On Sunday, Dec. 6th I preached the sermon at the Granger Christian Church- Disciples of Christ. I based my seron on the current lectionary scriptures for the Advent Season. The primary scripture assigned for this the second Cunday in the Advent season is Malachi 3:1-6, which deals with judgment and repentance. Eek! I gave it a good try.)
Confession and Repentance
Remember when you were a child and anticipating the coming of Christmas- not just the thought of the gifts would make you all excited, but the pure magic of it all. The lights and the carols, the school programs, and having time off of school! A time when your family came together to celebrate. Do you remember the countdown calendars? Oh, I loved those things! They would only help to build up the anticipation more! And then on the eve of Christmas, as a child you could hardly breathe! You swore that you were not going to fall asleep, but you were going to sneak a look at jolly old St. Nick. You lay in bed and listen for the sound of sleigh bells and hooves skittering across the roof above. I would be so restless with excitement, I didn’t think could stay still. I used to make deals with myself. If I stayed in bed and could count to one hundred, one hundred times, then when I finished it would be alright to get out of bed and it would be morning and our gifts would be in place and ready to open. But inevitably I would be overcome with sleep sometime during my counting prayers, but always, my counting prayers would be answered and I would awake to gifts and magical Christmas fun with my siblings. So it all seemed to work out in the end. It’s funny but I never ever questioned that come Christmas morning my counting prayers would be answered. I had a child’s trust, a child’s faith. It seems that the image and lines between St Nicholas and God were so often blurred as we were told the stories of the first Christmas, maybe St Nick’s heart was filled with the Holy spirit. I think that it would be a good idea to strive to enter this season with the anticipation, trust and faith of a child in order to make our seasonal intentions more pure. So you see, to me Christmas is not necessarily about the presents, but rather about God’s presence.
Today’s first lectionary scripture is Malachi 3 verses1-4 familiar to many from its use in the beautiful Handel's Messiah, this passage from Malachi speaks of purification and judgment, themes not generally associated in the popular imagination with Christmas. Nevertheless, Advent is, of course, preparation not only for a remembrance of Christ's first coming as a baby, the celebration of Christ’s birth, but also for Christ's second coming, in power and glory. And we use the occasion to remember Jesus’ promise to come again. In the anticipated coming of Christ, we wait and we prepare.
Malachi 3 starts out, “See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me.” The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke refer to this passage as prophecy, foretelling the coming of John the Baptist. This Old Testament reading is paired in the lectionary with the song of Zechariah after the birth of John the Baptist in Luke 1 verses 68-79 and the account of the beginning of John's ministry in Luke 3 verses1-6. John the Baptist is the one that God refers to as the messenger sent "to prepare the way before me", He is, as his father echoes later on, in Luke 1:76, the one who will "go before the Lord to prepare his ways".
If "my messenger" in Malachi 3:1 is consistently identified with John the Baptist in early Christian interpretation, then, "the Lord whom you seek" and "the messenger of the covenant" are most often identified with Jesus Christ himself. It is the Lord who is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap. It is Jesus who will purify the people of the covenant. And, despite our feelings or fears about the matter, this is actually good news! Sin separates us from God. Sin clouds and distorts the good creation God made us and meant us to be. And we are helpless to clean ourselves. Or are we? Enter the refiner of gold and the washer of clothes, to do the cleaning for us? In this Advent text, we are far from Bethlehem and the sweet strains of "Away in a Manger."
Repentance is not an easy process, of course. There is pain involved in refining and cleansing. There is pain involved in dying and rising. But it is a process that is designed for our good, for our well-being, to prepare us for the coming of the Lord. God comes into our midst as Emmanuel, comes to destroy the evil, He comes to draw us out of death into life, into His eternal realm. And though that can be an alarming prospect, it is also one that should fill us with great joy.
It is thought that only when we consider the possible wrath of God, can we also recognize His incomparable kindness. God comes into the very midst of evil and of death, and judges the weaknesses in us and evil in the world. And by judging us, God cleanses and sanctifies us. He comes to us with grace and love.1 Through him and only through him, are we able to name our sins and to enter into repentance.
These are apt words to us in this Advent season. ‘God is coming’. God is coming as a baby in Bethlehem, but God is also coming again "in glory to judge the living and the dead," as the Nicene Creed puts it. And what is our response? Well according many early Christians, any reasonable person should feel at least some healthy respect. You know I find it very remarkable that most of us contemporary Christians face the thought of God’s coming, so calmly, whereas previous generations trembled at this same thought. Have we become so accustomed to the idea of God’s divine love and of God’s coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of awe that God’s coming used to arouse in us? Should we feel comfort at the thought of God’s judgment, or should we fear it? Or have we just become indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable from it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us. The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all sobering news for every one who has a conscience. The Advent season is one of preparation and anticipation. We anticipate the coming of Christmas, of the celebration of Christ’s miraculous birth with mirth and merry activities and in this, the thoughts of God’s possible coming in judgment can be lost. We prepare our houses, schools and churches with decorations, lights and trees with ornaments and such. And this is good. It fills our world with so much beauty, how can we help but feel merry in our preparations? But how should we prepare our spiritual selves? The thought of gift giving and generosity, an extra helping hand extended with love to your neighbors, comes to mind quickly, it is all a part of the essential message that Christ preached. But in doing so are we preparing ourselves spiritually? Are we really thinking of our acts as the cleansing away of our sins? We shouldn’t be giving out of the feeling of guilt for our sins -or the meaning of Christ’s message is lost. We should give out of love, as He gave to us.
