“REPENT, REPENT, REPENT, REPENT, RE…”

2ND Sunday in Advent

December 10, 2006

United Lutheran-Red Wing, MN

LUKE 3:1-6

Grace and Peace be yours in these days of Advent, as we prepare for the coming of Christ. Amen.

Rulers and High Priests all seem to be working on such a predictable schedule and all fulfilling their niche in history when all of a sudden God throws in a surprise which will change the course of history forever. The writer of the Gospel, Luke, records that the Word of the Lord came to John the Baptist who proclaimed “the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” The world so neatly organized and carefully arranged was going to be turned upside down and things were no longer going to be what they seemed.

The messenger sent to prepare the way and to share the word to all the rulers and persons in authority and to anyone who cared to listen, was a relative nobody named, John. And what did he proclaim? Quoting from the Old Testament Prophet, Isaiah, he said,

“THE VOICE OF ONE CRYING OUT IN THE WILDERNESS: ‘PREPARE THE WAY OF THE LORD, MAKE HIS PATHS STRAIGHT.  EVERY VALLEY SHALL BE FILLED AND EVERY MOUNTAIN AND HILL BE MADE LOW, AND THE CROOKED SHALL BE MADE STRAIGHT, AND THE ROUGH PLACES MADE SMOOTH; AND ALL FLESH SHALL SEE THE SALVATION OF GOD.”

          Isaiah, 600 years before John the Baptist had spoken to the powerless of the time. Those people had been exiled and hauled off to Babylon and held in captivity. Their city of Jerusalem lay in ruins and when they thought of the old country, they wept. But Isaiah’s message was a call to hope. GOD REMEMBERED THEM! God was going to act for the forgotten, the down-trodden, the poor, the prisoners, and the desperate. Now John resurrects that message with words that promise that God is going to do a new thing. Like a bulldozer rearranging the landscape, leveling the mountains and hills and filling in the valleys, God was making way for a wondrous coming that would change the future of life for ever.

          Later in the Gospel of Luke, we will hear once again the words of Jesus quoting Isaiah, that he had come to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the afflicted, and freedom to the oppressed. But for now, God was preparing the way for His coming, and John is called to prepare the way. The earliest Christian witness simply asserts that God chose this time and this place to become human in the person of Jesus Christ. So Luke notes this fact and wants to draw us beyond it to see that the message of God’s coming among us will impact the world.

          What clears the way? What is this preparation John speaks about which will change the world, change our lives, and touch us to the very core of our being? That preparation is summed up in a rather unChristmasy activity known in our circles by the words—REPENTANCE AND FORGIVENESS. A friend suggested once that if we were to properly keep the Advent Season, we probably should send out cards with John the Baptist on the front pointing at us with words from next Sunday’s gospel saying: “REPENT! YOU BROOD OF VIPERS! WHO WARNED YOU TO FLEE FROM THE WRATH TO COME?  BEAR FRUITS WORTHY OF REPENTANCE!” MERRY CHRISTMAS!

          I can pretty well assure you that you’d be dropped from several Christmas card lists next year. But it’s message is not totally out of line with what these weeks of Advent are meant to be. For these weeks are a TIME TO GET READY, TO TURN AROUND, TO PREPARE THE WAY OF THE LORD, TO ASK FORGIVENESS THROUGH OUR REPENTANCE, and THUS PREPARING THE WAY OF THE LORD. It means to reckon with our own rebelliousness, brokenness and become reconciled with Christ and one another.

          John’s message was a disturbing presence calling for a new age. Turning around, yet a message of challenge, hope, and inclusion. Repentance may well be the expression of true belief. It’s meaning of being sorry, yet more than sorrow for what we have done, it involves the active acceptance of God’s gift of faith.   Karl Barth once wrote that Christian repentance is not just turning FROM something; it is turning TO something. More than that it is TURNING TO SOMEONE, namely, Jesus Christ. Then Barth concluded, “It is what we are called “to” that frightens us.  Repentance is turning about to that which is nearest and which we always overlook; to the center of life which we always miss; to the simplest which is still too high and hard for us.”

