Second Advent December 8, 2013 Christ United Presbyterian Church

This link will take you to the video of my sermon.  Below you will find the text.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rmwhRwuufA&feature=youtu.be

Christ United Presbyterian Church

December 8, 2013

Second Sunday of Advent

Sermon:        “A Child of the Church”

Matthew 3:1-7

Presbyterians like to eat.  How do you think it would go over if John the Baptist showed up at one of our covered dish dinners offering to share his usual diet?  Would he end up sitting alone?  Karen – who is more detail oriented than I – tells me that the words we translate “locusts and wild honey” could mean something other than the crunchy bugs that we think of, but that it does relate to some sort of sweet wild flowers and primitive animal protein. 

There is a great deal about John that might make him feel unwelcome at one of our dinners.  Although John’s message sounds simple enough, there is also a great deal about John’s message that might not be welcome at one of our dinners.

The first two chapters of Matthew are about Jesus.  If you read the lengthy genealogy of Jesus in the first half of Matthew one, you will also find that you are reading a summary of the history of Israel from the time of Abraham.  The second half of the first chapter establishes Jesus’ identity as an heir to that history.  Chapter two is the history of persecution of the Jews as Herod searches for the newborn king.  Then Joseph and Mary and the baby flee to Egypt, and finally, in a new exodus, the family leaves Egypt and resettles in a town called Nazareth. 

We’re not sure exactly how old Jesus was at that point.  In fact if you view world history strictly through the measure of “Before Christ” and “After Christ” then your dating system has some serious problems.  The King Herod who tried to kill Jesus died around 4 BC.  His son who is referred to in Matthew, Herod Archelaus, ruled over Judea from 4 BC until 6 AD.   So if we accept the fact that our dating system is simply stuck on an arbitrary allocation of time, then we would have to conclude that when Joseph, Mary and Jesus returned from Egypt, Jesus would have been somewhere between 9 and 12 years old. 

That’s how chapter 2 of Matthew ends.  As chapter 3 begins, we are ushered into a whole new world.  “In those days…” John appears preaching in the wilderness.  From what we can piece together from various historical events in the Gospel, John appeared when Jesus was about 28 or 29 years old.  So the phrase “in those days” leaps about 2 decades ahead from the closing verses of chapter 2. 

From the beginning of Matthew 2 until the third verse of chapter 3, Matthew quotes no fewer than 4 prophets, once again establishing Jesus as the heir and the fulfillment of all the ancient hopes and prophecies and placing the message of Jesus – and of John – in the prophetic tradition. 

“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”  Our modern American usage of the word “repent” may mislead us as we read this verse.  Sometimes when we have done something clearly wrong, when we have sinned, we may feel guilty and believe that the only way to free ourselves from the guilt is to “repent.”  We use the word “repent” as a synonym for “confess.”  We may think that repentance means admitting what we did and saying “I’m sorry.”  We may even believe that this form of repentance is the route to obtaining forgiveness.

That’s not “repentance” as John is preaching it.  John was announcing that God’s kingdom was coming close to us and the way to get there is to repent, i.e., TURN AROUND, and run for the sake of your very soul toward that kingdom. 

John’s repentance wasn’t motivated by a recognition of wrong-doing that caused us to feel guilty. Let me try to put it in baser terms.  If I told you that right over there, right in that corner, there was a bag filled with $1,000,000 that had your name on it, and there were bags with the name of each and every one of you on them, and all you had to do was turn around (“repent”) and go and pick it up, what you did next would not be motivated by guilt.  You would be motivated by passion to go get the money.

John’s message was that God’s kingdom was right there.  Right here.  The thing you have been waiting for.  The thing your ancestors were waiting for.  The kingdom of God is approaching our lives.  All you have to do is turn around, repent!, and claim your place in that kingdom.

The message of John and the message of Jesus that followed were firmly in the prophetic tradition. The prophets continually called the people to stop separating their religious lives from their daily lives.  The prophets continually proclaimed God’s desire that they live as members of God’s kingdom.  That meant that they had to practice justice, charity, mercy, forgiveness of one another, love one another and establish a right relationship with God by merging their acts of worship with the acts of their daily lives.

The prophets also told them that unless they did those things then they were setting up their own destruction.  If they turned their backs on God’s desires for them then they were going to have to rely solely on their own resources to survive – and we know how that worked out for them.

So once again, the prophet is telling them to turn around.  God’s kingdom isn’t very far from you but you must turn to it, run to it, passionately desire to be a part of it. 

John – like Jesus – recognized that the ones who would have the hardest time turning around were the ones enjoying the privileges and trappings of success in their unrepentant world.  He called out the Pharisees and Sadducees.  Today we might call them the “children of the church.”

Let me see if I can explain that comment about the Pharisees and Sadducees.  John’s comment would have surprised these two groups.  You see, they rarely agreed on things.  They disagreed on the privileges of class and wealth.  They disagreed on cultural assimilation, that is, could Jews remain faithful Jews and still enjoy all the social and cultural activities of the Romans or the Greeks.  They disagreed on the place of ritual worship in their lives.  They disagreed on scriptural interpretation with the Sadducees holding to literal interpretation of the scriptures and the Pharisees wanting to interpret scripture in light of history and social context.

Since they disagreed on all these important religious matters, they were convinced that only one side could be right.  Does that sound at all familiar to you?  Has anything changed?  So imagine their surprise and their indignation when John – and later Jesus – lumped them together and told them both that they had missed the point entirely.  “Do not presume to say that you are the only true children of the church; do not presume to say that you have John Calvin and Martin Luther for your ancestors.  Big deal!”

And so John – in his strange way – prepares the way for Jesus’ ministry.  Like John, Jesus preaches “Repent! For the Kingdom of God is near!”  The Kingdom of God is not defined by how well God serves you and your causes.  The Kingdom of God is not defined by anything that you say or do. 

The Kingdom of God is defined simply by those places, those hearts, that have given themselves over to the reign of God.  The Kingdom of God is a place that you enter as a passionate and humble servant not an arrogant pastor or egotistical theologian or self-centered elder or narcissistic millionaire.

The Gospel narrative proclaims over and over again what the Kingdom of God looks like.  It isn’t a secret.  It’s the fulfillment of all of God’s ancient promises.  It isn’t an endorsement of who we say we are or of the positions that we argue about so viciously.  It’s the definition of what God created us to be; of whom God wants us to be.  It’s the place where we shall find both joy and peace, the joy and peace that only God can bring us.

Repent.  Turn around.  The Kingdom of God is very close.  Turn around and as you recognize its value to your life, run as fast as you can.  Go and let God rule your heart and your daily life.  It’s yours for the taking!

Amen.