Rejoice! God comes in mercy to turn us around

Written by Marv Thiessen

Pastor Marv Thiessen

Calgary First Mennonite Church

December 13, 2009

 

Rejoice! God comes in mercy to turn us around

Advent 3

 

In some ways, as I did my early thinking and reflection about this morning’s texts, I thought I could preach last Sunday’s sermon again. We focused on repentance last Sunday as we were directed by the first six verses of Luke 3. This morning’s key text simply follows last Sunday’s text as it describes the interchange John the Baptist had with people who came out to hear him preach his message of repentance.

Last Sunday, I reflected with you about preaching that addresses repentance, about preaching that calls the hearers to recognize sin in their lives and challenges them to respond to God’s invitation to rethink their ways of living and to return to God-directed lives. In reflecting on preaching that does that, I remembered some of the guilt-inducing preaching of the church of my youth and I said that I didn’t want to return to that. Why wouldn’t I want that? Well, it seems to me that a heavy dose of judgment and guilt weighs us down more than inspires us to live right. It seems to me that the New Testament inspires us toward right living more with a sense that it is a matter of goodness that we live right and that it is the natural outgrowth of who we are in Christ than that we must live right out of fear of judgment. I’m inclined to think that we humans do better with a positive message inspiring right living than a negative message inspiring right living even though both have their place.

If that’s correct, I was left with a question about this morning’s text. We get the sense that John the Baptist was preaching hard about sin. He was challenging the people who came out to the wilderness about their way of living. If my suggestion that this style of preaching is not the most helpful to many people is correct, then why were all these people going to hear John? They weren’t going to a cushy church building where some excellent music would precede the challenging sermon. The preacher didn’t have any fancy video clips to grab their attention before he hit them with his provocative message. That’s not why they went. No, they were headed out to the desert to sit or stand in the sun-baked sand while John the Baptist in his camel-hair coat and bedraggled beard called them a brood of vipers and lambasted them about sin. Why would they go? We’ll respond to that question at several points in this sermon.

We’ll return to that question for the first time after we think about what this morning’s text in Luke 3 tells us about John’s interaction with the people who came to hear him speak. We note this interesting detail about Luke’s account of this interchange in the first verse. Luke tells us that John was speaking to the crowds when he called them a brood of vipers. That’s an interesting detail because Luke says almost the same things as Matthew does in his account but one thing is quite different. Matthew records that John said these words to the Pharisees and Saducees, the Jewish religious leaders. Matthew emphasized that the religious leaders were in need of repentance. Luke emphasizes that this message of repentance is for all. It is for all the crowds that came to hear John.

The message that followed was a strong warning. John asks the people, "Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?" What he meant by the coming wrath isn’t explained. It’s not clear whether this was an idea that the people had or whether this is something that John had already been preaching. We surmise that the people were expecting some act of judgment of God to come to them very soon. John did not speak to whether he believed this was a correct idea or not. He simply told them how they should think and what they needed to do. They could not rely on their Jewish ancestry to put them in good stead with God and they needed to live lives that were in line with repentance, that is, the choice to turn away from actions and attitudes that stand against the desires of God and to turn toward living the way God desires.

John had some hard things to say to them about their religious heritage. He challenged them with the idea that their heritage wouldn’t save them from God’s judgment. God would respond to people based on what they did with their lives. That was the essential meaning of his word picture when he said that the ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

The people responded by asking what they should then do? I think this was likely an honest, real question. "You’ve told us that our current state and actions aren’t good enough for God. What do you suggest we do to make that right?" That’s the kind of question we should join in asking. "How should we order our lives to make sure they are pleasing to God?"

When John answers that question, he speaks to the life situation of his listeners. He sees among them people who have material resources and are keeping them for themselves. He sees among them people who use their position as tax collectors for the Roman government to collect unfair amounts of money for their own gain. And he sees among them people who serve as soldiers and use their position to intimidate people and extort money from them. These were all people who bought into a philosophy of life that encourages one to accumulate all one can for oneself and to be unconcerned about the needs of others. Does that sound familiar? Does such a philosophy of life dominate our culture as well? Perhaps the correction John offers his readers speaks to us too. John tells his listeners to put away that philosophy of life and to develop one that concerns itself with the needs of others. We might summarize the philosophy of life he espoused in terms that school children would well understand. Share, be fair and don’t bully.

John’s listeners were impressed enough with what they heard that they wondered if John might be the Messiah, the messenger from God that they had long awaited. John said he wasn’t but that the Messiah was coming soon and would continue to challenge people toward repentance and better living. The statement he made about Jesus, "His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire," was an unmistakable prediction that Jesus would bring judgment to all humans who would not turn toward God in their lives’ decisions and actions. Then notice what follows that statement. Luke writes that "with many other words John exhorted the people and preached the good news to them."

Where’s the good news? In what sense is the prediction that someone is going to judge you and burn you up good news? I want us to remember the practical application for life that comes to us in John’s corrective words. God calls us to stop putting ourselves first in life. Where we have done that, we need to repent of our wrong directions and turn toward right directions. But that’s not my main point in this sermon. I think our texts today challenge us to consider primarily how the message of repentance and change is good news.

I asked this question earlier. "Why were crowds of people coming out to the desert to hear a message critical of them?" I can’t answer that question definitively, but I can offer the perspective that change in our lives that aligns ourselves with God’s desires for us is change that we need and that we fundamentally desire. It is that because it serves to bring us wholeness and joy in life. That’s why this message of repentance can be called good news.