          John didn’t just introduce Jesus, but the whole life of Jesus, from crib to cross! When the church stops repenting and preaching repentance the meaning of Advent is lost and our faith is lessened. Don’t be “in the way”--but make way! For the coming of the Lord. To get ready is not simply shuffling the dust around, not simply rearranging the furniture so there’s room for the tree. It is a thorough house cleaning!

          Repentance is a complete change of mind and heart. An openness to God with the confidence that God not only exists, but love, forgives, and has the power to give us life. It means to evaluate my own life honestly, to look at what I’ve been, and to be open to that change of heart and mind. Turning away from myself to God, my rebellion and preoccupation with self and to God’s love and fullness of God’s grace. John proclaimed a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”

          Paul wrote to the Philippians, “ALL OF YOU SHARE IN GOD’S GRACE WITH ME!” That’s what prepares the way of the Lord to get to us—God’s grace. God prepares God’s way. And Micah speaks of how God refines us, “soaps us”, and makes a way to us. You and I can’t get to Christmas if we run over or do an end run around John’s profound message which he lifts from the Prophet Isaiah. “THE VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS; PREPARE THE WAY OF THE LORD, AND ALL FLESH SHALL SEE THE SALVATION OF GOD.

          If only we could get to the baby Jesus and the message of salvation without having to hear John’s words calling for preparation and repentance. But why? To prepare the way is to be prepared for the Lord’s coming and this is NO threat. NO grim warning! It is a gracious invitation! An invitation for Christ to be born anew in our hearts this season. An invitation to receive the fullness of God’s grace once again this year. To be on the way the Lord has made for us this year.

          The theme song in the life of the Christian Church during Advent is not…”You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I’m telling you why…Santa Claus is coming to town.” That’s fun and familiar. The theme we are called to hear on this Sunday is heralded in the beginning and closing hymns of the day; “Prepare the royal highway, the King of Kings is near” and “On Jordan’s banks the Baptist’s cry announces that the Lord is nigh; awake and hearken for he bring, Glad tidings of the King of Kings…and let us all our hearts prepare for Christ to come and enter there.”

          For many years, Oswald Hoffman was the preacher/host of The Lutheran Hour, a radio program sponsored by the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. Pastor Hoffman told a story of one of his earlier programs called, “Bringing Christ to the Nations.” At the time, the broadcast was prerecorded and supplied to radio stations on plastic disks (like 45 records). At a particular station, one man was operating the station and doing all the jobs—station manager, disk jockey, and news director on an Advent Sunday. As he worked on the radio board, he put on the record and believed he would have about 25 minutes to relax, have a coffee break and read the morning paper. All well and good, but during that time the record got stuck. It stuck just as Hoffman’s voice spoke one particular word. For one full minute, the entire radio audience heard only one word, repeated over and over and over. “REPENT, REPENT, REPENT, REPENT, RE…”

          The man who relayed the story to Hoffman, listening to the program, said that he finally got them message himself. REPENT.  But added that he came to understand that repentance goes on and on and on, in the life of the Christian. From the beginning of each day until the close of  each day and every day.

          The news being heralded this morning and into the coming weeks, here and throughout the world is the news for which we prepare in Advent. It was heralded this morning in the beautiful music of the choirs, in the hymns for this day, in the Scripture read and preached, and in the prayers. The Lord has come! The Lord comes-daily! And the Lord will come again!

That God loves you! Loves us all! The news that all flesh shall see the salvation of God! That while we were yet sinners, God loved us, forgives us, saves us, graces us, and gives us life. All that and more in and through the one for whom we daily prepare.

          In the words of “Joy to the World”….“LET EVERY HEART PREPARE HIM ROOM!” Amen

Pastor Clark Cary