THE CERTAINTY OF THE LORD’S COMING.

Have you ever been ridiculed for your Christian beliefs? Have you ever had people mock-scoff-make fun of Christianity?

What do you do in those situations? Do you ignore it? Do you just walk away? Or do you make some kind of response?

There is no easy answer to that. It all depends on the situation. In the Bible reading for today we see how the Apostle Peter responded when people were ridiculing his faith. This letter of Peter could well have been written today instead of almost 2,000 years ago. We can see from this letter that people haven’t really changed all that much over the centuries. People who scoff-mock Christianity are saying much the same kind of thing today as they said centuries ago. So that makes this letter from Peter very relevant for us today. Scoffing at –mocking-making fun of Christian teaching is not unique to today. It is not something that only happens today. There always have been and always will be those who ridicule Christianity and its teachings. That is what makes this passage relevant for us today.

Two kinds of sermons-fish and chips –easily digested; and steak and vegies-you have to chew on- because of the particular topic-this is a steak sermon- you are going to have chew/digest this sermon.

How long is soon? How soon is soon? Song, “Soon and very soon we are going to see the Lord” . So how soon is soon? Can you remember when you were a child and you asked your parents for something and they would say “soon”. Or perhaps you used that response to your own children when they wanted something.

So how “soon is soon”. That is basically what the early Christians were being asked about the Return of Jesus. The mocking question they were being asked was, ‘Where is this coming he promised? What they meant was, “You Christians say that Jesus promised to return, so then, where is he? What the mockers were implying was that Jesus wasn’t coming back.

Now this kind of mocking question wasn’t anything new. It was the kind of question that unbelievers have taunted God’s people down the centuries.

“Where is your God? “ they demanded of the Psalmist.

“ Where is the God of Judgement? They asked the prophet Malachi.

“Where is the Word of the Lord”, the prophet Jeremiah’s enemies asked him.

Now in asking that question they were implying that there was NO GOD and therefore no Word of God and that believers were just deluding themselves. This of course has been the standard tactic of non- believers down the centuries. Not very original.

Let’s have a closer look at what the sceptics were saying and how the Apostle responded to their claim that Jesus was not coming back.

1.Vs4:Their first argument was that the promise had been so long delayed that tt was safe to assume that it would never be fulfilled. In other words because it hadn’t happened, it wasn’t going to happen. So you might as well forget about it.-poor logic.

2.Their second argument 4b the world is going on precisely as it always has. They claimed that the world was stable and such an event as the Return of Jesus and the end of the world simply won’t happen.

The Apostle has a two fold answer. And he deals with their second argument first- ie that the world is stable and such upheavals just don’t happen on earth.

Peter refutes that claim by pointing out that the world has not always been stable- vs6-he reminds them of the great flood that destroyed the world at the time of Noah. And then he adds that a second great destruction- this time by fire- was on its way. He is arguing that since God had the power to create the world he also has the power to destroy it. The great flood showed what God was capable of doing. If he caused a great catastrophe in the past he could certainly do so in the future.

Vs8-9. here the Apostle tackles the first argument. The sceptics refer to the slowness of God to act-the long delay and claim that they can safely assume that Jesus is not going to return- that the Second Coming is not going to happen.

Well the Apostle has a two fold answer to that argument.

1.Wemust look at time from God’s perspective. Time is not the same for God as it is for us. He quotes psalm 90,”Wit God a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day”. We have a short term view of time whereas God has a long term view. Have you watched Dr Who? God is the original Time Lord because he is the Lord of time. So God’s plans are not affected by time as ours are. We only have a human life time to carry out our plans. But God has all eternity to carry out his.

So when it comes to how God works –we must forget our ideas of time. For Time does not limit God like it does you and me. God is not limited by time. He stands outside of time and sets the limits of time.

2. The Apostle Peter points out (verse 9) that there is a good reason for God’s apparent slowness to act- one that is for our benefit. God acts slowly because he is merciful. He withholds his hand of judgement to give unbelievers more opportunity to repent. So God’s delay is not because of his inability to act –BUT to give people more opportunity to come to their senses and repent-to give people more time to prepare for Christ’s Return.

What this means then is that we are to look on the extension of time that God gives

us as an opportunity to share or faith-the Good News of what Jesus has done for us. After all the Bible tells us that God wants all to be saved. So every day that we live- every day that we draw breath-is an opportunity to share the Good News about Jesus and his Return.

So “How Long is Soon?”. It may be SOONER than we think.

Finally we come to the Apostle’s conclusion. Read vs 11. “SINCE” –no doubt about it. It is a foregone conclusion.

The question is, “What kind of people should we be?” .

Peter also gives us the answer. “You ought to live holy and Godly lives. Lives that are committed/dedicated to serving God, We need to assess our values – to check that the values by which we live are Christian values and that we have not blindly taken on the values of this world. By this I mean the values that assume that this world is all that there is. And it is so easy to get caught up with and adopt those views.

Advent reminds us that we live in a world to which Jesus is returning-a world that has a limited shelf life. It reminds us that we want to make sure that we are ready to meet our Lord when he returns.

And if his Return is delayed, , remember that this is because God wants all people to have the opportunity to come to know him-to repent of their sins and enter into a new relationship with him. So that when -not if- but when our Lord finally returns

We may all go with him into the joy of eternal life.

Sermon: 3rd Sunday of Advent, Year B

Reading: Isaiah 61:1-4, 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24 & John 1:6-8,19-28;

Waiting on the phone, waiting at the check-out, waiting for VCE results to come, waiting in the doctor’s surgery, waiting in the car as we drive on a long trip – are we there yet? I wonder many hours of our lives we would spend waiting.

The strange thing is that, even with all this practice, we never get used to it, although some of us are a little better at it than others. What doesn’t help, of course, is that these days we are getting more and more accustomed to instant answers and instant results. Everything from a pregnancy test to the digital camera – there it is, in seconds. We are slowly building our world around our desire to have it right now.

