Advent is a time of year when we, looking forward to Christmas, traditionally consider the message of John the Baptist who went out into the wilderness announcing that Jesus was on his way – the long awaited Saviour of the world was coming, and people were to be ready !
Now John was not the most conventional sort of person – he was in the wilderness, wearing wild animal skins, no doubt smelling very badly, and preaching repentance. He wasn’t genteel or polite, he offended all those who he could offend with his message that everyone has done wrong and every one of us needs Jesus to put it right.
He was telling his listeners to cut through all of the distractions, eliminate the nonsense in their lives, and stop running away from God, and running after things that actually in the overall scheme of things don’t really matter.
Now if John was here today I think there would be many people who would have a bit of a problem with him, not least Church leaders, but today I think John would still be offering the same message. Jesus has been to earth – living, dying and rising again – he has done all that is necessary for our salvation, but as we consider the world today few of us can doubt that there is a need for a voice crying in the wilderness, calling people to Jesus.
And so John may well be saying, ‘Just because you’re members of a Church, just because you give your weekly offerings, just because your parents and grand parents and great grandparents were in the Church, just because you’re an officer in the Church, or the Parish Priest, doesn’t mean it is time to relax and take things easy.’
Because the repentance that John is talking about really isn’t just a once in a lifetime repentance, but a daily action. It doesn’t matter how much we do for the Church, it doesn’t even matter how kind we are, or how many good clubs we belong to or how much we give to charity unless we are prepared to turn to Jesus and give him control of our lives – of course once we have done that all of those things will come as a natural response to the grace and mercy and love that God has shown us.
Baptism is a wonderful symbol of repentance, of promise, of commitment, but it doesn’t eliminate the need throughout our lives to commit and recommit our lives to God – when we think we’ve got it all worked out, and that we can sit back and relax, then we need to worry.
There’s a story about a woman who went to get water from a water pump one day, and she turned the tap and out came THICK BLACK OOZY MUD. So she was a bit worried about this but then along came a painter who asked her what the problem was. She explained that she had turned the tap on but all that came out was THICK BLACK OOZY MUD.
And so the painter said he would paint it – he said that if he painted it would look really nice and that should do the trick – and so he painted it, and excitedly they turned on the tap again but out cam THICK BLACK OOZY MUD…
And so the 2 of them were stood looking at the tap when a gardener came along. They explained the problem, and he said that the painting was good, but what it really needed was some flowers around it and so he dug a little patch and planted some flowers – the tap now looked really good, and once again they excitedly turned it on and of course out came THICK BLACK OOZY MUD.
And just then an engineer turned up – and they explained the problem. And he said that he was just coming to clean it – and they watched as he took the whole tap apart, and cleaned out the inside explaining that it didn’t matter at all how good it looked on the outside – unless it was clean inside then dirty water would come out.
And that’s what repentance is all about for us – offering ourselves to be cleansed by God – really cleansed from the inside out…. Repentance may not be a very fashionable word, but it simply means to stop running after everything else and realise that God is chasing us, and there is nothing we can do but just turn to him for our strength and our salvation. It is making a decision in our daily lives that shows where our hope lies…
And that hope isn’t found in status or in wealth, but rather in the love and joy and forgiveness that Jesus has brought us.
In advent we prepare to celebrate the greatest gift that we can ever have - the gift of an eternal life shared with Jesus, God’s gift to us… And our response to that gift is to commit and recommit our lives to God every day – to accept his gift of salvation, looking beyond Christmas, to Easter and the joy of resurrection and new life. AMEN
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