Background: Last weekend was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton, on the Second Sunday of Advent. The Gospel reading was Matthew 3:1-12, where John the Baptist is telling people to “Repent!” and baptizing them in the River Jordan. Below is the text of the sermon I gave at our four weekend services.
“Change Your Heart, Change Your Mind, Change Your Life”
We started Advent last weekend with Jesus telling his disciples to BE READY! Or KEEP AWAKE. We don’t know when God is going to break into the world, or break into our lives, so we’ve got to be ready.
This week, we encounter John the Baptist, who is Advent personified. He might be the perfect Advent spokesperson, or the best possible hype man for Christmas, for the incarnation. That’s what John came to do.
Two words that stand out for me in today’s reading are REPENT and PREPARE.
John says, “REPENT! The kingdom of heaven has come near.” Repent is one of those church words that we like to stay away from. It’s got some baggage. What we might hear instead as John calls us to repent is: change your heart, change your mind, change your life.
Our normal way of doing things, the same-old, same-old isn’t going to cut it. Turn around. Stop doing what you are doing. And change your heart, your mind, and your life.
Why do we get John the Baptist in our second reading of the church new year? John isn’t Jesus, do we really have to listen to him? What makes John the Advent spokesperson?
First, you can’t miss him. He stands out. Aside from Jesus, he is the most memorable character in the Gospels. We don’t often get much in the way of descriptions of people from our Gospel writers, but we do with John. When we hear his name, we probably all think about his camel hair clothing, his leather belt, and his go-to diet of locusts and wild honey.
John the Baptizer takes his job seriously and people take him seriously. For someone who cuts such a strange figure, people listen to him. Matthew tells us:
“the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.”
People from all over were going out into the wilderness to John. This isn’t going to coffee hour; they were being baptized in a river and confessing their sins. And John was so charismatic and influential in doing this work that we hear about him and his followers through the Gospels and all the way into the Book of Acts.
John walks the walk. He was not a hypocrite. What he told people to do, he himself was doing. He gave his life to God and to the mission God called him to.
John’s message: change your heart, change your mind, change your life, was not and is not an easy sell.
We have this sense of church sometimes that we want to enjoy ourselves, hear good music, catch up with our friends, hear a sermon that inspires us, and to walk out of church with a nice feeling.
For some people, going to church is entertainment. If I don’t like the music, if I don’t like the pastor, or if someone says something that makes me mad, I’ll just find another church.
That’s not what John was about. John called people out. He made them uncomfortable. If John was preaching REPENT in the same way today, you wouldn’t invite him to your holiday party.
And we certainly wouldn’t want John as a greeter at the front door:
“Welcome, you brood of vipers! You think going to church is going to save you? God could raise up the slate from your front steps and put them into the church pews. You better bear fruit worthy of repentance.”
I’ve always appreciated the analogy for repentance of taking a trip in your car. It doesn’t matter how fast you are going if you are going in the wrong direction. We might think, well, we’re going at a good speed, the car is nice, the radio station is coming in clear, all distracting us from the fact that we are actively moving away from the place we are trying to get to.
When that’s the case, the only sensible thing to do is to stop. And turn around. That’s what John is trying to get across. The companies who sell gas, service your car, and put shopping malls up on your way, none of them care where you are going or what direction you are going in.
John cares. Because God cares.
If we want to get to the place that God wants us to go—which by the way, isn’t a place, it’s a way of being, a way of seeing, a way of treating each other—then we need to change our hearts, change our minds, and change our lives. Both individually, but also as a church, as a community, as a country, as a world. The way the world is heading does not lead to the kingdom or kingship of God.
There was a poignant line in the Advent study we are doing this month, where Randall Curtis, who is a youth and family minister at an Episcopal Church in Florida, talks about the distractions and busy-ness that bombard us this month and he says:
“These distractions are the new ‘drunkenness and worries of this life,’ which means that as we prepare for Christmas and God breaking into the world, we will have to make sure we look up from our phones to see it.”
Ouch. But isn’t that the truth.
Maybe John’s message still applies to us today.
Talking about all these qualities of John—his influence, his popularity, his dedication—the thing that makes him the hype man for the coming Incarnation is: John doesn’t need things to be all about him. In fact, he points to someone else coming, who is a way bigger deal than John is:
“I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
John points to Jesus. The season of Advent points to the Incarnation of Jesus. This is a season not only of being ready, of staying awake, but of making sure our hearts, our minds, and our lives, are in fact preparing the way, and if they aren’t, then we need to repent, to change so that we are going in the same direction that Jesus is.
When people heard John, and when they heard Jesus, the ones with the ears to hear, listened to them and changed. I wonder if the church still holds that place, that authority, that someone might hear a critical, difficult message, go home, think about it, pray about it, and make a change in their lives if it is warranted.
Or is church just something we do, something we are, to feel good and to confirm and encourage us in the ways that we already are?
We’ve touched on repentance. What about preparation? John the Baptizer was preparing the way for Jesus, the same way Advent prepares the way for Christmas. If our lives are going in the wrong direction, the first thing we need to do to prepare the way for Jesus is to change our hearts, our minds, our lives.
John is doing his work so that we are ready for Jesus. Prepare the way, prepare our hearts. Jesus looks and acts differently than what the world wants us to focus on right now.
At a time when power and status are grand-standing, Jesus is going to come into the world as a defenseless child born to non-descript parents. At a time when we’re told vulnerability and empathy are weaknesses, the coming Incarnation meets us in our human-ness. Jesus says let me show you what vulnerability and empathy are.
Preparing our hearts and our lives for Jesus means letting go of the things that harden our hearts and blind us to the struggles of others. Our hard hearts and our lack of compassion are the chaff that will burn in unquenchable fire. It’s the love of God that wins out.
Anglican priest Tish Harrison Warren writes that:
“It is the love of God, in the end, that wins the day. The love of God is the blazing fire that purifies us, remakes us, and sets right all that is broken in us and in the world. The love of God brings us to repentance. The love of God sets the oppressed free and makes all things new. The love of God insists on truth and justice. The love of God reveals every hidden thing. And it is this love that is coming for us.”
The love of God IS the kingdom of heaven, which is drawing near. The love of God, the kingdom of heaven is coming to us in the person of Jesus Christ. Let us change our hearts, our minds, and our lives to prepare the way.
