Getting Really Real

An Advent Sermon Preached by The Rev. Paul Debenport

December 6, 2009

Call to Worship:  Matthew 3: 1—6

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”  This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said:  “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:  `Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’  Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.  Then the people of Jerusalem and all

Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they

were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.”

At the Sermon:

Just as we’re getting everything all pretty for Christmas, here he is again, right on the lectionary’s schedule, striding into our worship and our lives messing up everything.

He’s not pretty, nor is his message pretty, sweet, or sentimental.  Just necessary.

He’s real, really real, and is calling us to get real, really real, too.  Hear God’s

urgent, yet gracious Word as Matthew 3: 7—12 continues John’s story:

But when John saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them,

“You brood of vipers!  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Bear fruit worthy of repentance.  Do not presume to say to yourselves, `We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.  Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.  I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals.  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.  His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

The Word of the Lord.  Thanks be to God.

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          Reality TV is anything but real; at best it’s surreal.  But despite what we’re being sold as real on TV, we do know the difference.  We know when things are getting real—really real.  An example, also from TV:  Most of the time when I turn on televised football games, it is more for background noise than because I’m more than mildly interested.  But one game some time ago got my undivided attention, because it got really real.  I looked up, not because of a wildly cheering crowd, but because, suddenly, it got totally quiet.  One of the players was knocked unconscious and had stopped breathing.  His neck was fractured, and his body remained motionless in the midst of frantic activity by trainers and doctors trying to save his life.

          Five, ten, fifteen minutes went by.  The thousands of fans in the stands remained eerily silent.  The announcers only spoke in hushed tones.  The cameras focused repeatedly on the shocked faces of players, on groups of players kneeling in prayer, players from both teams joining each other on their knees, players looking heavenward in tears, and on that motionless body on the field.  What was a game, a diversion, entertainment for most, and a way to make a living for some, suddenly became a prayer service.  While no announcer named the name above all names, clearly that quarter hour in the midst of a game was now pointing in a totally different direction.  Suddenly, what’s important in life became really real.

          Just like when John the Baptist suddenly burst onto the scene dressed like the Prophet Elijah and urgently preaching a message of repentance.  And the people immediately recognized the real when they heard it.  The people were just going through the motions of their lives and the motions of their faith.  John especially lights into the Temple leaders, who were more interested in keeping people, especially poor and sick people, out of the temple and separated from God than in welcoming them in.  But John spoke to all God’s people such an unvarnished truth that they were confronted with the fact that they had lost something, lost their way, lost God’s way in their lives, and were in grave, spiritual danger. 

          John told them he was there among them, as he is among us still today, as a sort of signpost.  John was like the signpost on the freeway off ramp that shouts on an urgent red background, ‘WRONG WAY.”  John’s word for it is “repent,”—not a word much heard these days.  We say and hear “I’m sorry,” a lot, but most often we know it’s not really real.  From people convicted of really heinous crimes to politicians, sports stars, celebrities and from ourselves so often we hear the phrase: “I’m sorry for any pain I may have caused.”  It seems to me we have too many hollow “I’m sorrys” around, but precious little real remorse, hardly any real repentance.[1] 

          The word repentance doesn’t mean to be sorry so much as it means to turn around, to face a new direction, to recognize that what we are doing now is taking us the wrong way and that we need stop and turn another way.  Real repentance faces the truth in us, it says clearly to God, to others, and even to ourselves that we know that the road we are on really is hurting them, and that we will travel a new way, God’s way in our lives.  Real repentance helps us focus our lives beyond our own plans, beyond our own maneuverings for whatever self-serving goals we may be pursuing.  Repentance is a point of departure, a fresh start, a new vision, a new realm of possibilities open by our God who never seems to tire of making all things new.

          And John says something else really real about real repentance, that it’s not the words themselves that are most important, however deeply and sincerely they may be offered.  It’s our changed actions that matter most.  “Bear fruit worthy of repentance,”  John thunders.  So real repentance doesn’t just accomplish today’s forgiveness—which it does—but it also has consequences into the future.  Here John is calling us to the reality in us—in me, in you, in all—that there are parts of our lives that are wrong way streets, that there are acts of commissions and inactions of omissions that need to and can be turned around, bearing “fruit worthy of repentance.”

          So here’s old John the Baptist cluttering up all our pretty preparations for Christmas again, calling us to get really real.  But that’s the point, for repentance is what makes us ready to receive the One who is coming, the One whose sandals neither John nor we are worthy to carry.  Without turning from those things which ever turn our lives more inward and less upward and outward, we won’t be prepared to receive Him.  This is the reason for Advent preceding Christmas.  It’s to help us prepare, to repent, to turn away from all that separates us from Him and toward others who connect us to Him and His way of what is really real, and really matters in life.  It’s so we don’t miss him like Herod all hunkered down in his palace and self-serving plots, but see Him and welcome him and serve Him like the shepherds and Magi. 

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          Now retired seminary professor Fred Craddock tells about when John the Baptist appeared in his life and turned him around.  But his name wasn’t John, it was Albert—Albert Schweizer, who was sort of the Mother Teresa of his generation.  Schweizer was a famous German physician who spent most of his life serving the critically ill in Africa.  He was also both a famous organist and theologian who wrote the then wildly popular and still studied book The Quest for the Historical Jesus.

          When Craddock was a young seminary student, he heard that Schweizer was to perform a benefit concert at a large church in Cleveland.  Since Craddock had recently written a critical paper about Schweizer’s book and had received an A+, and since he was filled with himself, and eager to show his stuff, he planted himself on the first row, ready and loaded with a page of smart questions to put the aging old doctor on the spot at the after concert Q and A.

          But after his concert Dr. Schweizer didn’t ask, “Are there any questions?”  He simply said, “I thank you for your hospitality and your gracious reception of me, but I have to leave now to catch my plane back to my people in Africa.  They are sick and hungry and dying.  If any of you have in you the love of Jesus, come help me.”  Dr. Craddock’s self-serving, smarty questions turned to ashes right then and there.  And his whole life became pointed in a whole new direction.[2]

          John the Baptist can appear to us anywhere and anytime, including here and now, pointing the way, calling to us to repent, to turn around and “bear fruit worthy of repentance.” 

Amen.