Recently I had the opportunity to open and consume a special bottle of red wine. It’s a bottle that I have been cellaring for 14 years. When we first tasted this wine at the winery it was full of promise. It had all the makings of a wonderful wine, though in a raw and undeveloped state. Back then it was completely unsuitable for drinking straight away. I read my Penguin wine guide and discovered that the experts suggested this year (2005) was the year it should be opened. So we waited and waited for 14 years. And finally last Wednesday we drew the cork.

And the wine had changed – it was rich and smooth and complex and wonderful. The potential it had back in 1991 had come to fullness. It was fantastic. And we reflected, as we sniffed and sipped this wine, that our enjoyment of it was heightened by our waiting for it to develop. Our enjoyment had been enhanced by the anticipation of what that raw, purple fluid would become as it matured over time. The wine had come to fullness and so we were able to fully enjoy it.

There is a purpose in waiting – it takes time for things to be ready. It takes time to make us ready for them. It is part of how God has designed creation. One famous writer and theologian (Teihard de Chardin) said: “It is a law of all progress that it is made by passing through stages and that this may take some time.”

It is in this same way that God unfolds his salvation, in what we often experience to be lengthy and maybe frustrating periods of waiting, and we become impatient and perhaps even cynical, and yet we know by faith that God’s timing is perfect and that it is almost always different to ours.

This period of Advent is all about waiting: anticipation, the slow growth of joy coming gradually to fullness as we celebrate Christmas. Mary waits as the child grows in her womb. Israel waits. All this waiting is represented as we wait through four weeks of this season, lighting candles as we go and recalling God’s promises through the ages.

Advent helps us practice waiting for God. Waiting is part of God’s unfolding plan for our salvation and for this world’s salvation.

It allows us space to grow towards maturity and it allows God’s work to develop – like the wine coming to it’s fullness.

These three Bible readings are about waiting.

Isaiah speaks to us in the Old Testament reading from the distant past. From this vantage point, he puts our waiting into perspective for us. He shows us that God’s work in this world reaches over centuries and generations, and did not begin and will not end with us.

This plan of God’s to bring all things together in his love began millennia ago, and stretches into eternity. And we who are part of God’s great plan see only what is here and now and we wait for the full revealing of God’s Kingdom.

The Church is not just us here and now. We are part of a long history and, after us, who knows how God will shape the church of the future. It may indeed look very different. We often wish we could make things change or move or progress faster than they do, and we definitely have our part to play, but often there is also waiting involved: waiting for others to be ready, waiting for the right opportunities where God brings things together and makes new things happen in people’s hearts and lives.

In today’s Gospel, John the Baptist speaks to an impatient crowd who are looking for their Messiah. As he speaks, it is some 400 years since God has sent a prophet to tell them what is happening. God’s people had been waiting. And John declares himself to be that voice that Isaiah speaks about; the voice crying in the wilderness. John is saying to them: God has not forgotten. He is working and your waiting is not in vain. He will not disappoint you. The promise is not lost. The day is coming, and is almost here.

In the Epistle reading today, Paul speaks to the Thessalonians who are waiting, as we also wait, for that final day of the Lord’s coming. They are fretful and distracted and restless and troubled by persecution and doubts and worries. And Paul is teaching them how to wait. He tells them to pray, to give thanks, and, he says, do not despise the words of the prophets. Like John the Baptist, Paul points the Thessalonians who are waiting back to the promises of God in his Word. And he says in verse 24, He who has called you is faithful and he will do it. He will do it. Leave it in his hands. Relinquish control. God will bring all things to completion and fullness in his time, at the right time.

What are you waiting for?

Retirement?

Kids to become independent?

For recovery from an illness?

For the right life-partner to come along?

For the right job or the right home?

For life to settle down so you can have a rest?

For life to get going so you can get on with it?

Waiting for others to get organized so you can do what you really want to do?

Waiting for God to answer some long-cherished prayer?

Waiting for some vision for our congregation that is close to your heart to be fulfilled?

We have all been waiting for our parish worker to be employed!

Well, Isaiah and John the Baptist and Paul would say to us: accept the waiting. Don’t fight it and fret it and become impatient. It is part of the journey of God’s purposes, for his whole creation, and for you and for your life. The waiting is just as important as the arrival of what is waited for. God is cellaring the wine, so that it will come to fullness.

He is maturing our hearts, gradually forming our character, shaping your will and the wills of others. As we wait for the bigger and the smaller things in our lives (whatever they may be), we can be confident that the waiting is part of what God has in store. And we can be confident also that He is preparing us for that final completion that will bring the perfect fullness of what our lives are meant to be.

When we wait in this way, our whole lives become “an Advent”… we mark our stages on the way. We learn to wait with hope and joy for the small and large gifts and changes that we need. We read the promises of God in His Word, reminding ourselves of where it is all going.

And as we wait for that final ultimate meeting with our Lord, the joy and hope and anticipation builds towards fullness. God is cellaring his wine, bringing it to its fullness. And one day when the waiting is over, we will taste that joy in its fullness. And so we wait with joy.
Amen.

2 Peter 3:8-15a

The day looks to be taking forever. And the length of the day appears to be inversely proportional to the hardships we face in it. That is — the worse the events one must endure to get to the end of the day, the longer it takes for the day to unfold and happen.

When the day gets harder to endure, there is also a decline in most of us too. The pressure makes the temperature gauge rise, and we begin to boil. It doesn’t take much for us to blow our tops. Hardships burden us so our patience is depleted and we become more and more intolerant to the events happening around us.

Extreme weather can add pressure to our days; stinking hot summers and bitterly cold winters can both weigh heavy on our patience. Various pain, limited only by the imagination, can make one feel as though the day seems to take a thousand years. Guilt from doing something wrong also gives the impression of slowing the day as we ponder, “If only I hadn’t done that!” In fact, anything that causes hardship has a lengthening effect on time so a day feels like it takes a thousand years to happen.

