Sermon at St. Mary’s Church, Alderbury – Advent 3 – Sunday 15 December 2024
Luke
3:7-18
May I speak in the name
of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and may these words be yours Lord, and may
you bless all who hear them. Amen.
A
Dutch theologian, Johannes Halkendijk, tells this story that took place World
War:-
“During the Nazi occupation of Holland, the Nazis
planned to deport Jewish children to concentration camps. A Dutch resistant
group had been formed and one arm of this resistance decided to do what they
could to save these children. A group of 300 people, children and resistance
leaders, were gathered together and were hiding. What they did not know was
that someone in their own group had betrayed them to the Nazis. They were found
and taken to a detention centre. There they heard that they would be taken, not
to a concentration camp, but to a crematorium where they would be killed. When
the day to be taken away came, both Christian resistance leaders and Jewish
children boarded the same cattle cars together, to share the same fate. The
trip lasted a few days. One morning, just after sunrise, the train stopped and
word was given that they were to get out of the train. They got out, expecting
to find themselves surrounded by guards. Instead, they were standing in the
middle of a pasture. They were not in Germany or Poland, but in Switzerland.
The train, while it was taking them to their death, had been taken over and
liberated during the night. As a result, these 300 people, were not recipients
of the death they expected, but of a new life.”
"Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand".
This is the message that John the Baptist proclaimed by the Jordan some 2,000
years ago. It is a message that we still see on signs today. "You better
change, or else." I feel the same
when I view signs often seen on posts outside some evangelical free churches or
as carried by street preachers which say "The wages of sin are
death". Nothing is wrong with these words, they are God’s word and are
true. But by themselves, without a word of explanation, they may offer as
little hope as the train ride did for the resistance leaders and children back
on that train. At least that is how many people feel about the message of
repentance.
And yet as verses 18 tells us, John exhorted the people
and preached good news to them. For the message of repentance, when understood
properly is not a ride to a death camp but a ride to a pasture of new life.
The key words in this passage of scripture we heard
today are contained in the question posed to John the Baptist by the crowd
when, after being called a brood of vipers who hadn’t seemed to have changed
their ways in years, ask the question which I think we would all ask in such
circumstances “So what are we to do then?”
Indeed, it is a good an honest question. We can talk about repentance,
we can even study the Greek name for it “metanoia” which the Blue Letter Bible
translates as “a change in one’s way of life resulting from penitence or
spiritual conversion” or, simply put, “a change of heart”. I have also heard it defined as being a
turning around suggesting going back to a way in which we may have behaved
before.
What are we to do, then to repent and become saved?
John gives the answer in great detail – in summary he
says: share what you have with those who have not, both food and clothing;
don’t exhort money asking for more than is due – John emphasises that even the
tax-collectors who were despised by the Jewish people of the day can be
baptised and repent. Indeed, many of the examples given were echoed by Jesus in
his later ministry and often this passage is confused with being spoken by
Jesus himself.
John tells the crowd that the time is coming when Jesus
will baptise with the Holy Spirit not just with water – a true infilling of the
Holy Spirit leading to a direct connection and communication with God.
Indeed, later, when asked by the elders what was the
most important of the Commandments given to Moses, Jesus responded that there
were two – the second of which was to love and treat one another as God loves u
and as we would have others treat us.
Throughout my years of ministry, it is this second
Commandment upon which I have preached the most and will continue to do so
until the day my ministry ends.
Unlike the crowd being addressed by John in this passage
of scripture, through the life and ministry of Jesus and his great sacrifice
upon the Cross, we already have the Holy spirit within us and, as Paul says in
his first letter to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 2:16) we now have the mind
of Jesus which means it should be automatic and natural to do all those things
which John says we need to do to repent. Therefore, by spreading the good news,
as John did, we hope to make others understand and want to act in this way.
We are told that this is precisely what John did - he
exhorted the people and preached the good news to them in the very last verse,
and we as good Christians are called upon to do that in our daily lives by the
way we speak, act and direct. So this Advent and Christmas tide, what are you
going to do and how well are we prepared to do it?
May the Lord bless you with peace and joy this Christ
time.
Amen MFB/208/13122024
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