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Second Sunday in Advent, 12/06/2015
Hunger for Repentance
Sermon on Luke 3:1-6, by Gregory P. Fryer
n the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
My sermon this morning is about spiritual hunger. I want us to try to reckon with the perhaps counter-intuitive notion that there are people in our city who desire to repent and mend their ways. They are waiting for a preacher of repentance. They have had their fill of affirmation. It has left them empty. They would be awfully glad for someone to simply say, “God is at hand and so it is time for you to shape up!” They are waiting for John the Baptist.
Let me begin to develop this idea by noting that the preaching of John the Baptist is also part of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In fact, both Mary the Mother of Our Lord and John the Baptist are part the story of our Lord. These two people are central to the story of Jesus, especially to the beginning of the story. Indeed, judging by the Bible, we do not get the tale right if we do not begin by speaking of Mary and John.
Mary, the Mother of Our Lord, and John the Baptist are “ordinary people” like you and me in the sense that we do not say of them what we do say of Jesus: that he is “fully God and fully man.” No, these two are not “fully God.” They are simply human beings, like us. But they are veritable giants of faith. Both Mary and John illustrate for us what humanity is capable of: We are capable of extraordinary dedication to God. We are capable of surrendering ordinary hopes and dreams and plans for an extraordinary life consecrated to God.
In Advent we look at both of these central characters in the story of Jesus. Here at Immanuel we have banners for them. Here hangs John the Baptist. Later, for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, we will replace John with Mary. The story of Jesus begins with these two. This Sunday and next we look at John the Baptist.
Our Gospel Lesson for today places the story of Jesus in its historical setting. St. Luke wants us to know that when we speak of Jesus, we are not speaking of a fairy tale, but of objective events that happened in a particular time and place. So, our Gospel Lesson starts off pinning down the times by speaking of prominent people in those days, especially political leaders, but also religious leaders — in particular the two high priests, Annas and Caiaphas, who later will examine Jesus throughout the night of his passion, leaving him exhausted and beaten to stand before Pontius Pilate (John 18).
So, the first verse of our reading lists these prominent political and religious leaders, but then speaks of John the Baptist — the hero of this morning’s sermon. Let me read that first verse aloud, skipping over most of the leaders of those days, and ending with the words about John:
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar… the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness; (Luke 3:1-2, RSV)
Karl Barth once pointed out that we would normally expect the text to speak of Jesus at this point, not of John.1 We would expect St. Luke to write the dramatic words, “the word of God came to Jesus.” We’d expect to hear about the preaching of Jesus, because, after all, the Holy Gospel is not about John the Baptist, but about Jesus.
Nonetheless, the Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ seems to begin with the preaching of an ordinary man, John the Baptist. St. Matthew, for example, dates the opening of the kingdom of heaven “from the days of John the Baptist” (Matthew 11:12). And St. John’s prologue to his Gospel speaks of John the Baptist as an important part of the story of Jesus:
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. (John 1:6, KJV)
We honor Mary, the Mother of Our Lord, for her submission to the will of God for her:
And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. (Luke 1:38, KJV)
But John the Baptist too dedicated himself to the will of God.
I am fascinated by this simple, everyday notion that Mary and John had a role to play in the story of Jesus. Indeed, as the Evangelists tell the story, they seem unwilling to leave out the part played by people like you and me. It makes me wonder: I wonder whether you and I might have some important role too to play in the story of Jesus. Is God waiting and hoping that we will step up and play our role? I think so. I think that every day that stretches before us is a day in which we can try to make ourselves useful for Christ, and we can do so in the confidence that God will accept our offerings and use them for the upbuilding of the kingdom. That is, you and I can try to take our place alongside our sister Mary and our brother John.
John’s preaching
Now let’s talk about the particular role John the Baptist played in the story of Jesus. John is the one who preached that something immense was afoot — something divine was about to happen. The word of God came to John, with the result that he preached in such a way as to put people in mind of the ancient prophecy of Isaiah:
Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. (Luke 3:4, KJV)
The Evangelists agree that John was a preacher of repentance
1In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea, 2And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. (Matthew 3:1-2, KJV)
John taught the world that when “the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” it is appropriate for us to repent. It is right for us to change the direction of our lives, to forsake sin, to turn toward God, to do what we can to make ourselves ready and available for him.
