Broadway Christian Church
Columbia , Missouri

Morning Worship
October 3, 2004

Prayer of the Day

Eternal God, thank you for calling us into this place to be reminded of who and whose we are!  We rejoice in the gift of life, which we receive by grace, and the new life you give in Jesus Christ.  We do this in his name and for your glory.  Amen.

Scripture 
Matthew 3:1-12

In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!”  For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah saying:

“The voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight’.”

Now John himself was clothed in camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist.  His food was locusts and wild honey.  Then Jerusalem, all Judea, and all the region around the Jordan went out to him and were baptized by him in the Jordan, confessing their sins. 

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “Brood of vipers!  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’  For I say to you that God is able to raise up children for Abraham from these stones.  And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees.  Therefore every tree, which does not bear good fruit, is cut down and thrown into the fire.  I, indeed, baptize you with water unto repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry.  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.  His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will thoroughly clean out his threshing floor, and gather his wheat into the barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

Then Jesus came from Galileeto John at the Jordanto be baptized by him.

Message
God’s Doberman
Rick Frost

Good old John!  John the Baptist.  John the Baptist seems like, for many of us, the Doberman pinscher of the Gospel, always nipping at our heels.  Now usually we hear John just before Christmas time, just before the baby Jesus is born.  We hear about John just when we’re really wanting to sing songs about “Silent Night, Holy Night.”  That’s why I chose this week to look at John the Baptist.

John speaks, I think, of important things most of us really just don’t hear, because we’re so focused on the baby who’s coming.  Here in October, we might be a little better able to hear the growl of this in-your-face watchdog, who grabs people by their pant legs and barks a message of warning: “Repent.  Turn.  Return, for the kingdom of God is near!”

Before he’s through, our heads are reeling with vipers, and snakes, and wrath, and axes, and unquenchable fire.  Yet, in every single gospel – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – Jesus is always introduced to us by John.  Did you know that?  It’s as if to say, “You know, if you can’t handle John, you’re not going to be able to handle the one who’s going to come after him.”

As different as John and Jesus are going to turn out to be, they go together, really, like night and day, inextricably linked.  John’s judgment – clearly judgment – precedes Jesus’ grace.  Isn’t that interesting?  It’s always been that way.  You cannot separate those two things as much as people try, because those who know nothing of God’s judgments don’t need grace, do they?  They go together.

Now John’s business is repentance.  Repentance meaning, of course, to turn.  You know that.  Repentance meaning to return, or to turn away from those things that are wrong and to turn toward things that are good, and right, and loving.  It means to change your mind.  If our mind and our thinking are faulty, then we need to change our minds to the right way, the better way.  It means to change our ways, if what we’re doing is not right, is not good, is not loving, then we need to change to ways that are.  That’s what repentance means.  It’s a good thing.  It’s the stuff of a better life, a better way.  It’s what we love to talk about nowadays as “transformed living.”

Now, what I want you to remember is that John’s baptism and Christian baptism are different.  They are.  John is not a Christian.  You know that?  When John got into the water, he saw his job as being the one who was there to clean you up.  He was trying to get you ready to meet God.  It was a meeting he believed was going to take place very, very soon.  He went around begging people to change their lives in preparation for that meeting.  He was not above, as you know, scaring the living daylights out of persons if that is what it took.  It was anything to wake people up and make them see they were basically sleep walking through their lives.  Or more importantly, they were confusing their ways with God’s ways resulting in a life that is accumulating sin just like an empty house accumulates dust.  It is a life that gets further and further away from God.  When it does, of course, you and I know that leads to very destructive, sad consequences.

John offered – and that is what it was, an offer – to hose folks down.  Now, they had to be willing, but if they were willing, he said there were ways to wash all that crud away.  He would clean them up.  They would be rid of all that bad stuff forever.  Actually, it wasn’t his doing; it was God doing it through him.  All they had to do, he said, was want it.  They had to desire it, consent to it, repent, turn, return to the Lord.  Then they could start living their lives all over again.  They could start a new life, even before they dried off.  It was an amazing thing.

The past would lose its power over them.  Whatever they had done, whatever they had said, or made happen, or whatever had happened to them would no longer be the things that would run their lives.  You know about that voice that can sometimes go on in your head that keeps telling you how rotten, how ruined you are?  That voice disappears, and in it’s place is the voice of God taking over telling you how loved you are, how blessed you are, how beloved, and how to do life the right way.

Now, as scary as John was – I mean, camel hair, loin cloth, wrap-around leather belt, eating wild honey and locust, screaming like a mad man out in the desert – regardless of all that, it was essentially a pretty-good deal.  In fact, it was such a great deal that people walked for days just to find him.  He didn’t do his thing in the city.  He didn’t do his thing in the temple or the church.  John was out in the desert.  You had to walk to get out there.  People walked for days to find him.  He wasn’t looking for them.  They were looking for him.  Sometimes they would just stay there for a while, just to hear him say it over and over and over again: “Repent.  Turn.  Return for the kingdom of heaven is near.”

