Sunday 4th December 2011 - the Second Sunday of Advent

Prepare the way of the Lord

Introduction

Today, on this second Sunday in Advent we come to the ministry of John the Baptist.

Exposition

In some ways it is a bit strange to look at the ministry of John the Baptist now, in the period as we approach the Birth of Jesus, because John didn’t preach or teach in the months or years before Jesus birth. John was just six months older than Jesus and we read of his conception and birth in the Gospel of Luke. Zechariah John’s father was married to Elizabeth. They were both elderly people and were childless. Zechariah was a priest in the temple and one day went to offer incense in the inner part of the temple and whilst he was doing that had a vision telling him that he and Elizabeth were to have a son who would be like the prophet Elijah and ‘turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.' (Luke 1:17). Zechariah would have been well aware that these words come from the prophet Malachi who speaks a prophet who will prepare the way the messiah and be his herald and forerunner.

After John is born we hear nothing more of him until he begins his ministry. He goes out into the desert near the river Jordan as many prophets had done before him and begins to announce that God’s kingdom is at hand and that the Messiah will be coming soon. As a sign of getting ready for the coming of the messiah people are urged to publicly turn away from their wrongdoings and show that they had done this by being plunged beneath the waters of the river Jordan and emerging washed and clean.

Jesus himself comes and spends time with John and then sets out on his ministry. Some of John’s disciples become followers of Jesus. John is fearless in denouncing corruption and wrongdoing in high places and is eventually arrested, imprisoned and executed by Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee.

Application

When Jesus came he did not come to a world which had had no warning of his coming. The prophets of the Old Testament had spoken both of him and the one who would prepare his way. There were many who were ready to hear and eagerly received the message, but sadly there were many more who do did not.

As always it was the poor and the outcast who were able to listen to John and therefore get ready to receive Jesus when he came among them. But those who should have known better were exactly those who did not. Those who were absolutely convinced that they had got it all right were found to be compleatly wrong.

And that is what I want us to think about today. You see I am convinced that God is speaking to us loudly and clearly today, but I’m not sure we are listening. What do I mean by that?

As the author of the letter to the Hebrews said, God speaks in many and various ways. His primary means of speaking to us is through Jesus Christ his Son and through the scriptures which testify to him. But he also speaks through circumstances and people.

I believe that our Bishop, Steven, is one of the people that God is speaking to us through today. He is calling us to consider anew the priorities of our life together. He has written:

Following a period of consultation across the diocese, the November Diocesan Synod is being asked to affirm four priorities for our life together as Anglicans in Essex and East London. These are being presented under the title Transforming Presence and concern how we can:

·         Live a distinctive Christian life in the world

·         Share and communicate our faith more effectively

·         Hold ourselves accountable for developing a core agenda of ministries in each of our parishes, schools and chaplaincies

·         Re-imagine Christian ministry, so that at every level of diocesan life we are not just maintaining our presence but developing it so that the world can be transformed.

In other words this is about Christian lifestyle and spirituality; how we live our Christian lives each day; evangelism; and about our expectations of ourselves as Christian Communities. And it is about what sort of ministry we need for the future.

The November Synod did, indeed, affirm those priorities and they will form the basis of our exploration and action over the next 15 years. We could, of course ignore them and carry on with business as usual. Or we could throw ourselves behind our Bishop’s vision, get involved and act and change as a consequence; for yes, it will mean change and hopefully the biggest change will be a move from carefully managed decline to a new attitude and hope.

As with John the Baptist some will listen and some will miss the boat, and our future will depend on which road we take. Listen to what God is saying to us today:

Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.

No Sermon This Week

No Sermon this week as I am on retreat in Holy Island.

20th March 2010 - Lent 2

"You must be born from above." John 3.7

A little while ago someone suggested I go and see a certain family. They said to me, “You’ll enjoy meeting them. They are born again Christians.” And the person was right. I did go and visit the family, and I did enjoy the time I spent with them. I was reminded of that conversation as I read the Bible readings set for today because of that term, “Born again Christians.” That term “born again” comes from the King James Version text of John Chapter three. In the New Revised Standard Version which we have read this morning it is rendered “born from above”. This reflects the fact that the phrase is a difficult one to translate into English. The words used in the original language mean “born from above” and “born again” and “born anew”. It is not that one phrase is a more accurate translation. The words in the original language encompass all three meanings.

