Matthew 3: 1-12
12/4/22, 2nd Advent
What brings you hope this Advent season? Perhaps it’s a new job, a new phase of life, and addition to the family. I pray that you’ll find this place to be a community of hope that celebrates the presence and the love of God in every season of the year.
Our bible passage for today is the familiar story of John the Baptist. Although it is usually read as a message of judgement, what with the axe at the foot of the tree and the chaff being burned, I think it is also a message of hope.
This week I stumbled upon an amusing quote from the autobiography of Robert McAfee Brown, who was a preacher and religion professor at Stanford University. Brown included in his autobiography as old family photo taken at Christmas time. He writes, “There we all are gathered around the crèche on Christmas Eve, putting animals and the wise men and the shepherds around the baby Jesus, who is a small center of sanity in a large and crazy world.” (1)
I think that’s a great description of Jesus in these advent days – “a small center of sanity in a large and crazy world.” That’s’ a good thought to keep in mind when things get hectic this time of year.
I once read about a young woman named Elizabeth who had spent many years struggling with a drug addiction. During those years, she was desperate for some words of encouragement, some signs of hope. When she got into recovery and created a new life for herself, she wanted to help others who were trapped by hopelessness. So, she started writing little notes of encouragement and sticking them on the windshields of cars around her city and posting them on telephone poles in local parks. She ended one note with the words, “Much love. Hope sent.” (2)
Much love. Hope sent. That’s what we celebrate during Advent and anticipate at Christmas – that Jesus, that small center of sanity – embodied the message of much love, hope sent. It’s a message of hope that God has been preparing for thousands of years. It’s been foretold by numerous prophets. And what God promised through the prophets has now been fulfilled in a person – the person of Jesus Christ.
In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness preaching, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near. Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”
I know, you wish all our sermons were as short as John the Baptist’s – but we need a few more words that he used. The word used here for repent means “to think differently” or to change the inner person.” So John was saying “Jesus has brought the kingdom of heaven to you. And you can receive his message when you think differently, when you change your inner person.”
That certainly sounds like a message of hope to me. But repentance is just the first step to receiving the kingdom of heaven. The next step is baptism, first with water, and then with the Holy Spirit. Each of those steps leads to receiving new life as citizens of the kingdom of heaven.
Rabbi Ari Lamm once gave a great explanation of repentance when he was interviewed on the Jane and Jesus podcast. Rabbi Lamm said that in the Jewish tradition, repentance is an example of time travel. He says that the Bible shows us that true repentance changes both your future and your past. Let that sink in – repentance changes both your future and your past.
Rabbi Lamm says, “If you repent properly, what God promises is that God will change who you are. It’s a question of identity.” To paraphrase, he says that in Judaism, what God promises to those who sincerely repent is the opportunity to say, “I am no longer that person who sinned… I am a fundamentally different person. It’s as if I am a newborn child, and I have a new path in life.” (3)
That’s the promise and the hope of Christmas. At Christmas, the kingdom of heaven came near in the person of Jesus Christ. And through Jesus, we have a new King, a new life, and a new purpose – all promised to us when we receive the kingdom of heaven.
The first promise and hope of Christmas is that in Jesus, we have a new King. The history of humanity has been shaped by sometimes sinful and unworthy leaders. We could easily name a whole list of kings, emperors and politicians who have been greedy, power-hungry and violent. And their moral failings have been responsible for unimaginable suffering all over the world.
But when God wanted to show us God’s love, purposes and power in action, God came in the person of Jesus Christ. In the Advent season, we realize more than ever that the priorities of this world – greed, power and violence – are empty and contrary to God’s kingdom. That’s why Jesus came, not as a powerful military leader, but as a helpless baby born to a poor family. That’s why he didn’t seek status with the religious or political leaders of his day. He rejected wealth, power status and success. He rejected others’ attempts to make him a religious celebrity or a king. He rejected all the things we so desperately chase after because his mind was fixed on God’s will, on bringing in God’s kingdom. We can put our hope and trust fully in Jesus because he embodies the use of power in the service of love.
