Today we are celebrating the birth of John the
Baptist. Sometimes, when I read the
stories about John the Baptist, I wonder if his story was told just to make
Jesus look normal.
First, we have a couple of people getting on in their
years. Well, really, they were old. Even though they had always wanted kids, they
didn’t have any. Elizabeth was old
enough that it should have been impossible for her to get pregnant. Since they were devout followers of God, he
was a priest, they believed in the power of prayer. The story doesn’t tell us, but they had
probably been praying for kids since they were newly married. By this time, they had probably given up hope
of ever having kids, but they had a good routine going, so they kept on
praying.
God answered their prayers.
Mary was Elizabeth’s niece. She was a good girl who was engaged to be
married. The word used to describe, which
we translate as “virgin” from the Greek, comes from the older word in Hebrew
which means young. She would have been
somewhere around thirteen or fourteen years old: old enough to have kids, but
young enough not to want them quite yet.
She and Joseph are definitely not praying for her to get pregnant, at
least not yet.
You know what happens.
This is just the first time that Jesus is just a bit
more “normal” than John. I could spend
two or three sermons just showing how John makes Jesus seem a little less
weird. Elizabeth and Zachariah are so
stunned by the news that they can’t believe it even though the evidence becomes
unmistakable. Mary and Joseph accept God’s
message and immediately begin to plan their lives accordingly. John lives his entire life before his
ministry in the wilderness. Jesus spends
forty days in the wilderness. John eats
bugs and honey. Jesus eats with outcasts
and sinners. At every step, Jesus is
just a bit more normal. Jesus’ message
is a bit easier to accept because John came first with his wild ideas.
But are John’s ideas really wild? Jesus didn’t seem to think so. Many of Jesus’ teachings build on what John
was teaching. Primarily in two areas:
baptism and repentance. For John, they
were tied together in one package. Jesus
separated them a bit.
I’ve talked several times about baptism. Today I am going to talk about repentance.
What does repentance really mean? I know what I was taught as a kid.
Repentance: Telling
God that I feel guilty for the bad things I have done and meaning it.
Feeling guilty.
Can anyone tell me if feeling guilty is a positive or negative emotion? (Negative).
What happens when we feel negative emotions? (We feel more negative emotions. We withdraw.
We get depressed if it goes on long enough.)
Thankfully repentance has nothing to do with guilt, at
least not in the Bible. We have two main
words which we translate as repentance.
Neither one of them has anything to do with guilt. The Hebrew word means to turn around or turn
back. No guilt, just go back to doing what
you should have been doing in the first place.
The Greek word means to be of new mind.
Again, no guilt; forget what you were doing that was wrong to make room
for new possibilities.
Nothing good comes from guilt. Nothing good comes from any negative place. But when we put these two ideas together, we
get something very powerful and positive.
If we must look back, let’s look not at what has gone
wrong but rather at what has gone right.
When we feel ourselves being drawn into negative feelings for ourselves
or for others, let’s put that away and be of new mind. Let’s open ourselves to the possibilities of
the good that we can do together.
I’ve been here almost three years now and in that
time, I have seen you do some wonderful things.
We have done some wonderful things together. We have reached out to the community through
special services, blessing the fleet and the bookbags, Back to Church Sunday, World
Day of Prayer, our Advent services, the All Souls service and the Palliative
Care service, our visits from Santa Claus, and just recently Messy Church. We have opened our doors to youth in times of
tragedy and of pilgrimage. We have made some
small changes to make our buildings and our services more welcoming to those
who do not know our ways.
In my time here, I have seen two churches that have
always been together but separate, try to bridge their differences and work
together. It has not been easy, but you
have shown me and each other that it is possible. In this time of financial difficulty, you
have found the strength to reach out and ask for help and the compassion and
love necessary to give that help without judgement even though it came at a
dear cost.
When God answered the prayers of Elizabeth and
Zachariah, he not only gave them a son, but he gave that son a purpose. John was to prepare the way of the Lord. John was sent to open people’s hearts and
ears to the message that Jesus would be bringing. This is our calling too.
I pray that we can build on the good things that we
have all done together. And when we lose
sight of that good, and we will, because we are human, we need to repent and
return to that good path where our minds can be open to new possibilities;
possibilities that we can only reach by working together in love; possibilities
that are possible because we are open to God’s call; possibilities that let us
prepare the way of the Lord in this community for those who come after us. With each other and with God’s help, we can
do it.
Thanks be to God.
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