Saint Peter encourages those under pressure from impatient scoffers and those hell-bent on doing evil who have forgotten God’s Word, saying:

With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:8-9)

If we compare the eternal almighty majesty of our Heavenly Father next to our pettiness and weaknesses which constantly test God’s patience, it’s not surprising that a day examining us seems like an eternity, let alone a thousand years.

God is so powerful he can examine all things big and small, complex and simple, microcosms and macrocosms. And he can do it in the blink of an eye. If it were possible to reach the edge of eternity, God would have already been there for an eternity.

Inside eternity he has knowledge of every single thing he has created, every star, every planet, every rock, every tree, the internal structure of every atom and molecule, every creature that walks the earth, flies over it, and swims in its waters.

And he knows everything about every person. What would take a thousand years to learn about yourself, God knows in a day. In fact, he knew your every impulse, thought, and action in the eternal moment before a blink of his eye.

This is absolutely amazing since we don’t even know ourselves or the pulses that run through our minds in a matter of seconds. Do you ever wonder how you ended up thinking about someone or an event from the past when you first were thinking of something completely different? Have you then gone back and tried to list the chain of events from your subconscious that led your thoughts from one to the other? It’s hard enough to remember a chain of events just happened in your mind let alone from further back in the past.

Can any of us remember everything about our past anyway? God knows every microscopic detail about our past, and even our future! None of us have an intimate knowledge of our medical and physiological makeup, nor do we really want to know! But God knows every sinew, every drop of blood, and every pulse of your brain. Yet he hasn’t even taken a surgeons knife to you to look in side.

We don’t have an intimate knowledge of our internal bodies in a physical sense. Furthermore, how much do we really know about each other in a social sense? Our understanding of our interaction with other people is so limited; yet it’s so complex, but God has full view of it all.

He sees all things we do, both good and bad. He sees the things we should have done. He sees all of our sins that occur as a result of our sinful condition, the ones we know, feeling guilty and ashamed about, and the sins we seek to justify. He also see the sins we overlook; the sins we don’t even know we commit. And it’s not just you he knows, it’s every impulse, thought, desire, and deed of every person who has lived, is living, and will ever live.

Now for us to know all this about our mortal selves would take a thousand years, let alone knowing anyone else around us. But it’s comforting to know God is patient with us and doesn’t do to us what our condition deserves. Although he is infinitely intimate with our whole person, God’s patience endures in the hope we will not eternally perish.

But having been made his children in baptism, receiving the life-giving condition of Christ in our mortal frames, have you ever wondered why God doesn’t place in us a stop guard so we no longer falter from the sinful condition still in us. Perhaps it would have been good if God had placed a conscience lock in us as he gives us new life in Christ!

A conscience lock would kick in and disable our physical bodies when we seek to harm our brother or sister in any way. A conscience lock would flash illegal error in the brain when our thoughts became devious. A conscience lock would silence us when our words waver from what is good and wholesome. The conscience lock would also work the other way and make us conscious of things around us. It would wake us to the needs of others, and we would never need an alarm clock to make it to church on time.

However, this is not the way God works. It’s not the way Christ worked when God sent him to be born in Bethlehem. Jesus was no robot. He was as human as you and me; and capable of the same sin as you and me. If Jesus was a robot sent from God, how much would he be able to relate to our human condition? But he struggled with the same things as you and me, yet he remained faithful to God and didn’t succumb to the sinful human nature as we do.

We like Jesus are not robots. So there is no lock on our consciences, although Christ is living in us. Jesus allowed himself to be handed over to death as result of our sin and he gave us life. Jesus rescues us and chose to take us to our Heavenly Father through his sacrifice. And now that we are with him, he calls us to stand with him, remain with him, and abide with him in heavenly peace.

Our sinful nature, the old Adam, still remains although we have now been given the new nature of the New Adam, Jesus Christ. But just like Christ God desires faith rather than robotics. Yet God is still patient with us, his people, his church!

God has done the work of salvation and brought us to it. He is faithful and in his work of salvation grants us faith through the work of the Holy Spirit. He is patient with us, willing us to see ourselves for who we are, to be conscious of our consciences, and trust what he has done for us.

Having been given this trusting faith, God desires you to remain with him and seek repentance, because he doesn’t want any person to perish. God is patient, but God will fulfil all of his promises. In these last days God desires you to understand his patience, to rest in his forgiveness, and to know of his almighty power as his comes forgiving you in his word, before the last day when he promises to put all things right.

Finally hear God’s word from Saint Peter…

But the day of the lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. Since every thing will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth the home of righteousness. So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him. Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation. (2 Peter 3:10-15a)

Amen.

Pots and moulds 

It’s an ugly mess. It has no form; it’s a great big pile of brown goo. It’s sticky and damp; good for nothing it seems. It’s dirty; perhaps to some it’s even a bit smelly; and if you get it on yourself it can stain. But someone is looking for exactly this; a useless formless piece to be formed into something that is good and pleasing to the eye.

This someone takes the goo and plonks it on the table. The table begins to spin and his hands descend on the formlessness to mould it into something pleasing to the eye; a thing pleasing to the one who turns the tables on something so seemingly useless.

Clay can be troublesome stuff. It can cause heartache for anyone who comes across it. When it’s dry it’s like rock and jars the arms of those who try to break it. But when it’s wet, it’s so sticky, it seems to latch onto anything that touches it and it won’t let go. Anyone who wants to use it has their work cut out for them; such is clay in its natural environment.

However, to the potter clay has a use; a very good use. He knows just what to do to work the goo into something exquisite. The stickiness is worked with wet hands so the clay moves and grows into something good. Its stickiness actually is a quality that keeps the pot adhering to itself. And when it’s put in the kiln and baked the clay is returned to a state that is rock hard to keep its form so it can be used to hold things; perhaps even water.

