Mark 1:1-8; Advent 2 (B), 2002;

Repentance—The Way to Christmas

If you ask a travel agent how to get to Bethlehem you’ll be booked on an El Al airlines flight to Tel Aviv, ride on an air conditioned coach up through the hills, probably pass through Jerusalem, and then into the tourist trap called Bethlehem.

As we look for directions on our journey to Bethlehem this Advent season, we are told, "Go out to the desert. Keep going till you get to the River Jordan. You can't miss it.  You'll find a man out there, standing knee deep in the water, baptizing people. That's John the Baptizer. If you want to go to Bethlehem, you've got to start there. There is no other way to get there." All four gospels say the same thing: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.  They all say that the road to Bethlehem begins with John the Baptizer. Every year at Christmas time, we are forced to take a hard look at this odd prophet preaching out there in the wilderness. John’s message is: “Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.” The Lord is coming. Are you ready to receive him?

John was sent to announce the advent of the Lord; to prepare the people to recognize him and to receive him. However, when Christ arrived, did he find faith among his people? Hardly. Their failure to receive their Lord should be an important warning to us, that in all our Christmas busy-ness, we do not shut out the most important person—Jesus!

Recently I heard a story about a meeting between a university professor and the great Zen master Nan-In. “Master,” said the professor, “teach me what I need to know to have happy life. I have studied the sacred texts, I have visited the greatest teachers of the land, but I have not found the answer. Please, teach me the way.”

At this point Nan-In served tea to his guest. He poured his visitor’s cup full and then kept on pouring and pouring so that the tea began to run over the rim of the cup and across the table, and still he poured until the tea was cascading upon the floor. The professor watched this until he could no longer restrain himself. “It’s overfull, stop, no more will go in,” he cried out. “Like this cup,” Nan-In said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you the way unless you first empty your cup?”

When John the Baptist preached in the wilderness his plea was “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” Part of that preparation is emptying our cups so that there is room for Christ to enter in. The way to emptying ourselves is through repentance. But repentance is an uncomfortable subject, isn’t it?  Now, John the Baptist doesn’t mind making us uncomfortable.  He preached in the dessert – an uncomfortable place. John wanted to make people uncomfortable, to make them think about their lives, how they honored or rejected God. 

Often it is not until we are uncomfortable that we begin to search for God, to open our ears and become attentive to his voice. As long as life hums along smoothly, we live as if God did not exist, except, perhaps, on Sunday’s. John called the Pharisees and Sadducees a "brood of vipers" because they believed that they didn't need to repent and change their ways. They were full of their own notions of what it meant to be godly. They refused to let God work repentance in their lives. In telling people to repent, John was asking them to take another look at their lives, to be honest with themselves and with God, and live a life that reflected God working in their hearts and minds.

There was once a Hagar the Horrible cartoon, where in the first frame Hagar is addressed by a monk. The monk, with his Bible tucked under his arm and an expression of peace on his face, says to Hagar, “It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” In the next frame we see the monk disappearing over the horizon and Hagar stands looking out at us saying, “But I like cursing the darkness.”

Repentance is not easy. I really don’t want to give up any of the activities that make my life so busy that keep me from preparing for the Lord. I’d rather curse the darkness, complaining, but doing nothing to repent and turn from my old ways. But my baptism was a baptism of repentance, a sign that I was going to live as one of Jesus' children rather than as a child of the world. If I do not repent I will never have a cup empty enough to receive the blessings from God. These are far more valuable than any of the things I cling to in this life. Repentance comes hard, but repent I must.

God helps us prepare for his coming. He gives us his twofold word: his word of law and his word of gospel. His law tells us how we are really like. It says, “All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them.” That’s us. In God’s presence, we wither and fall. We all fall short of his glory. On our own we are nothing.

But that is not God’s only word to us. His word of Gospel tells us that he has paid for all our sins (Isaiah 40:2). The prophet Isaiah tells us how God loves us: “He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that are young.” (40:11) This is our God! Peter completes the picture saying that the Lord “is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” You see, God does not treat us as our actions deserve, according to his word of Law, but according to his grace.

Besides granting us the forgiveness of our sins in our baptism, God also gives us his Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit gives us the power to change our lives—to live a life of purpose and power.

Fred Craddock, one of the great preachers of this century, tells the story about a young pastor who visited an old lady who was very sick in the hospital. He entered the room and saw the person lying in the bed grasping for breath. He decided to have a short visit so as not to tire her. He asked, “Would you like me to say a prayer for you?” She nodded yes. “What would you like me to pray?” asked the young pastor. “I want you to pray that I will be made well,” the old lady said. The young pastor gulped. Then he prayed something like, “God, if it is your will restore this woman to health. However, let us accept your will so that whether she receives her health or not, she will know that you are still close to her.” When the prayer ended, the old lady’s eyes flashed open. She sat up. She startled the pastor by throwing her legs over the side of the bed. She stood up. She stretched out her arms. She turned around to the young pastor and said, “I feel better. I feel A great deal better. In fact I feel like I have been healed!” With that she walked out of the room, headed down the hall toward the nurse’s station, shouting, “I am healed.” The young pastor staggered out, went down the stairs, out the door of the hospital into the parking lot. As he stood at the door of his car, he looked up. “Don’t you ever do that to me again!” he said.

As we prepare to meet our Lord today as he invites us to his table, we are quite accustomed to examine our life in the light of God’s word, confessing our sins and expecting him to forgive our sins as he promises it. But we sometimes forget that where there is forgiveness, there also is eternal life, and where there is life, there is also physical healing possible. This power we received with the Holy Spirit we received.

But in order to tap into that power, we must first hear the voice crying in the wilderness. We need to be reminded of our mortality and our need to turn to God. That is the work of the wilderness, of the desert times of our lives: to help us prepare to meet God and to experience the power of his Holy Spirit in our lives.

Henri Nouwen once said, "If we do not wait patiently in expectation for God's coming in glory, we start wandering around, going from one little sensation to another.  Our lives get stuffed with newspaper items, television stories, and gossip. Then our minds lose the discipline of discerning between what leads us closer to God and what doesn't, and our hearts lose their spiritual sensitivity.”  It’s the hard work of acknowledging our sin and repenting that leads us to God.

But for us, turning does not come so easily. It means breaking old habits.  It means admitting that we have been wrong.  It means losing face.  It means starting all over again.  And this is always painful. It means saying I am sorry.  It means recognizing that we have the ability to change.  These things are terribly hard to do.  But unless we turn, we will be trapped forever in yesterday's ways.

When we say we are preparing for Christmas during Advent, we are saying that we are turning our hearts and lives around, we are willing to empty ourselves of our old life and to turn our hearts towards God to be filled with his Spirit.  We are saying that we will try and remove all the obstacles and make the path smooth for Christ to enter into our hearts and lives.

Hear the words of John the Baptist: “Make straight paths for the Lord!” Come now and repent of your old ways. See, the Lord comes to you, having healing and compassion. Come, prepare your hearts to receive him as he comes in his body and blood offered for you so you may have life. Amen.