2nd Sunday Advent
Matthew 3:1-12
"An Honest View of Yourself."
"In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, "The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight." Now John wore a garment of camel’s hair, and a leather girdle around his waist; and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then went out to him Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers! Who 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 as our father’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. "I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire." Matthew 3:1-12, RSV.
Grace and Peace to you from our Lord and Saviour, Jesus who is the Babe born in the manger. Amen
From the Book "A Sign in the straw" by Pastor Richard Hoefler comes the following:
"A well known lecturer related that he had been a coal miner in his boyhood and told about first day as a mule wagon driver.
Before that day his father sat down and told him about all the dangers he might encounter and warned him to drive with caution.
There was one spot called "Deadman’s Fork".
It began with a steep decline and a curve in the mine passage. Immediately after this curve was a fork and the passage divided into two tunnels. One tunnel went only a few yards and then dropped off hundreds of feet into an abandoned shaft.
On his first trip behind his mule riding a big load of coal, he approached "Dead Man’s Fork".
His heart began to pound in his chest. As he started down the decline, the hill, the heavy load pushed at the mule and he started to. run. The boy pulled with all of his might on the reins, but the mule refused to slow down.
Fear suddenly gripped the boy, his legs went cold, his body trembled as he could hardly hold the reins over the mule’s back.
He panicked, And in his panic he couldn’t remember which passage he should take at the fork.
Was it the left one? No! It is the right one! Or is it??
His mind went blank with stark fear!! Then, just as he turned the corner and approached the dangerous fork where he must decided to go either right or left, to live or die, he saw a light.
Ahead of him in the semidarkness was a man with a lantern. It was his father! Waving the lantern his father called out,"This way, son!! This way out of the mine!!"
"That," said the lecturer,"that was the most beautiful sight I ever saw in my life. My dirty, coal-smeared father waving me to safety with the dim light of a lantern."
In those days, came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" "The voice of one crying in the wildernesses, Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight." John wore a garment of camel’s hair and a leather girdle around his waist."
John the Baptist was like that coal-smeared father waving his son to safety. John, the wild one calling, exhorting, crying; "Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight."
John came to prepare the people for the one who was coming, Christ the Lord. We sang in the first hymn and as we sang last week, "What Child is this" who is coming into our lives during the Christmas season? How do we get ready for him.
John gives us another clue about this one who is coming by saying;, "I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry, he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with the fire."
John explains to the people they must repent, turn from believing in themselves as the Pharisees and Sadducees did so well and place themselves into the arms of the one who is coming, the one who comes not with a judgment of the law, but with the love and sacrifice of a cross.
Repentance as seen in Matthew 27:3 and II Corinthians 7:9,10 is turning away, turning around, changing direction walking in a new path. The Greek word used most often in the New Testament for repentance is "metanoia". It’s from the same source that we get our English word-metamorphosis which comes from the Greek word-meta-meaning-to change- and morphe- meaning- form.
It simply means to change form.
In Clarence Jordan’s Cotton Patch interpretation of the Bible he uses the illustration of the caterpillar-butterfly image to clarify the real meaning of repentance.
"The ugly caterpillar crawls along in the dirt with the warm sun shining upon him, then he climbs by instinct out onto a limb of a tree an weaves a cocoon all around himself. The sun continues to bathe him with warmth and when the time is right something wonderful happens to him. The protective shell begins to crack and break open with new life. He emerges changed, changed into a new form to face a whole new world.
Jordan’s continues," The happiest, most joyful thing you’ll ever do is to Mtetoroia. Would you say to the caterpillar, "Well little fellow, you know I sure felt sorry for you--you’re fixin’’’’ to become a butterfly. It’s terrible man! And the little fellow weeps and moans and groans because he’s fixing to be a butterfly.
No! His birthday is here. He’s about to enter into a new order that God Almighty has prepared for him. The happiest thing a little caterpillar can do is to metamorphose. And the happiest thing for a person is for the light of God to shine on him for him to be taken out of his darkness and put in a new order of things."