But clay being what it is can still be trouble. As the potter caringly tries to mould it the clay can collapse and become misshaped. It has to be returned to the lump in which it was originally found and the potter starts again. When the clay becomes a pot, its hardness also makes it brittle and if the pot is not treated right it can shatter into a myriad of pieces. Even if it gets a fine crack, the owner takes to it with a rod reducing it to pieces of potsherd.

When we consider that God is in fact the potter and we are the clay and the pots that he moulds to hold his holy presence we are encouraged to examine ourselves and see the imperfections that cause us and our Heavenly Potter trouble. Isaiah did exactly that when he lamented over his peopleIsrael.

You come to the help of those who gladly do right, who remember your ways. But when we continued to sin against them, you were angry. How then can we be saved? All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away. No one calls on your name or strives to lay hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and made us waste away because of our sins.

Yet, O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. Do not be angry beyond measure, O Lord; do not remember our sins forever. Oh, look upon us, we pray, for we are all your people. (Isaiah 64:5-9)

Perhaps you have noticed the imperfections and cracks in the shell of your being. You worry that you’re in danger of being dashed to pieces and thrown on the scrapheap of life. Maybe like Isaiah you see the reality of your hidden human nature — the content of your fragile fatal life — and tremble because you know God sees the sin within.

So hiding the sin is fruitless; it still oozes out the cracks. And even your most honourable and worthy acts can’t exist without containing just a hint of self centeredness. So you know in the depth and core of your being you can do nothing righteous in God’s all-seeing sight. We look in the pot knowing we were moulded and formed to hold something so much better than the pot of filthy rags we have become.

Like the Psalmist we are reduced to see the reality of who we are before God Almighty as we plead…

Restore us, O Lord God Almighty; make your face shine upon us, that we may be saved. (Psalm 80:19)

The fact of the matter is this: we need to be saved. Without intervention and restoration the potter will return and take to the pots with an iron rod and dash us into pieces of potsherd.

Knowing this the Potter sets to work at the wheel yet again and moulds another pot to contain the core of his being. Just as in the days of old when Solomon used clay moulds to cast precious metals for the temple, Almighty God cast Christ Jesus, his holy and precious Son, into the same fragile clay shell as you and me. And in this mould was veiled the depth and breadth of God’s complete holiness and generosity.

This is very good news for us full of cracks and imperfections who know we need restoration so God will look on us favourably. Our prayer should be the same as that of the Psalmist who also sees he cannot save himself…

Let your hand rest on the man at your right hand, the son of man you have raised up for yourself. Then we will not turn away from you; revive us, and we will call on your name. (Psalm 80:17-18)

So God sent his Son; he cast Christ as one of us. The Son of Man at his right hand, the one on whom God’s hand of blessing rested, was sent and born a baby, a fragile clay pot, capable of the same failures as you and me. Yet he did not crack under the pressure that show us for who we are. He stood the test of time, a fragile pot holding the holiness of God, more precious than any silver or gold.

But then the Potter took his rod of wrath. The rod we know we deserve and having his Son raised up, let him be smashed to pieces. The pot was broken, the mortal mould and holy contents was made to die. Christ was cast; then Christ was crucified! God’s hand fell on Christ so the prayer of the Psalmist, together with your prayer, is answered. You are restored! We are revived! God’s face shines on us and we can call on the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth. We can confess our sins; our brokenness to God. And even more, God wants us to see ourselves and seek him in confession, so he can forgive the guilt of our sins.

Jesus was poured out like water, he was dried out like potsherd, he was cast as Christ but then he was cast out, the outcast. On the night before he was betrayed and crucified on the cross he said…

This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you. (Luke 22:20)

And so God’s pot was broken like bread and the cup was lifted up for the forgiveness of your sins. God has wet his hands in baptism to mould your mortal clay so you carry what was poured out of the cup of his Son for your salvation. You now contain the life blood of Christ himself in you, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of all your sins.

So as we hear from Paul from the beginning of his first letter to the Corinthians, grace and peace has come to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. That God can be thanked for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. You can trust that in him you have been enriched in every way.

Therefore, know, you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. Also know as you struggle with your fragility, only Christ who continually sends the Holy Spirit through his written word will keep you strong to the end, so you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful. He won’t let you down, but he will allow you to be poured out and broken so Christ might flow onto others. But after it is done those who trust his faithfulness will be raised like Christ, to be with Christ, restored and revived, in all the holiness and peace of eternal life, forevermore Amen.

Isaiah 7_10-16 The way it is

There are some things that naturally just go together.  Like horse and cart.  Like bricks and mortar.  Like paper and pencil.  Like man and woman. They work together, they belong together and together they create something greater.  Then there are things that don’t quite work together. Like cats and dogs. Like fine wine and Maccas.  Like Australia (England) and cricket.  They don’t make sense together and don’t create something great when joined. 

When in a tight situation, or even a desperate one, we want things to come together; we want things to join so that something great can come of it. King Ahaz of Judah found himself in a desperate situation, when the city of Jerusalem was surrounded and besieged by a foreign army.  He wanted something to come together that created something great; like an alliance with another country.  It made sense to join two different armies to one great army to defend Jerusalem.

When he and all of Judah and Jerusalem had heard the attacking Syrian army had already done this, making an alliance with Ehpram, the Northern kingdom known as Israel, it is reported that king Ahaz and all the people shook like trees in a forest during a storm; as naturally you would when members of your own family are plotting against you.  King Ahaz wanted to defend Jerusalem by doing the same.  To strengthen his position, he would have to join with an old enemy Assyria.  The alliance would have made sense, they belong together as natural as lightening belongs with thunder to create shock and awe.   