John did not simply preach about the coming kingdom of heaven; he also preached repentance and amendment of life as the appropriate and rational step in life for those who will soon be meeting God. Who knows all of John’s theology? He might have felt that all human repentance is inadequate and a poor thing that leaves us unworthy to stand before God. He might have thought that, and he would have been right if he did believe it. Nonetheless, he was a preacher of repentance. The kingdom of heaven is coming, he said, and it is high time that we turn our lives around and direct ourselves more toward our Maker.
Hunger for such preaching
Interestingly, John’s call to repentance did not make him an unpopular preacher. St. Mark says that even fancy city folk traveled out into the wilderness to hear John and to be baptized by him:
4John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. 5And there went out unto him all the land of Judaea, and they of Jerusalem, and were all baptized of him in the river of Jordan, confessing their sins. (Mark 1:4-5, KJV)
There was spiritual hunger in the land in those days, including in the great city Jerusalem. I believe there is spiritual hunger in the land today too.
To begin developing this point, let me refer to the Question and Answer session after the recent Erasmus lecture at the Union League Club here in town. This year’s lecture was given by Ross Douthat2, a conservative Op-Ed columnist for the New York Times.
Douthat’s lecture bore the title The Crisis of Conservative Catholicism. It is available online.3 I cannot find the lecture Q&A session online and so I must rely on my memory. But if I remember right, Douthat had something interesting to say about what he called “bad Catholics.”
He was not complaining about “bad Catholics.” In fact, his complaint went the other way round. His complaint was about progressive views of church teaching that were so liberal that they essentially eliminate the notion of a “bad Catholic.”
Let’s generalize this, to speak of “bad Christians.” Perhaps you are one of them. I am quite sure that I am, alas. I mean, the ordinary Christian who comes to church, perhaps sits in some distant pew hoping and praying to be left alone, who sits there mindful that he or she falls short of official church teaching. He’s a bad Christian, she’s a bad Christian.
What that means is that the person acknowledges that there is still work to be done in his spiritual life. Not all is well — not yet.
The person even acknowledges that if he walks out of church, gets hit by a bus, and flies off to heaven, he is in for some trouble, she is in for some trouble. At least, he is going to have hope for some major mercy when he must bend the knee before Jesus, when she must bend her knee.
Now, suppose we just do away with the notion of a bad Christian. Suppose we so temper and moderate church teaching that no one runs afoul of it anymore. No one needs to sit in some distant pew mindful that he falls short of church teaching because the church no longer teaches anything worth worrying about anyway.
Would that make things better? I do not think it would. Certainly I could be wrong about this, but I think there are people in our town who are hungering for the truth, even if it makes them feel bad, even if means that they have some repenting and mending of their ways ahead of them. Tame preaching threatens to leave us parched. The continual proclamation, “I’m okay, you’re okay” just does not suit the soul when we know deep in our hearts that we have not loved God enough and have not loved our neighbors enough.
Well, one thing you could count on John the Baptist for was that he would not be a tame preacher. Next Sunday we will look at some of the details of his preaching. We will listen to him speak of such things as “you generation of vipers,” and “even now the axe is laid to the root of the tree,” and “bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance.” We will also hear more moderate things — practical exhortations to holiness of life for soldiers, for example.
The point of this sermon is that such preaching is part of the Gospel. The word of God came to John, and he preached in the manner he did. This seems to have been pleasing to God. Perhaps it would be pleasing to you too.
So, if you are not satisfied with the state of your soul, do not give up. It is okay to sigh and to long for standards of holiness that you do not even live up to yet. It is alright to join with the Psalmist of old in praying for a new path in life — for ways that cohere more with the will of God:
5O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes! (Psalm 119:5, KJV)
It is alright to want more of God’s law, not less:
18Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. (Psalm 119:18, KJV)
Indeed, the One about whom John the Baptist preached and the One for whom he prepared the way, is also the One who pronounces a blessing on those who are not yet satisfied with either the world or even themselves:
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. (Matthew 5:6, KJV)
To this Greater One, who blesses those who hunger and thirst, be the glory, with the Father and the Holy Spirit now and forever. Amen.
Zusätzliche Medien:
1 Church Dogmatics IV, 4, 55.
2 Pronounced “DOW-thut.”
3 http://www.firstthings.com/media/the-crisis-of-conservative-catholicism