December
7 - John the Baptist’s Message
As many of you know I haven’t been feeling well
this week, and so, as Henry the Eighth said to each of his six wives, “I won’t
keep you long.”
In the lesson from Isaiah we read:
A voice cries out: in the
wilderness prepare the way of the Lord.
That prophecy was fulfilled when John the baptizer
appeared in the wilderness. He was
dressed like the prophets of old in a camel’s hair coat, and was more than a
little strange. But crowds came to hear
him preach a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
A television preacher who is pastor of a very large
and growing church was interviewed and asked: “What is the root of your success
in attracting people? How do you keep
growing?”
The TV preacher responded: “People are tired of
being told that they are not right – that they are sinners. People are tired of getting beat up in the
name of Jesus. So instead my message is
Jesus loves you just as you are. I never
use the words sin or sinner in my sermons.”
I guess that preacher will not be reading this
gospel about John the baptizer with his message of repentance and forgiveness
of sins. He wouldn’t want to suggest
that there might be sins that need to be forgiven. In traditional churches we observe Advent to
prepare for Christmas, and you can’t get to Christ until you first meet John
and you hear his witness. For God
appointed John as a witness – as one who gives testimony to the One who is to come.
Comedian Al Franken is still running for U.S.
Senate in
Some of you may remember Al Franken’s character on
Saturday Night Live. He portrayed the
worst therapist ever. He was a disaster
at counseling. His favorite therapy for
troubled people was to have them stare at themselves in the mirror and repeat
over and over “I’m good enough. I’m
smart enough, and people like me.” It
didn’t help anyone. They still had the
same problems.
Like the preacher who tells you “Jesus loves you
just the way you are. You’re OK. I’m OK.
Everything is OK.” That kind of
message may make you feel good for the moment.
But it leaves you stuck right where you are.
As a contrast, let me read the words of a
50-year-old very religious man. One who
seemed to have it all together when it came to doing what was right according
to God’s way. See if you could agree
with any of it.
The trouble is with me, for I am
all too human. I don’t really understand
myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it… I don’t want to do
what is wrong, but I do it anyway… There
is another power within me that is at war with my mind.
Romans 7:14, 15, 19, 23 NLT
Some of you recognized those words of Paul. But have you at times felt that way? Even if your walk with the Lord is measured
in decades, like Paul, you haven’t reached the destination yet - you’re still
on the road together.
As Paul says, I don’t mean to say that I have
already achieved these things or that I’m perfect, but I press on… Looking
forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race.. Philippians 3:12, 14 NLT
There’s still room for all of us to grow and improve. Or as Luther said, in this life we remain
both saint and sinner. Yes we are being
made holy by the gift of the Spirit, but we still mess up. We come to church with the hope that Jesus
will show us the better way that leads to more abundant life.
The color for the Advent season is blue,
symbolizing hope. The dark blue of the
sky just before sunrise – the dawning of a new day with new opportunities, and
therefore hope. Rather than saying
everything is OK when it’s not, the message is things can change – people can
change – even you can change.
Advent is a time for imagining possibilities.
In Advent
we lean into the future and wonder what we might become under the
influence of God’s grace. Advent is
future orientated, and the future is the realm of the possible.
It entices us to imagine what we would be
like if God is gracious to us and if we could do His
will for us.
You have
to imagine yourself differently in order to change – you have to be able
to see the possibility of being different before you can
ever actually become different.
There was
the woman who lived out in the country who, much to her dismay, discovered a
skunk in her basement. She called her
neighbor in panic, but he calmed her down saying:
“The
solution to your problem is simple. Open
the door of your basement, and just make a trail of bread crumbs from your
basement to the garden. Then wait for
the skunk to follow it outside.”
Half an
hour later, the woman called her expert neighbor back: “I did what you said - and now I have two
skunks in my basement.”
One sin
leads to another. Once you step off the
way of the Lord, it is easy to keep moving further away.
We can be tarnished by the world around - dragged
down so that we are less than what we could be
So we listen to John the Baptist, the one appointed
to prepare the way for Jesus. He
challenges us to look at ourselves.
“Maybe I am not as good as I am created to be. Or maybe it’s just that I don’t know
everything I need to know to live an abundant life.”
Deep down inside we can feel God created us to be
something more. If you happen to be someone who feels stuck with the way things are or even
trapped at a dead end, John says things can change and be turned around.
You don’t have to settle for your life as it is.
The One more powerful than I is coming after me. I
have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy
Spirit. Mark 1:7,8
The one more powerful, Jesus, is coming and he will
give us a share of His power and His Spirit.
Christ the Savior gives us the power to do what we could not do on our
own. It’s not that you are going to make
yourself better by your own effort, but that you can – you will – because that
is the effect that Jesus has on people.
Just imagine the possibilities.
Today’s gospel is The
beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ. The good news is not only that God loves you,
but that He saves you - not just in the future, but right now. Jesus can even save you from yourself.
The beginning of the good news is repentance and forgiveness
because that opens us up to new possibilities.
Repentance simply means ‘turning away’ and turning toward’. In Christ we are free to say “I want my life
to be different - better - I don’t have to stay the same.”
The beginning of the good news
about Jesus Christ
is He accepts you as you are so that he can help you change - help you with an
attitude adjustment.
And that’s the source of our hope. We can be different - better. We’re not stuck where we are in life - for
Jesus can open up new possibilities. He
invites us to imagine the possibilities.
If you
read the full account of John the Baptist’s preaching, we’d see that one
of his listeners was Jesus himself.
When John
spoke of the One who was to come – the one more powerful who would baptize with
the Holy Spirit, he was not speaking about some far off event.
The
promised one stood among them unrecognized by the crowd – and would soon
come forward for the baptism that launched his ministry.
John awakens our imaginations to the
possibility that Christ himself is among us, even though we may not discern
Christ’s presence already among us.
Advent is
a time when we reflect on our future with hope, reminding ourselves that
with God nothing is impossible.
“The
One who calls you is faithful, and He will do it” 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
God can
bring possibilities into reality doing for us what we could never
do for ourselves.
If we imagine possibilities that are
God’s possibilities,
God then empowers
us to realize them.
Begin
to discern the
Lord’s purpose for you more clearly - and turn your life toward His purpose,
relying on His power.
God is
faithful and he will do this in your lives.
Imagine the possibilities.
Christmas
Eve Services at 5:00 & 7:30 pm