Plans, similar to Ahaz’s go on all the time in our lives don’t they.  In order to escape out of a difficult situation, or to better our position, we make natural alliances with other people we think suit our needs.  Or we join with electronics, with money, with power, with anything we think belongs together to better our cause.   The nobler the cause, the more tempting it is to make an alliance.  Who could criticise us for acting shrewdly if our intentions are good?  Who could judge our alliances as wrong, if our cause is to better the world; or who could consider we were acting contrary to the God’s will, if we are certain our plans and alliances are purely to make great the mission of God?

Perhaps Ahaz thought this very thing when planning to join together with Assyria, a long term enemy of Jerusalem, to destroy the other branch of Israelites.  Who could criticise him for wanting to protect God’s own people; who could judge his alliance as wrong in such circumstances and for such a noble cause.  He was only doing all he could to keep the promised seed and kingdom of David alive; the promise foretold to David by the prophet Nathan, found in 2 Samuel 7 “The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you: when your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom…I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.  I will be his father and he will be my son…Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.”

When it looks to us as if we are about to lose something precious, we need to be careful about making alliances, and working with what we think should come together for our cause, as the cause itself can become an idol; something we must do, even at great cost.  As you know, an idol demands a sacrifice, and we can sometimes be so blinded by our noble cause, we don’t actually see what is being sacrificed.  The Prophet Isaiah came to King Ahaz right at this very time, right when he was planning his own rescue package for the line of David at all cost.  Isaiah comes to Ahaz to tell him not to form an alliance with their old enemy Assyria.  That the Lord himself would fight for him; that the Lord has a greater plan already in motion to continue to kingdom promised to David.

 The Lord had already made an alliance and it was to be through this coming together that the shoot of Jesse, the seed of King David would come and not through any human alliances or plans.  The Lord even attached a sign to show Ahaz that his deal was fair dinkum; that he planned beyond the immediate saying “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”  God himself had chosen to join with humanity, to become one with them, to be born to them as a child of a virgin.  And the child born will be called the son of God, Immanuel: God with us.  In this unlikely alliance, through this impossible union, a saviour will be born and he will be Christ the King.  And the kingdom of David will be upon his shoulders.  He will rule his kingdom in grace and truth.

A virgin giving birth to a son will be the sign of God’s covenant with Israel; that he himself will be their king and will be their God and live with them.  With that sort of impossible alliance, and with that sort of sign, that a virgin can give birth, but even more impossible, that God himself will be the son, only faith can grasp such a promise.  Only faith that lets go of reason can trust God could do such a thing.  Apart from faith, we can only go on relying on our own alliances, as King Ahaz ultimately did, only to destroy himself and most of the kingdom.  Yet this is how God chose to bring in the reign of his kingdom; through a virgin, through a son and finally through a cross on which the son of man was crucified for the sins of the world.

If Ahaz’s alliance could have worked to protect the seed of David and make great God’s kingdom, the Lord would not have had to send his son, born of a virgin.  If the kings of Israel could deliver from evil, then Jesus would not have to be born a servant king.  If the good deeds and religious acts of the Pharisees could have atoned for sin, then there would have been no need for the son of God to die on the cross.  No human alliances, no amount of coming together could ever be enough to overcome and defeat our enemy of sin, death and the devil.  Only the son of God, born of a virgin, and named Immanuel, could achieve and deliver such a victory.  The son to be born to the virgin will be named Jesus; he will save people from their sins.

Luther writes in his commentary on John the Baptist “No matter who a man may be or how prominent he may be, all count for nothing.  Something higher than, and different from, man is necessary, even though he be king, patriarch, or prophet…even if I wear a leather girdle and camel’s hide, eat locusts, and dwell along the water, I am not purified there by.  Christ alone does this.” (LW 22;434; 440) Our alliances and efforts to better ourselves, or the world, or to further our cause for the gospel, not matter how noble, are futile if the true alliance, between us and Christ Jesus are not glorified; if all we do and say does not point to Christ.

Advent is a time for us to remember the sign of the promise of God that “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”  In this unlikely union between God and man, Jesus the Christ was born for all.  And in this alliance, God fulfilled the promises of old, that he himself would be our king and delivers us his people into victory, as St Paul writes in 1 Cor 15 “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.  But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”  Advent is a time to relook at the promise given by God at your baptism, “whoever believes and is baptised will be saved’; to trust in the promises held out in Holy Communion, “my body and blood given and shed for you”; and given also through the absolution “your sins are forgiven”.

The son born of a virgin was born for you; to be your God; to be your salvation.  Some things just belong together. The word and promises of God are our only alliance in which we trust, and Jesus is our only king.  To him be the glory forever and ever Amen

Well who would have imagined.  Who could have predicted.  Who could even comprehend the deluge of rain we have had in the past week?  And the huge amounts of water that can flow down the Macquarie River.  When we as a family drove through the city of orange for the first time on our way here to Dubbo, the country looked green and fertile.  Then we made our way down onto the plains.  Well! Who could have imagined.  As we drove through the drought ravaged land, our hearts dropped and we though to ourselves ‘we were told this area was prime farming land, but look at it’.  Having never been in this area before, being surrounded by ash and smoke haze from the Ganoo Forrest fires, we could not see how the rocky fields, the red dust and the dry dams could possibly ever be green again, let alone grow a viable crop.  We quickly realised how life on this land and in this region is fickle.

We just need to cast our mind back 12 months to remember the hopelessness and desperation we felt as the drought continued to worsen.  Some farmers and locals even took their own lives, sadly not being able to face the uncertainty anymore over how to pay back the years of debt, and ending it all rather than choosing to walk off their farms.  Back then our prayers to God reflected Psalm 77 “I cried out to God for help; I cried out to God to hear me…at night I stretched out untiring hands and my soul refused to be comforted…will the Lord reject forever?  Has God forgotten to be merciful?  Has he in anger withheld his compassion?”