Now, what might sound like a threat to many of us in this room, I think, sounded like a promise to them.  We might hear those words and think “guilt.”  They heard those words and thought “pardon.”  That’s why I think we’re so turned off, most of us, by the notion of repentance.  Just the word itself doesn’t do good things for most of us.  I think it’s probably because of the way we learned it.  Repentance meant, for many of us while growing up, owning up to how rotten we were.  Repentance meant owning up to how selfish, how sinful, how deeply defective a human being we were.  Just the thought of us, we were told, grieved the heart of God.  Indeed, if you were a person of pride… if you came off as arrogant… it was considered the root of so much evil.  That was the message we received.

Only, what if that’s not true?  What if pride, arrogance, and ego aren’t really the problems at all?  What if, maybe, the problems are the very opposite of those things?  What if the main thing most of us in this gathering of people need is to repent of is not our pride, our arrogance, nor or ego?  What if the main thing persons in this room need to repent of is our despair?

Do you know what I’m talking about?  I think you do.  I looked up “despair” this week.  It means those things that seemingly will never change for us, those things that, no matter what we say, no matter what we do, no matter what we feel like, we are stuck with forever.  That mess we may have made somewhere along in our lives, or that others have made in our lives.  It doesn’t matter, either case, there is that feeling somehow we’re stuck.  There’s not hope.  There’s no chance to begin again, no chance for a new life. 

Now friends, that is a real problem in this community.  I cannot tell you how many people I know who are all but dead with despair.  You wouldn’t know it by looking at them.  It happens in so many ways. 

Some of us get diagnosed with a big-time illness.  I mean a really big-time illness.  It drains you.  And it doesn’t just drain you.  It drains the caregiver as well. 

There are persons in our midst who are grieving the loss of a loved one who died years ago, folks.  They just haven’t been willing or able to let it go. 

There are persons in our midst who were abused as children.  Decades have passed, and they still can’t get past it. 

There are persons in our midst who have suffered economic reversals.  They are so far in debt they can’t see their way out, and they can’t get past it. 

There are persons, myself included, who have done those things which we ought not to have done, or have had things done to us that should never have been done, but they happen anyway, most of the time a long time ago.  There’s no changing that.  My dear friend Ralph who made some serious mistakes managing other people’s money and his own, but couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.  The list goes on.

For most of us, despair is much more serious than pride, arrogance, or ego will ever be.  It is so serious that the scholars say the ancients used to have in their baptismal vow something that was aimed right at what we’re talking about today.  And, of course, we were so smart 500 years ago we just threw all of that stuff out.  Big mistake.  But in the early church, when a person was baptized, the person was asked this question: “Will you persevere in resisting evil?  And when (not if, but when) you fall into sin, will you repent, will you return to the Lord?  You’re going to go away.  You’re going to drift away.  There are going to be things that take you away.  But when that happens, are you able and willing to return?”

That’s what they wanted to know at your baptism.  And the answer was, “I will, with the help of God.”

That’s the John-the-Baptist vow.  It’s not about keeping our eye on our rottenness, folks.  It’s about keeping our eye on those things that have the power to take our hope away.  Those things never, ever are to be allowed to take hold of us and get the best of us.  I don’t care how many times you have to repeat the process.  There are people in this room who have to do this every day. 

We are a people who never say “never.”  We are a people who say, “I will never say I will never recover.”  We never say, “I will never give up.”  “I’ll never get it.”  “I’ll never be able.”  “I’ll never learn.”  That’s not us.  The reason that is not us is because we believe in God’s goodness a whole lot more than we believe in our rottenness.

Most of the repentance that most often causes our stomachs to turn is always focused on “me, me, me.”  It’s a miserable center – me.  It could revolt you, but the healing kind of repentance is far more interested in God than it is in me.  Spend more time looking at what is possible to do today rather than looking in the mirror and thinking about all the things that are not possible today.  It has much more faith in God’s power to make things new, rather than our power to mess things up.  Hallelujah!

This is what John the Baptist offered people, and they responded.  It was like a cold shower, a fresh start.  It was a cure for the drain of hope.  Now, he offered it as a place to begin.  Baptism was never just an end in itself.  Baptism is the beginning, folks.  It’s not the end.  It’s where it starts.  Because John knew someone was coming after him who was going to offer something a lot stronger than what he had to offer.  But meanwhile, evidently, according to the Scripture, he was fairly content to be God’s watchdog, God’s Doberman pinscher, nipping at people’s heels to get their attention.  He wanted them to wake up.  He wanted them to wake up to what might be coming next.

In the Daily Morning Section of this book I’m using right called Chalice Worship is a great line in one of the prayers that goes something like this:

“Eternal God, we rejoice this morning in the gift of life today, which we have received from your hands and by your grace, and for the new life we have been given in Jesus Christ.”

Now I am a person who needs to not just read those words and say those words occasionally.  I need to hear those words and say those words every single morning.  If you’re willing, I’m going to ask you to echo them back to me as I lead you, a phase at a time.

(Editor’s note:  The congregation spoke this prayer responsively.)

“Eternal God… we rejoice this morning… in the gift of this life… which we have received… from your hand and by your grace… and for the new life… you give us today.  In Christ Jesus…”

And we all say together… “Amen.”

Benediction

God of Compassion, when our grief steals away our breath, you are there holding us.  When our healing helps us catch that breath, you are there to steady us.  When the restoration of our hearts breathes new life in us, you are the winds moving us forward, one step at a time.  Amen.