John the Baptist - Advent 2

Imagine if you will you were nicely asleep, comfortably snuggled down under the duvet,

When suddenly someone comes rushing shines a bright light in your face and throws water over you.

I wonder what you would say – feel, do!

A brutal wake up call.
 Wake up calls- I’m sure we all have examples of not very nice ones possibly not as bad as that. .

In our gospel reading this morning we see a bit of a wake up call.

It’s a great wake up call though because what Matthew is telling us is that that’s what John the Baptist’s was like to the Jewish people of his day.

John’s ministry burst in upon the surprised Jewish world.

Many had been looking for a sign from God, but they hadn’t expected it to look like this.

Many had wanted a Messsiah to lead them against the Romans, but they weren’t anticipating a prophet telling them to repent.

John was a voice shouting across their dreams,

Their dreams of freedom- freedom that had been promised such a long time ago and freedom which seemed such a long way away with the situation of Roman occupation.

Some must have thought that he was mad- coming along telling them to wake up to the greatest moment in Jewish history

Within the Jewish history they were well used to prophets coming to give them messages from God.

Their history was full of situations where they had been called back to God,

They were told by the prophets of times when they would be taken over by other nations, where they would be in exile and yet how a remnant would return to their own land.

And through their history these prophets had spoken of a future time when the Messiah would come.

But these prophecies had apparently ended with Malachi and now some 400 years later there was a new prophet on the block.

This man John was telling them to wake up, to get ready, because something amazing was just about to happen.

And this strange man comes along and all he does seems to be full of significance.

He comes along wearing strange clothes – camels hair, with a leather belt.

Eating honey and locusts.

All these things reminding the people of the Old Testament prophets.- Elijah is referred to in 2 Kings as a hairy man with a leather belt around his waist.

So he looks like a prophet.

And the location that he finds himself in is also deeply significant.

The Jordan – full of significance for the Jewish people.

We had seen Jacob cross the Jordan to meet Esau.

Joshua led the people of Israel across the Jordan into the promised land.

The ministries of the prophets Elijah and Elisha had focused on the Jordan.

In preaching and baptising here, John was calling up many sacred memories.

And it wasn’t only the Jordan that had significance but also the dessert.

The people had wandered there fore 40 years, sustained by God’s goodness.

There was some idea that the Messiah would appear in the dessert.

This significance would not have been lost on the Jewish people who were still waiting with anticipation the promised messiah.

Who would have known the words that we had read of Isaiah which pointed to someone coming before to prepare the way.

The challenge that John brought had a sharp edge to it.

They were being told to get ready that someone was coming very soon.

At assemblies once as we thought about Advent I’ve asked the children to think what they would need to get ready if the queen was coming to visit.

They all came out with such things as making sure the school was clean, that their uniforms were pristine, that they had food and drink ready for a party.

Apparently it is a bit of a joke that everywhere the queen goes she smells fresh paint.

We would smarten things up if we were expecting royalty.

In the same way John is telling Israel that they need to smarten up to receive the messiah who is coming.

So what can we learn from this meeting of John the Baptist and his wake up call to the people to get ready for Jesus.

Well I think this can help us to think of our faith in three distinct ways or three things that matter.

Firstly our context matters

Secondly our whole matters- both body and soul

And thirdly we all matter

Firstly our context matters.

We see from this passage that Christian truth and experience are not found separate from the other bits of life of the day.

We see from John the Baptist that he was so geared in to the history of the Jewish people.

We see this also when we look at the old testament prophets.

They were not only looking forward but they too related to the day.

They challenged the society from which they came, they spoke out about aspects of contemporary life which were against God’s kingdom principles.

The experience of both John and also the prophets was that their faith impinged on all aspects of life, of the history of the nation, of the social life of the day, of the political life of the day.

And this is true not only for then but also for now.

Our faith can not be independent of other aspects of our lives.

It is only as religious belief and practise truly engages with the affairs of everyday life that it can be seen as authentically from God

John’s role, location, manner and message interlocked Jewish history, contemporary life, future hope and God’s presence in them all.

This has to be a key to our mission and ministry.

So is our faith separate from the context that we find ourselves in.

From this passage it can’t be.

We need to engage our faith within our context.

We have some wonderful examples of this with the campaign against poverty spearheaded by Christian organisations, and then recently the stop the traffic – working to alleviate the modern day slave trade.

True faith and mission engages with the context with which we find ourselves in.

So the question we need to ask ourselves is what is the context for our mission as a church – what are the key issues that surround us here and now in Poole and how can we get involved.

Secondly our whole matters both body and soul.

John the Baptist came preaching a baptism of repentance.

Repentance relates to every part of our lives.

We cannot separate our faith out and see it as something we do privately and on a Sunday without letting it influence the rest of our lives.

There is not room in Christianity for something which thinks just of the soul and not of the body, just of our time with God but not of our time at work, which separates our church life from our home life.

The call to repentance cuts across all of this – it cuts across our whole lives.

And the fact of forgiveness also cuts across this.

So our whole matters- both body and soul and God will forgive and redeem our whole when we repent.

And thirdly our faith is not something that we do individually but is intrinsically linked with other people and with God’s whole plan for salvation.

So in our faith we all matter.

We all have a specific place and role in God’s kingdom.

When we look at John we are able to see God’s plan for him in God’s wider plan for the world.

We have seen how even in the days of Isaiah there was a plan for John the Baptist.

John’s place in God’s larger plans is a lesson with broad implications for us all.

The Christian gospel makes us broad minded as we look at God’s eternal plan.

As we come to worship week by week we are reminded of this perspective, we see ourselves within God’s wider plan for salvation.

We see the wide sweep of God’s purposes,

And as we see this we begin to see that our own part within this.

And yet this is not something that we do on our own.

But we are linked clearly with other people.

In God’s purpose and plan we belong together with other people.

The message of the prophets would have been purposeless if John had not been raised up to preach repentance.

John’s words would have been meaningless had the prophets not stood up and said what they did hundreds of years before.

Jesus’ own ministry was aided by the fact that John was willing to baptise not only others but Jesus himself.

We see within this the way that our faith is not just something we do as individuals but is so linked with other people.

We see this clearly when we come to Paul’s teaching on the body of Christ – words which we echo regularly at our communion service= though we are many we are one body.

So our faith is not just individual but belongs with others.

So we see within this message how our faith is not individual but relates not only to our context, to our whole but to each other.

This advent as we come to prepare for God’s coming let’s begin to see how God may be calling us to share our faith in the context we find ourselves in and take our part in his plan for the world.

Amen