 Who could have imagined, that in one week, perhaps even in one day, the Lord God changed the fortunes of this land and completely flooded this region with a deluge of abundant rain.  After 10 years of nothing, in one day, in one week God poured down enough rain to break all records in some parts, showing us his mighty power and dominion over the earth and above all showing us his eternal faithfulness, mercy and compassion.  St Paul praises God saying “now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power…to him be glory in the church…”  ‘The Australian poem by Dorothea Mackellar says it all:

“I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains, Of ragged mountain ranges, Of droughts and flooding rains.  I love her far horizons, I love her jewel-sea, Her beauty and her terror -The wide brown land for me!”

In a way we are privileged to live in this region, because the very land we live on preaches God’s grace and faithfulness to us.  The droughts and flooding rains give evidence of God’s work.  Isaiah uses extreme droughts and flooding rains of his wilderness as synonyms to the workings of God’s promise of salvation thought the seed of Jesse.  The Messiah will come, Isaiah declares “Be strong, do not fear; your God will come…he will come to save you.  Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped…Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert.  The burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs.” 

Isaiah uses the imagery of droughts and the paradox of flooding rains to reveal the paradox we experience in life and compared with the promise.  The Israelites were living in exile and could not see a future.  They were in the wilderness of God’s judgment, the promised future, that they will be a blessing to all nations, seemed to have dried up; they were in a drought of God’s word.   Many Psalms of lament were written during this period.  One, Psalm 137, most clearly tells of their despair, “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion…How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land.”  How can any of us sing of the Lord when we are in desert places?  We all have times of wilderness in our lives, when we struggle with the paradoxes of what is actually happening in our life and faith in Jesus who promised ‘Lo I will be with you to the very end of the age.’   

We all go through droughts of God’s word, when our faith is tested with suffering and hardship.  When God seems to abandon us, leaving us with a desert like faith that is dry and parched and we can no longer sing God’s praises.  We don’t even want to open the bible, or study the word.  Instead of having a living and vibrant church life, we shrivel away.  Like with a drought, when the hot desert  winds sweep away the top soil, revealing all the rocks below the surface, in a time of personal struggle, its as if God seems to speak like sweeping spiritual winds, revealing  all our hidden rocks; faults in our character we thought we had dealt with; idols we never knew we had.  Our sinful nature is laid bare for all to see.

What then? Do we judge ourselves, God and the world as lose, as we often did during the effects of a drought in this region?  We can do this, go and hide, walk away from God, church and our faith.  We can judge what is going on by how things currently are, or we could go out into the desert and wait for the rains to pour down upon us. 

The words of Isaiah spoke into the crisis of faith for Israelites ‘Be strong, do not fear; your God will come…he will come to save you’.  In other words, the rains of God will come; the word of God will come to bring comfort and hope. Who would have imagined?  Who would have predicted?  Jesus, the promised shoot of Jesse, the Christ, did indeed come, and his miracles of restoring sight to the blind, opening the ears of the deaf and healing the lame, point as testimonies to the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy “Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped.  Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy.”   

The droughts of faith we experience will pass, just as we have witnessed with the flooding.  The Lord will come, he will save you.  It is during the drought we need to take heed of what God is doing.  Droughts of faith are his alien work, to make us dry and thirsty for him.  To make us aware of our hidden rocks so that they can be dealt with; to drive us back to Jesus so that he may bless us with forgiveness and eternal life. 

Jesus explains the paradox of living in spiritual drought and the pouring rain of God’s grace in the beatitudes “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled.”  God drives us to thirst, and be in desperate need of righteousness in our crisis of faith.  Not to destroy our faith, but to point us to Christ; in whom we have redemption.  Our thirst is filled with Jesus’ own righteousness, declaring us forgiven and accepted by him, for the sake of his suffering and death, even though we experience otherwise.  This is why St Paul writes “we live by faith, not by sight.”  By sight we experience life as if God is absent, not caring and even punishing us, by faith we know that his word, Jesus Christ, dwells in us richly and is working springs of life in our parched souls and causing our faith to burst into bloom.

Luther writes regarding affliction of the saints ‘[God] alone it is to whom we must flee as to a holy Anchor and our soul refuge when we think we are lost.  This is our task supreme: to become able to call upon God as a benign and forgiving Father, such as he ever is, even when we feel that God is against us and angry with us and that we are sinners who have deserved wrath and damnation.  And so indeed God must be judged, not according to what we see but according to his promises, in which he has assured us that he would be our Father and our God.’

The promise foretold by Isaiah has been fulfilled in the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus.  Yet the promise remains; that the word is near you.  By the power and action of God’s word and sacraments, you are recipients and benefactors of Jesus continuing ministry through the church.  As Isaiah promised in Chapter 55 of God’s word “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish…so is my word that goes out of my mouth: it will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”

God in Christ Jesus, even in the midst of crisis, is deluging us with grace, abundantly pouring out his mercy and forgiveness.  You are hearing the good news that is still being preached to the poor; and are having your eyes opened, as the blind are having their eyes opened to God; and though you struggle to walk with the Lord, you together with the lame are walking on the way of holiness.  Who would have thought!  God is achieving immeasurably more than we asked or imagined. 

Amen

Most of us have one or more of these. (show a rewards card).  The idea of a rewards card is to buy certain products or pay for purchases using the card, earn enough points to exchange them for a reward.  A rewards card works best when used often.  The more we use the card, the more certain we are of getting a reward, like air tickets, bonus fuel vouchers or whatever your rewards card offers.  Christmas is an ideal time to ensure we meet our rewards requirements; to use our credit card to the max; to flash the fly buys card in participating shops; to purchase only products that give us the most bonus points, so that we can be sure of our reward.  It’s a great system, nothing wrong with it as long as we don’t make the mistake of purchasing for the sake of getting a reward.

We are transactional people; it makes sense to us.  I do this for you, you give me a reward.  I spend money, you give me what I want.  Christmas gift giving reveals our transactional behaviour.  Think about it. How do you feel and what has your response been, when you received a gift from someone you didn’t expect, and had nothing in return to give them?  I can tell you now, you would have squirmed, felt uncomfortable, perhaps blushed and even excused yourself with a whole lot of fast talking, for not being able to give a gift in return.  We are transactional people, its how we function in the world.

