We normally prepare because we expect something to happen. Today's story is that this eccentric man, dressed in a rough coat woven from camel-hair, tied round his waist with a leather belt, eating locusts and wild honey (in other words, living on the absolute basics) comes preaching in the desert – and people are excited by his appearance, his presence, his message, so much so that the flock to listen to him.
His message is terse: “Repent (change of mind) for the kingdom of heaven is near.”
John self-identifies as the “One sent to prepare the way of the Lord...” he was, as Michael Green put it, “His Master's Voice”!
Something was going to happen. The Lord was going to come among his people. The promised “Kingdom” was at hand – this season of the Messiah that Isaiah had promised, the last days that Joel spoke about, the beginning of the “end” that Daniel had hinted at. The Kingdom is at hand. It's going to happen. There was “one coming after John”, more powerful than him; he wasn't worthy to tie this guy's laces. This was the person who was going to bring the Kingdom; who was going to baptise with the Holy Spirit, who as going to bring judgement. A winnowing fork or fan was used by a farm worker to throw grain into the air, so the husks and weevils and other rubbish blew away and the seeds could then be ground for flour. This person – Messiah – and the Kingdom, were coming with the power of the Spirit and with judgement.
So what does “ready” look like?
People were coming to John and being baptised. People went down into the River Jordan, and were splashed, plunged into the water. (Not sprinkled with a few drops of water from a clam shell. Greek has two words: bapto means to dip, like the blacksmith dips the red-hot horseshoe in a barrel of water to temper it, or like cloth is dipped in dye; and baptizo means to swamp, flood, drown, or sink... baptism was meant to ruin you! It was a public declaration of a private change of heart, a reorientation. It was a token of a desire to be spiritually clean, a way of expressing this “repentance” thing.
Now this wasn’t something John invented. These Jewish people already knew about baptism. When a family from “outside” of Judaism – Romans or Greeks for example – adopted the Jewish way of life so totally that they wanted to be accepted fully as Jews, it took three stages. All the family were baptised – a ceremonial bath to wash away their “Gentile unclean-ness.” Then all the men were circumcised. Then the head of the household offered a sacrifice.
John's baptism was different. It was offered to Jews and non-Jews alike. So John was in effect saying to the Jews “you are just like pagans in the eyes of God. Your Jewishness isn't going to save you! You all – Jews and gentiles alike – need to “repent!”
And what does repentance look like?
It's more than an idea. There has to be fruit. Some of the people who came to John were very religious, and John wasn’t keen to baptise them. He wasn't sure they had really repented. Some were from a group called “Pharisees”: they took the Bible seriously; they believed in the resurrection. They were expecting Messiah to come. They believed in keeping the law, observing the Sabbath, washing their hands before eating, and so on. They were the traditional bible-believing people of the first century. And others were called Sadducees: they were more interested in the Temple and sacrifices than the Bible; they didn't believe in the resurrection, or angels. They didn't worry too much about the details of the law. They were the upper-class, intellectual, gown-wearing liberals of the first century. But all of them – Pharisees and Sadducees alike – were a “brood of vipers”. There was something poisonous in the way they thought, in their smugness, their lack of concern for others. Both needed to produce fruit of repentance. For the ordinary people, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.” (Lk 3. 11) Then there were the soldiers, the tax collectors: they had to be fair in their dealings, not abuse their power, not oppress people. (Lk 3. 12-14) So John wasn't keen on baptising some of the people who came forward.
And tantalisingly, there is this other person who comes forward for baptism, whom John is reluctant to baptise. This time, it was because John wasn't sure this guy, Jesus, needed a baptism of repentance at all. In fact Jesus wasn't baptised in an act of repentance but “to fulfil all righteousness”. “Righteousness” here means the kind of life people were expected to live after being baptised: a life totally surrendered to God. So in his baptism, Jesus is saying “God is aleady fully in charge of my life.” And as part of his surrender to God, Jesus is embracing the cross, beginning to stand with the sinners he came to save. Jesus has a unique and special relationship with God the Father – he is God's Son; the Holy Spirit falls on him at his baptism; his Father is pleased with him. This was the Person, for whom John was preparing the way.
What are we to get ready for? What is the thing we are expecting to happen? Jesus has come. And he wants to visit us again by his Spirit.
We are to get ready for Jesus! Not just for Christmas!
We are to get ready for:
The kingdom of God to be manifested, to be seen! God's rule. God's rules!
Judgement that separates the wheat from the chaff, blows away the dust, and the weevils.
The Holy Spirit filling our lives.
Righteousness to be fulfilled... sins to be dealt with
Revelation of who Jesus is!
And how can we get ready?
By a public declaration of a private reorientation.
One way we can do that is by baptism. The baptism we do is shaped by what John did and by the fact that Jesus was baptised by John. God knows that we need to respond to him, we need to make a clear, public declaration of a private re-orientation. But the content of Christian Baptism is more than John's Baptism. John's was all about repentance. Christian Baptism is about reception as well as repentance. It is an appeal to God from a clear conscience. (1 Peter 3. 21) It is about repentance and faith.
So to be ready, we may need to make some kind of public, physical step: we have made Christianity too intellectual, too cerebral, too internal, and too private and too easy. You say something in your heart, to invite Jesus in. “Every head bowed, every eye closed; raise your hand so the preacher can see. “ But John, and Jesus, insist that wont' work. We need the sacraments. We need to step forward and get baptised. We need to take bread and wine. We need as Billy Graham used to say to “get right up out of your seat”.
Why do we have a prayer-team here every Sunday? Is it because they are better than all the rest of us? Is it because sometimes we can't pry for ourselves? Well, sometimes we do need someone to stand with us in prayer; sometimes we are not sure how to pray for ourselves. And we have a recognised team so that people who step forward are safe. But these guys' prayers are not necessarily any better than your own. Sometimes we know we can pray for ourselves. But we need to stand, to step forward and ask for prayer. I believe that the physical act of stepping forward and asking for prayer, is sometimes what opens the door for God to bless us.
We need to produce the fruit
As simple, Bible-believing Christians, we need to produce the fruit. As people who feel we know the “Right way” to do things, we need to produce the fruit of repentance. Attitudes of superiority, criticism, rivalry and hatred need to go. Attitudes that exploit and manipulate other people, need to go. Indifference to the suffering of the poor, needs to go. The instinct to put ourselves first, needs to go. The desire to be in control, or any idea of self-sufficiency, needs to go. Then we will be “our Master's voice”, empowered by the Spirit, and preparing the way for Jesus' kingdom to touch our world.
© Gilmour Lilly December 2016
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