In that context, let’s consider our text of hope for this morning briefly. The words of Isaiah 12 have a very joyful ring. The writer declares that God is his salvation in whom he will trust and not be afraid. Then his words become more communal than personal and he leads his people in praise, exalting the name of the Lord, singing to the Lord, and proclaiming what God has done to the nations. This is a joyful text.

Now, how does this text relate to the theme of repentance? In the preceding chapters of Isaiah, the theme that God’s anger stands against Israel has been fairly prominent. Israel has done wrong and God is angry with them. The joy of Israel in chapter 12 is introduced with these words. "In that day you will say: ‘I will praise you, O LORD. Although you were angry with me, your anger has turned away and you have comforted me.’" In this text of hope, joy comes about because God’s anger has been turned away.

That’s where repentance and joy walk hand in hand. God is deeply disappointed in our failure to orient our lives toward him. God deeply desires that we change our lives’ orientations and align ourselves with him. When we recognize our failings and align ourselves with God, his forgiveness and restoration is deep and genuine, resulting in a return of wholeness and joy.

I thought a story would be a good way of bringing these words of good news to real life. I reminded you of one of the incidents that occurred between Jake and Bill Reimer (unrelated) of Beside the River Mennonite Church near Winkler, Manitoba in a sermon at the end of October. In their creative conflict, each had desecrated the other’s yard in anger at the other. Earlier in their history, Bill had caused Jake’s land to flood by draining water from his land onto Jake’s land and Jake had taken revenge by killing Bill’s dog. The whole dispute had become public and odious in the community. Some time after the earlier incident, Jake and Bill had come to a point of reconciliation through the efforts of church leaders and a Mennonite conflict resolution specialist from Winnipeg. But that had fallen apart later when Jake and Bill found themselves diametrically opposed to each other in relation to a disputed church project and engaged in mutual property defacement, the story I reminded you of several weeks ago.

They didn’t get over that one quickly and easily. They were genuinely angry at each other even though they stopped engaging in public acts of anger. The ministers of their church again urged them to overcome their differences and love each other as brothers as the Bible called for. Let’s face it, the attitudes and actions of Jake and Bill Reimer in their angry dispute necessitated repentance. They needed to admit their wrongdoing, work toward forgiveness, and turn around in their attitudes and actions. They were never going to experience much joy in life as long as they harboured hatred for each other. But Jake and Bill were not inclined to let this one go. They had reconciled once earlier and that had lasted for a while but they now knew that their hatred for each other was not going away and they would just live with it. Yes, it was wrong but that’s just the way it was. And they wouldn’t be attending church together, either. It was interesting that in their condition they still thought about church attendance, but they did. Somehow, they believed they could continue in their attitudes toward each other but respond to God with church participation. They began attending different churches in neighbouring communities and had nothing to do with each other except offering an offensive gesture when passing each other on the road.

Then, one day, Jake was operating his tractor with a front-end loader on his yard when things went terribly awry. While his loader was up in the air, his front wheel suddenly hit a large hole and the tractor upended. Jake was thrown out of his seat and off of the tractor and the lower part of his body was trapped under the upended tractor. It was fortunate that he was not immediately killed and fortunate that his wife found him in time to summon help. It was unfortunate that one of his legs did not survive the mishap.

Jake ended up spending considerable time in the hospital. During that time, God used the event to work in Bill’s heart. The Holy Spirit, of course, had for years been urging Bill and Jake to repent of their attitudes and actions and to do the right things in their relationship. Bill and Jake had resisted the urging of the Spirit. Now, though, Bill arrived at a crisis. He wondered if he could have lived with himself if Jake had died with their conflict still burning. He knew that if he wanted to live in joyful relationship with God, he had to take steps to make this thing right. Eventually, he worked up the courage to visit Jake in the hospital and confessed his wrongdoing in their conflict. He promised to do better with God’s help. Likely, Jake had also been softened by his near-death experience and he said he had also been thinking that he needed to admit his wrongdoing in their conflict and he promised to do better.

When Bill went home, the Holy Spirit impressed on him that turning his actions around should result in some practical change. It wasn’t hard to figure out how that could be done. It was obvious that Jake wouldn’t be doing the chores on his farm for a while but that those chores had to be done. It was also obvious that Bill, who farmed right across the road from Jake, was the best option for doing some of the work that Jake wouldn’t be able to do. And so, in a practical display of repentance, Bill began doing the most critical jobs on Jake’s farm that were going undone.

What do you suppose was the result of this turning around? I can tell you that there was considerable joy that resulted from the repentance of Bill and Jake Reimer. Perhaps most significantly, each of them found themselves feeling much closer to God and more alive in their relationships with God. They found themselves finally feeling more whole after many years of fragmentation due to anger and vengeance. This new joy didn’t end with them. The entire body of Beside the River Mennonite Church also experienced joyfulness as they saw the way that the work of God had helped Bill and Jake turn around. It was a confirmation that it is possible to trust in God for change in people’s lives. It was an encouragement to the ministers of the church to continue to speak of God’s merciful work of turning humans around. It made it possible for the church people to feel more confident in speaking with other members of their community about the good news of Jesus.

So why would we come intentionally to the message of repentance? Why would we allow God to challenge us about how we live with the message that we need to turn around? How can we view that message as good news? We respond to those questions by remembering that it is in the message of life change that God comes to us in mercy and brings to us the potential of genuine joy.