John the Baptist was offering a gift.  In the waters of the Jordan, John was baptising people for the forgiveness of sin as a gift from God, apart from and free from any of the religious duties demanded by the ruling religious leaders of their day.  “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near,” was the message and many people throughout the region heeded the Baptist’s call and were baptised.  For doing nothing more than receiving the good news that God’s kingdom was near, and allowing themselves to be baptised, they were rewarded with the gift of the cleansing of their sins.  There was no transaction made, God was giving it all and there was nothing to give back in response.  There was no trans – just action on God’s part.

When the Sadducees and Pharisees came to do likewise, to be baptised by him, John, in typical prophetic style calls out, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.”  Why, if baptism is a gift from God for the forgiveness of sins, does John scold the religious leaders for coming out? 

John knew they were the great religious-transactors, that’s why.  As Jews and descendants of Abraham, they were given the very words of God, the Ten Commandments, and were given the promise that a saviour and king would come from their Father Abraham, as Isaiah foretold “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.  The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him-In that day the Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him, and his place of rest will be glorious.”  Sadly however, the gift of the promised Messiah foretold by Isaiah, who would freely forgive the sins of the world, was now only available to those who played the transactional game; a ‘reward’ transacted between the religious players and God. 

Like when we use our rewards card to collect enough points to earn our reward, the Pharisees and Sadducees came to be baptised believing they were earning ‘points’ that could be exchanged for  a reward from God; the forgiveness of sins.  They did the same with every religious act.  For them, religion was all about transactions.  If you were to adhere to the conditions and stipulations of the commandments, and those of their own making, it was worth something before God.  Then, with enough points, God would reward you with the kingdom. 

John refused to baptism them because they were simply going to use the baptism as another transaction between them and God; another point on their religious rewards card; I do this…you reward me with that. He couldn’t baptise them because his baptism was dependant on repentance and faith in the coming Christ, as Jesus later said “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved”, and not on works and rewards.  

We also often play the same game with God.  By nature we want to transact with him.  We think we have something we can offer, some ‘points’ we can use to redeem a reward from him.  In a transactional Christian faith, we oblige God to reward us; Christ and all his benefits no longer come to us by grace through faith, but by works and rewards.  While we are not as overt and boastful as the Pharisees, we are of the same mould.  We all have a hidden rewards system we use to try and manipulate God.  We know we have a transactional faith if we get angry when other’s aren’t as committed to our cause as we are; if we are jealous of another Christian’s strong faith; if we belittle someone for not being disciples in the same way we are; If we believe God only likes our style of worship or only songs and not hymns; Or we try to do every job at church because we feel others wouldn’t do it satisfactorily.

A transactional faith always looks to how many ‘points we are earning’, looks for rewards and judges others for their lack of ‘points’.  John the Baptist challenges this belief system by saying “I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.”  Throw away any thoughts of a transaction. God is a God of action. He created stones out of nothing by the power of his word, so he can also make these same stones into sons of Abraham.  As I have said previously, God does not go around looking for people who can reward him, rather, he creates that which is rewarding to him.  By the very action of the suffering and death of his Son Jesus, the shoot of Jesse, and by the action of his resurrection, God creates holy and pleasing people.

The gospel of Jesus that, “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification,” is the very action of God that brings about our repentance and faith; that creates us into righteous people, pleasing and rewarding to him.  God has done all the transacting; his son’s death in exchange for ours; his Son’s life in exchange for ours. That is why St Paul says “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes”.  Luther’s explanation of the third article in his Small Catechism, explains it best “I cannot by my own understanding or effort believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him.  But the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, and sanctified and kept me in true faith.”

A transactional faith gives glory to our selves, repentance and faith in Christ alone gives all glory to God, which is the fruit of repentance.   To produce fruit in keeping with repentance is to know this assignment from Jesus “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”  Advent is a time for us to reaffirm our faith in Christ alone.  That he alone saves.  That God is not a God of transaction but of action; that in the coming of Jesus “every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”

Let me play for you one of the worst sounds in the world (an alarm clock).  Who would agree?  There we are, blissfully sleeping, enjoying a nice dream, perhaps of walking the white beaches of Hawaii, and then (ring again).  The alarm clock rings, wakes us out of our sleep and dreams and into the real world; it alarms us to the fact that the day has begun and we need to get up.  But what do we do?  We hit the snooze button and lay there and work out, now what is the quickest time I have ever got up and ready in time…right that gives me an extra 20 minutes sleep.  So every time we hear this (ring it) we re-hit the snooze button, until we suddenly realise that we are late…and then its too late.

There are times however, when ignoring alarms to wake up and falling asleep again is extremely dangerous, like falling asleep behind the wheel of a car.  You read the warnings signs on the side of the highway ‘stop, revive, survive’, or read the fatigue signs ‘tired, yawning, loosing concentration’, yet you drive on thinking I Ok, I’m not sleepy.  Its dangerous to ignore the alarms, because have you noticed how you can never tell when you actually fall asleep.  There is no point when you say to yourself “I’m going to sleep….NOW!   Neither is there a point in our sleeping when we determine the precise time we wake up.  Sleep is a lapsing out of our control.

St Paul rings an alarm bell for believers in Christ.   He warns “The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here.”   Are you asleep?  Surely not yet, I’ve only just started the sermon!  So why does St Paul mean to alarm us into being fully awake by saying “The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber…”  Who’s asleep?  St Paul, we would think, would be alarming those non-believers, the outright sinners and the heathen.  To wake up to themselves, to see that the dawning of God’s kingdom has now begun; to wake up from their godless acts of indecency and believe in Jesus, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and will come again to judge the living and the dead.  

