“The Expectation of Change”

Luke 3:1-6

December 10, 2006

Saint Paul United Methodist Church

Reverend John A. Fleming, Pastor

Messengers come in all shapes and sizes these days. A minister tells that he was in the surgery waiting room at a hospital when he saw her come in the room. She looked like someone’s teen aged daughter. She was casually dressed and way too young to be a professional person, at least in this pastor’s eyes.

She stood tall and looked around the room. It was then that it dawned on this pastor that she was a doctor, out of her surgical scrubs, and looking for the family of one of her patients. She recognized the family sitting next to the preacher who tells this story. She began to walk to them. She sat in a chair in the middle of them so that she could look all of them in their eyes. The family was large. The surgery was emergency in nature.

The young doctor’s words were straightforward, but kindly spoken. She said, “Your mother received a terrible blow. I have to be honest with you. It does not look good for her. We are doing all that we can do to help her. The surgery went as well as it could have gone. If she can pull through the next twenty-four hours or so, she has a chance.”

The doctor then asked the telling question, “Are you people of faith?” They all nodded their heads. The oldest daughter who quickly became the family’s spokesperson almost screamed out, “Yes! Yes we are. This is our preacher, right here!” The doctor answered, “Good. Pray for your mother. Get her on every prayer list you can. Pastor, if there is a intercessory prayer team, get them started. Our medicine, your prayers, the support of the family, her faith and what I believe is a strong will to live, all working together, just might pull your mother and wife through this.”

The young doctor, you see, was a messenger. Part of her message was the reality. “Your mother is gravely ill.” She was also a messenger of hope. “Pray for your mother. She has a chance to make it.” I will go ahead and give you the ending to the story of this woman. She did make it. She was in intensive care for weeks, but made a full recovery.

Back to our sermon. Many times messengers come into our lives to help us prepare for something bigger. Sometimes that something bigger is good news. Other times the something bigger is bad news. Still they come.

The Bible is full of messengers. Sometimes they come in the form of angels. This time of year, one of the messengers we think about is Gabriel, the angel, who came to Mary and delivered these words, “Greetings favored one. The Lord is with you. Do not be afraid.”

Sometimes messengers in the Bible come in the form of prophets. And the most famous one this time of the year has to be John the Baptizer. Luke introduces John with an elaborate accounting of time and place. He puts rulers in their proper places as if to say that timing is everything.

Once the rulers are where they are supposed to be, John the Baptizer goes around the region near the Jordan River proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. We might put it this way, John is out there saying, “Something great is about to happen. You had better get ready for it.”

The way John goes about preaching his message is by quoting another biblical messenger, the prophet Isaiah. In fact, John uses the same image Isaiah did centuries before him. Isaiah said that when the people left Babylon and traveled back to Jerusalem following a time of exile, God was with them. God built a super highway. God leveled mountains. God raised up valleys. Isaiah wanted those he prophesied to know that God was with them all along, helping them home.

Luke has John using the same imagery. Except Luke doesn’t say that John will lower the mountains and fill in the valleys, not on the outside, anyway. John is interested in helping us deal with the mountains and the valleys that are inside of us, the ones in our minds and the ones in our hearts. It is our crookedness. It is our deviousness that needs to be straightened out. It is our rough edges that need to be smooth. Luke is saying that John came and will help us change those things about us. John will help us prepare ourselves so that when the Messiah does make his appearance, we will be ready. How does Luke put this, “....and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

So how do we do these things that John says we need to do? How do we prepare? How do we straighten out our lives? How do we make our rough ways smooth? What has to happen so that this year we will be able to see the salvation of God?

John’s answer is simple. We repent. Now the word repent is an old fashioned word that we don’t hear much these days. What does it mean? And what does it mean to repent?

Some people believe that repentance is something that happens naturally. When we get a little older and we live life for a time, we change. But before we do, we travel along life’s highway. Things are smooth. Our goals are being met. Our values are set. Our lives are in order. But then something happens. We crash into something that seems unsurmountable and unconquerable. It is something that we cannot handle on our own. We do not have the strength.

Someone we love dies. That was my experience last year. Someone we love dies. Our health fails. We lose a job and a new one does not quickly come. The school doesn’t accept our application. She doesn’t want to be married any longer. We crash and the experience of it changes the direction we were heading. This change is a mild form of repentance. It is hard, but this change is not the change John preached out there in the wilderness. This change is more like growing up and maturing. Most of these experiences do not give us new cards to play. Most of these experience make us shuffle the cards we already have. So we adjust, but we don’t really change. This is not what John had in mind.

Some people believe repentance is larger and more profound. Some believe that repentance is like a New Year’s Day resolution. The old passes to the new. We feel the extra inches on our waistlines. We taste the bitter taste of our addiction on our lips. We think about the hurtful and the harmful thing we said to someone else. And we repent.

We go to the gym. We flush the cigarettes. We get rid of the alcohol. We stammer out a few long overdue words of apology to those we have offended. This is all good. It is like wiping the slate clean. It is turning over a new leaf. It is a new beginning. But it is not enough to qualify as repentance. John’s idea of repentance is different than that. John’s idea of repentance is stronger than that.

The repentance John called for and preached passionately about calls for a revising of the past. Listen very carefully to what I am about to say. John’s repentance makes us look behind before we dare to move ahead. This repentance makes us encounter the past we have lived through, but not really experienced. This repentance makes us look at the past we inherited, but not inhabited. This repentance makes us look at all these things before we dare enter a future we don’t yet understand.

The real question this morning is to ask what this repentance looks like in our lives. It is a question I hope you spend the better part of the afternoon answering.

The messengers today came in the form of that doctor in the waiting room and in the fiery preacher, John, in the wilderness, with his baptismal clothes ready. Let me ask you to look at one more prophet. This one is Elijah. Elijah was running from God once, but looking for him all at the same time. He needed to change. Do you remember where Elijah found God? He didn’t find him in the tremors of the earthquake. Elijah didn’t find god in the wind. He didn’t find him in the fire. Elijah found God in a still, small voice.

Listen today. Listen for the still, small voice. Listen with your humble heart. Lean forward to hear the messenger’s words, “Let me tell you the good news. It is for you. In fact, it is for everyone. God is coming to be with you. Get ready for it.” Amen.