and becoming whole persons in the sight of God, just imagine how strange John's call to repentance must sound to those living beyond the church!
Once we get beyond the compound walls of the church, the message of John the Baptist gets run over by the reindeers of our Santa Clauses just like goats being run over by a speeding express train. Already we have a hard enough time keeping Christ in Christmas, let alone John the Baptist! In most of our homes Christmas doesn’t happen in Bethlehem, but at the shopping malls and butcher shops. Jesus comes in a distant second to Santa Claus in the race. In the West Rudolph and Frosty are better known than Mary and Joseph. If Jesus is the center of the true Christmas, Old Saint Nick is obviously the heart of the social Christmas with which we are more familiar and also more comfortable.
Santa also has his share of goodness. He has a list of names of good children who deserve his gifts. Only Good children are rewarded by Santa. Not the naughty ones.
You better watch out
You better not cry
You better not pout I’m telling you why
Santa Claus is coming to town
He’s making a list and checking it twice
Gonna find out who’s naughty and nice
Santa Claus is coming to town
But Santa's naughty or nice list pales in comparison to the prophet in the desert. With Santa, if you are on the wrong list, well there's always the next year. But with good old John the Baptist, there is a greater sense of urgency. God is coming and there's going to be a judgment. The prophet saw trees that produced fruit and trees that didn't. He saw axes and fire. He saw chaff being separated from grain. John tells us that God cares about how we live our lives. He reminds us that maybe our lives are not all that they should be. He gives us an opportunity to repent, to change, to get ready for our meeting with God. That is the message of John the Baptist.
The word repent used in today's text is the Greek word, metanoia. Metanoia means literally, to think differently. It means to change one's mind or heart. What God wants from us is metanoia. God wants us to change. God wants us to grow. God wants us to become. The funny thing about metanoia…it's sort of like tomorrow. It never comes. Yesterday today was tomorrow, and tomorrow will be today and there will be another tomorrow waiting around the bend. In the same way, our hearts never stop changing; they never stop growing toward God. Repentance is a lifelong project. And that’s why our Christmas needs a little touch of John the Baptist. That’s why Advent comes before Christmas.
Do you remember the old story about the man who died and went to heaven? At the gates, St. Peter said, "You have to pass the good deed test to get in. You have to score a hundred points on this test." Now this man was a good man, a man who had never done anything very wrong, and he thought that the test should be pretty easy for him. St. Peter said, "Tell me something good you've done." "Well," said the man, "I went to my Church every Sunday and listened to the preacher preach." "Ah," said St. Peter, "regular worship — two points! Only 98 to go! What other good things have you done?" "Uh", the man stammered, "uh…I…I helped my kids with their home-work!" "helped children, eh?" said St. Peter. "Well, the Lord was indeed fond of children, but I can give you only half a point for that." "Half a point!," exclaimed the man, "At this rate I'll only get in by the grace of God!" "Grace of God!" cried St. Peter. "That's 97 and a half points! Welcome to heaven!"
Yes, the grace of God is the power that saves the soul that repents.
God only looks for repentance, metanoia, a changed and changing heart. And where there is repentance there is forgiveness, and salvation.
God's grace makes our good deeds seem small in comparison, and God's grace more than makes up for our bad deeds and not-so-good deeds, and even all of our ought-to-have-done deeds. When the Christ comes at Christmas, it is with the angelic assurance that our savior IS born! But still, we should be grateful for the presence of John the Baptist crying out in the wilderness of our lives, "Repent!" Sometimes we forget that we are a work in progress. We may be Christians. But we still need to hear John's reminder. “Repent, for the kingdom of God is near.”
Before we go home today, before we put John the Baptist away for another year, before the angels sing and the shepherds run to Bethlehem and the magi find their king, before Santa visits our homes and churches and schools, will you please join me in a prayer of repentance? We will begin with a time of silence so that each of us can find that place in our heart where God is calling us to repent and change…
Let us pray
Almighty God, by whose providence your servant John the Baptist Was wonderfully born, and sent to prepare the way of your Son our Savior by preaching repentance: Make us so to follow his teaching and holy life, that we may truly repent according to his preaching; and, following his example, constantly speak the truth, boldly rebuke vice, and patiently suffer for the truth's sake; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
LESSONS – Isaiah 40: 1 – 5
St. Matthew 3: 1 – 12