Jesus Christ and John the Baptist both preached heavily about repentance. “Repent and be baptized for the Kingdom of God is at hand”. In other words, get yourself ready to come face to face with God, your maker. Make yourself worthy of His presence and to enter into His Kingdom. So I guess that repentance would be a good starting point for our spiritual preparation. I know, I know, most of us think about repentance of our sins, and go “oh man!” “Do I have to?” But I truly believe that the act of repentance is a gift and not the chore or punishment that most of us initially see it as. It can be like some very heavy internal spring house cleaning. The process may leave you exhausted, but you can feel a strong sense of accomplishment in the end. You feel clean and purged. All brand new! So how do we really take a step towards repentance? Well, that is really a personal process, and as individual as all of us are. But I can tell you one thing, to many Christian groups the process of repentance starts with confession- public confession. How public I can’t say. But I do know that many today cringe with fear at this idea, even more so than at the thought of God’s judgment? Wait a minute, so we fear our neighbor’s judgment more so than our makers?
Why confession? Well it’s based on the premise that in order to truly confess our sins we have to do some very deep introspection, we have to take a long and honest look at ourselves. We have to become totally aware of ourselves, in order to be able to identify all of our sins. We have to look at the good and the bad of ourselves, in order to be able to distinguish between the two. We have to hear our own voice as we confess our sins and expose ourselves in our raw shame and the guilt. This is to feel remorse, because that’s what repentance is, isn’t it, remorse? We have to be sorry for what we have done in order to unburden ourselves of this sin don’t we? We can’t do this secretly, there is no privacy in becoming humbled, even if it is self invoked. And that isn’t always very easy is it? The thought of confessing makes most of us today feel very uncomfortable, stepping forward and announcing our short comings is a very humbling experience. Last week during youth time, the question was asked as to whether it was easy to be a Christian and most of the children quickly said yes, the thought ran through my mind, “Perhaps, but it is very difficult to be a ‘good Christian’.”
A little side note here; I spent the yesterday at the church and was pretty busy, so I really didn’t have much time to think about my upcoming sermon, this sermon. But on the drive home I did, wondering and hoping that I would say enough and praying that I didn’t say too much, when a little blurb came on the radio station I was listening to, it was about confession. My ears perked up, this is what we call a ‘God Wink’ in our family, a God Wink is a serendipitous or profound coincidence, a personal message maybe, it was like God was saying to me, “Okay Ray, here’s a little something, something for you to think about.” The person on the radio was talking about the difference between a confession and an excuse. A true confession does not contain a ‘but’, in it. In other words you don’t go up to the person that you have wronged, like oh, say your wife and say, “I am sorry I snapped at you on the phone, BUT, the traffic was terrible and I had bad day at work, and,….blah, blah, blah.” No, that is an excuse, you are excusing your own behavior and placing the blame else where, a true confession would go something like this, “Honey, I am so sorry that I was short with you on the phone today, I was wrong and for that I am very sorry, I feel bad.” That is confession and repentance, the difference being, accepting responsibility for your actions, (it’s called culpability) and then you come forth to apologize for what you have done, because you truly are feeling sorry. And now back to the sermon!
And now we come to the Baptism part of the message. The Jewish practice of immersion has carried over into the Christian tradition. We will be cleansed internally by repentance and externally through baptism, and through this process we are changed, we emerge clean and ‘new’. We emerge into the light and into God’s presence which makes us whole. Baptism is our public proclamation of our change, as we make a vow to ourselves and those that surround us and mostly to God that we use this new beginning to invite God into our lives, thoughts and souls.
I don’t know if I have convinced you or not but at least now you can see why I feel that repentance is not a chore but a gift! An honor! A point to start from, in working towards our way closer to God’s presence. It is our holy spiritual preparation, in our journey and process of stepping into the light. For Jesus is the light, that carries us all on through the darkness, the light of the breaking dawn that kisses us good morning. Oh, the anticipation!
(Please note that the scriptures referred to with this sermon are read by the scripture reader prior to my giving the sermon, if you cannot understand the sermon because you are not familiar with the text, grab a Bible and give it a read, it can't hurt. Can it?)