Now I am fairly sure that you would have a pretty good understanding of what was meant by the person who used that phrase, "born again Christians". If you heard someone described as a “born again Christian” you’d probably think about someone who was quite enthusiastic about their faith, someone who attended a church with lively songs and worship, someone who took very seriously the call to share their faith with other people - perhaps even to the extent of not being able to ever get off the subject. Above all you might think about a person who had moved from unbelief to belief and had experienced a great transformation in their life as a consequence. That is the sort of thing that people generally mean by that phrase today. But what did Jesus mean when he used that phrase? Is it something we need to understand? or is it just for extremists and enthusiasts and not for good Anglicans like us.

In John Chapter 3 Jesus is approached by a man named Nicodemus, who is described as “a leader of the Jews”. This probably means that he is a member of the Sanhedrin, the ruling council of Judea. He appears three times in John’s Gospel. First here, then later when the ruling council begins to think about moving against Jesus, he calls for patience and tolerance and is mocked by the rest of the council, and then finally after the crucifixion when he, together with Joseph of Arimathea, asked Pilate to let him have Jesus' body so they can place it in a tomb. Nicodemus is member of the party of the Pharisees, a group who believed that by keeping God’s laws perfectly they would bring about the liberation of their people. All of this suggests that Nicodemus was a good, tolerant and scholarly man from a wealthy family with good connections in both the Jewish and Roman ruling classes. So not an extremist or an enthusiast but in many ways rather like a good Anglican; or at least the stereotype thereof.  

This Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night. There are a number of ways to understand this. Firstly it could mean that he is coming unobtrusively; he has heard about Jesus, wants to find out about him, but doesn’t want anyone else to see him doing it. Secondly, it could simply mean that he comes to Jesus when Jesus has time for a private conversation. During the day Jesus is surrounded by people. After sunset there is time for an individual and in-depth conversation. But there is a third possible meaning too. In John’s Gospel the terms day and night, light and darkness, refer to people’s attitude to God. Most dramatically, when Judas leaves to betray Jesus we are told “And it was night”. In Chapter 11 Jesus says, “those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.” He is not talking about the need to carry a torch. The darkness of night is darkness of a life lived without reference to God. Just two verses after the end of today’s Gospel reading John writes “this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.”

So where have we got too? I think this; Nicodemus is not a bad man but probably the kind of person you would see as being the best of his people. He is learned, religious, tolerant and wise. He comes from a good family and is well respected in his community. But despite all this he is still in the darkness. He still did not walk in the light.

Nicodemus reminds me in some ways of another member of the Pharisee party. This man wrote of all the advantages in life that he had received. “If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.”

The writer is, of course, Saint Paul, but after listing his advantages he goes on to say, “Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ...”

And this, I think, explains what it means to be born again. To be born again is to step away from all those things that we think make us special and to realise that they count for nothing in the sight of God. It is to stand before God as helpless and naked as a newborn child and accept his complete authority over who we are and what we do. It is both the easiest and most demanding thing that you will ever encounter. The easiest because it is utterly the action of God. The most demanding because God’s love “so amazing, so divine; demands my life, my soul, my all”.

And of course it is a lot easier to do if you know that your life is rubbish. That is why we associate that phrase “born again Christian” with people who have experienced that dramatic change. Go to the churches you associate with “born again Christians” and you will hear the testimonies - I used to be a drug addict, a thief, a gang member; but Jesus changed my rubbish life and gave me a new one. It was ever so, Jesus said to the Pharisees “Truly I tell you, the tax-collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.”

But Nicodemus’ life didn’t appear to be rubbish. If anyone was OK he was. But he wasn’t. It was to him, the good man, the tolerant man, the scholar, that Jesus said“no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Even the best are not good enough, even the worst will be accepted if they come to God empty handed and ask Him to rule their lives. "You must be born from above."