During World War II, German pastor Helmut Thielicke visited a prominent church that had been bombed by the Nazis. Thielicke understood the suffering and hopelessness the people were feeling in the midst of war. He stood in the rubble of this devastated church, and he preached these words of hope: “Where Christ is King, everything is changed. Eyes see differently and the heart no longer beats the same. And in every hard and difficult place the comforting voice is there, and the hand that will not let us go upholds us.” (4)
Where Christ is King, everything is changed. That’s the hope we are promised at Christmas. In Jesus, we have a new King.
The second promise and hope of Christmas is that in Jesus, we have new life. Notice that John baptized people in the Jordan River. The Jordan was significant to the people of Israel. In the book of Deuteronomy, we are told about the Israelites wandering in the desert for forty years. The elders who had escaped slavery in Egypt had mostly died off. And God planned to lead the people into Canaan, into the Promised Land. But before God did that, God challenged the people to choose between death and life. The people of Israel chose life and followed God. When they crossed the Jordan River into the Promised Land, they crossed over into freedom and new life. It’s no accident that John baptized people in the Jordan. Our baptism represents our crossing over from death to new life in Jesus Christ.
Pastor Ben Helmer tells of a man in his congregation who, after attending a short while, approached him and asked, “What do I have to do to be baptized? This man was 57 years old. He’d spent his professional life as a counselor. But he reported that it was only in his baptism that he found the wholeness he had been seeking in life. He had always felt that something was missing – but in his baptism, he found the new life God made him for.
This man became a regular volunteer at the church food pantry. The following Christmas, he joined the team that cooked and served Christmas dinner at a local health clinic. His baptism marked the start of a new life of service in Jesus’ name. (5)
John Chrysostom was a leader of the early church in the Middle East about 1,600 years ago and the bishop of Constantinople. He once taught his church members that the best way to share their faith was through their actions. He wrote, “Let us astound them by our way of life. This is the unanswerable argument. Though we give 10,000 precepts in words, if we do not exhibit a far better life, we gain nothing. It is not what is said that draws their attention, but what we do. Let us win them therefore by our life.” (6)
Let us astound them by our way of life. Let’s show the world what it looks like for Jesus to live through our actions, our words and our priorities. Let’s show them by our actions what it means to go from death to new life.
And finally, the promise and hope of Christmas is that in Jesus, we have a new purpose. In the sermon on the mount, Jesus teaches us to “seek first the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness.” When we have been baptized into new life with Jesus, our new purpose is to prioritize the kingdom of heaven above all else. The kingdom of heaven is the rule of God in this world. It is the what the world looks like when Jesus is living in us, and we are pursuing the priorities that Jesus sets.
Let me tell you about one young woman whose faith gave her a new purpose in life. When she was 28, Gertrude Dyck moved to the United Arab Emirates to serve as a medical missionary at the first hospital in Abu Dhabi. Her flight to the UAE was only the second time she had ever flown. She quickly learned the language and adopted the customs of the local people. Her compassion earned her the nickname Doctura Latifa, or Doctor of Mercy. (7)
When Dyck started at the hospital as a nurse and midwife, infant mortality rates were at 50% and maternal mortality rates of 35%. Half of all newborns died in childbirth or soon after, and soon after, and so did 1/3 of mothers. The staff of the new hospital were determined to change this heart-breaking reality.
Over the course of her nursing career, she delivered tens of thousands of babies, including the children of the Royal family. She and her colleagues introduced new medical practices that significantly reduced patient mortality rates. She served 38 years as a nurse at the hospital in Abu Dhabi – when she retired, infant and maternal mortality rates were below one percent. (8)
So, where do you find hope in this Advent season? Is your hope that you’ll get everything done in time for the holidays? Is your hope that next year will be better than this one? Or is your hope in knowing that the pressures and priorities of this world no longer hold you down. You follow a different King, you are living a new life, and you have found a new purpose because you have received Jesus Christ, Immanuel, God with us. So I encourage you to welcome Jesus, that small center of sanity, into your hectic holiday season.
May God be praised. Amen.
1. Dynamic Preaching, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 3, p62.
2. Ibid… p62.
3. Ibid… p62-63.
4. Ibid… p63.
5. Ibid… p63.
6. Ibid… p64.
7. Ibid… p64.
8. Ibid… p64.