In that new order of things, living in the love of Christ, we are changed like that caterpillar into a new relationship with Christ, but unlike that caterpillar who became the butterfly and flew above the ground with its dust and dirt, we still have our moments when the dust and dirt, when the sin and darkness of this world appeals to us. So our process of repentance begins in Baptism when we take on a new life in Christ, but then each day we need to die to sin and be raised to a new life in Christ.
In the book The Cradle, the Cross and the Crown by George Bass he explains this daily washing in the terms of story about two people.
" Listen:
Recently, I was in the home of former members. He and his wife are retired and have just moved into a new condominium. As I toured the house one thing really caught my eye, the carpet in the bedroom showed very clearly marks on it that these people were upon their knees by their bedside each day in a devotional prayer.
But I wonder, George Bass commented to himself, if we do not equally need a simple bowl of water at our bedside into which we dip our finger tips when we get up and when we go to bed, making the sign of the cross, ’In the name of the father, Son and Holy Spirit,’ as an act of devotion, an act of repentance and death, and in assurance that our sins have been forgiven and heaven is our final destiny.
Dying in baptism comes no more easily than physical death; we avoid acts of penitence and contrition like a plague. Yet spiritual death is necessary to new life, according to John, Jesus, Paul and most other writers of the New Testament, life of any kind almost always is preceded by some, often radical, kind of death."
On our knees in repentance, with the sign and symbol of our new life, water beside us will change life. As you come forward this morning to the rail to fall on your knees to eat and drink the body and blood of Christ, you will encounter God’s grace and forgiveness for you.
But notice what you walk past the. baptismal fount. Through that water and through eating and drinking there is a power here to change lives, to transform people. Here in these sacraments are the signs and seals of God’s power to transform your life into something wonderful. There is great power here, power and courage to first admit that you cannot handle life yourself, that you need the forgiving, healing power of God to make you a really whole person. Seek that power this morning so that you might be able to change, turn away, repent form those sins which make you less than what God intended for you to be.
This changed life we have been speaking about, produces fruits of the Spirit. You and I bring forth in our lives the fruits of God’s Spirit as it says in Galatians 5:22, these fruits being; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility and self control. In our life of repentance these fruit can make a difference in this world. You bringing forth these fruit can make a difference. You and your unique gifts, your fruits can make a change, a difference in this world of ours.
I would like to close with a story taken from the book A Sign in the Straw by Richard Hoofer.
"Henry Ford made a visit to the Berry schools at Mount Berry, Georgia. He expected a request for a grant of money from Miss Martha Berry the head-teacher of the school. But none came as he toured the buildings and grounds
As he was ready to leave, he asked, "Is there anything I can do for you?"
She smiled and said, "I would like a dime." Ford was famous for giving,out dimes to anyone.
He smiled but said, "Is that all you want? I am usually asked for gifts larger than a dime.
She smiled and said, "A dime is all I need to show you what we can do at this school."
Martha Berry took that dime to town and bought a dime’s worth of peanuts and planted them.
From the harvested crop, she planted a still larger area.
Several years later when Henry Ford returned to see what had happened to his dime he was amazed. For from that dime there were acres and acres of peanuts, he was so impressed that he gave her a grant of money to build new building. Those building still stand as some of the best Gothic stone buildings in this country. All of this turned on a dime.
One little lady, Martha Berry used that gift of a dime to bear unbelievable fruit. Others would spend Ford’s dimes or keep them or children would turn them into candy, but this lady makes good use of the fruit which was given her.
And this is what we do with the fruits of the changed lives we have received from God. It is what we do with the grace God so generously gives us.
The new birth given freely at our Baptism and experienced each day in daily repentance is meant to be lived.
It is meant to grow into a sturdy and healthy tree that continues season after season to produce good fruits for God’s kingdom.
"Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."
Be metamorphized, be changed, be transformed by the power of Christ’s love which is here through the water of Baptism, through the bread and wine, through the body and blood of Christ, through the word proclaimed, through the sign of the cross made with fingers dipped into water.
Amen
Written by Pastor Tim Zingale November 29, 2004