We would even like to think the alarming words “wake up from your slumber…The night is nearly over; the day is almost here,” are a wake-up call to slack and lazy Christians who never come to church; those we only see at Christmas and Easter; to those we judge under our breath as hypocrites.  To think St Paul’s alarming words are ringing for others, but not for you or me, is the same as thinking that the fatigue warning signs on highway, are not meant for us…they are there for everyone else.  Or to think the ringing of our alarm clock in the morning, is meant to wake only the neighbour.

God’s word is never meant for someone else.  He always speaks to us directly and addresses us personally and calls us by name, as he did to Adam in the garden “where are you.”  And Jesus’ words spoken over the bread at the Last Supper are also addressed to you personally, saying “This is my body, which is given for you.”  The word of God spoke life into us, and he continues to speak to us, sustaining us physically and spiritually, as Jesus said “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”  We are people of the word.  We are saved from the guilt of our sin and God’s wrath against us, because of suffering and death of Jesus…the word of God in flesh.  

 St Paul’s alarming word of God “The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber”, is our personal word alarm from God, telling us as believers that every hour we have believed brings us an hour closer to the day of Jesus’ return.

To be asleep as a Christian is to think, speak and act as if God does not address us personally in his word.  And so to be asleep at the wheel of our Christian life, is to think that “you shall not murder “ only applies to those criminals in jail and others who threaten violence toward others.  Yet if we are people of the word, even this must speak to us, as Jesus points out “anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.”

Just as we get tired on a long road trip, and if we ignore the warning signs thinking they apply to someone else, we may fall asleep and crash.  We also get tired of battling our sinful nature.  We get fatigued of always fighting the constant temptations that draw us away from God’s word.  St Paul says in Roams 7 “For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do– this I keep on doing.”  And so, in our spiritual fatigued state, its easier to convince ourselves that God is only speaking to others. 

We know God has asked us to pray, and promises ‘whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours,” but we convince ourselves that’s only for those who are good at prayer.  We know we should do the home devotions that we have been given today, we know that Jesus said ‘we live on every word that comes from the mouth of God”, but in our fatigue we believe that’s only for religious people, not for me.

We know Jesus said “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest”, yet in our weariness, we feel Jesus must be saying this to people who haven’t done the things we are now ashamed of.  God’s word alarms and awakens us to a lot of things, including today’s alarm “The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed,” but its far easier to hit the snooze button, turn off God’s word and fall asleep.

This is the sleep St Pauls is warning us of, spiritual fatigue…or as they saying goes “I’m OK Jack.”  But we are not Ok.  Just as a sleepy driver could laps into a micro sleep any second, spiritual fatigue is the first sign of imminent danger.  God warns ‘sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.”  And St Peter adds “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”  St Paul is ringing the alarm, are we hearing it? Are we awake enough to apply it to ourselves?

If so, once awaked by God’s word, you may be wondering what are we to do to remain awake spiritually?  Once you have woken up in the morning, do you go straight outside?  No, we first get dressed ready for the day.  In the same way, St Paul encourages us, once awakened to get changed for our spiritual day, to get dress spiritually for the light, that is, to put on Christ.

It is in the putting on of Christ, and not our own efforts, that enables us to remain aware; to be awake to the prowling’s of the devil who tricks us into thinking God is not addressing me.  To put on Christ is baptismal language.  Paul, in Galatians writes, “for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.”  Not only are we forgiven in Baptism, and given the gift of eternal life.  We are also covered by Jesus to protect us from the attacks of the devil; the acts darkness, and the spiritual fatigue St Paul speaks about. 

To put on Christ is expanded upon by Paul in Ephesians 6.  “Put on the full armour of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground…Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”

All this clothing is given to us as a gift to put on, so that we do not become fatigued by our own efforts at being spiritual, and then fall asleep at the wheel of our salvation.  Each piece of Christ’s clothing, the helmet, the breastplate, the shield, the belt and the sword are all simply different facets of the one and the same word of God that addresses you personally.  So not only does God address us in his word saying “this is my body and blood given and shed for you”, he also dresses us and covers us in his word. 

Luther called the church ‘the mouth house of God’.  It is in church were we are covered by the word of God so that we are awakened and ready of the coming of the Lord. So as the writer of the book of Hebrews writes “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another– and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”

Have you ever experienced a life changing moment?  That moment when a word was said to you; a word that made time stand still as you tried to take in the significance of what was said; as you tried to comprehend the enormity of change that was now dawning on you.  Perhaps you heard that life changing word in the doctor’s surgery…you have cancer.  Perhaps you heard that life changing word from the bank manager…we are gong to foreclose the farm.    That life changing word can also be a good one ‘will you marry me?’  ‘We’re having a baby!

And it is at that moment, as time stands still, with the impact of the words still soaking in, we realise our life will never be the same.  Many of us take days, weeks even months to comprehend it and to make that first step out into an unknown world.  For some of us that life changing word has been bad news and we remain stuck at that point, reliving and replaying the words in our mind night after night; questioning why, and how its not fair, crying why me, what did I do to deserve this?  Sadly, it is often at this low point we turn to our own plans to redeem the situation, rather than leave it to God who promises in Jeremiah 29 ‘For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’

At this dark point we begin to contrive our redeeming plans; plans that we put in place to recoup what we lost; to try and bring new life for ourselves.  Plans that have our rights as the driving force.  Last year in Australia the life changing words ‘You’re pregnant!’ were said to 90, 000 women.  What life changing words, ‘You’re pregnant!’  Unfortunately, the life changing word was not what these women or couples wanted to hear.  That figure I gave you were the 90, 000 aborted babies in Australia last year.  98% of these babies were aborted because ‘the parents felt the baby was an inconvenience!’    The words ‘you’re pregnant’, probably repeated themselves in their mind night after night; questioning why and how its not fair, crying why me, what did I do to deserve this.  800 mums and dads every week in NSW alone, choose to redeem their situation and put an end the life of their baby.

Sadly, as with all our own redeeming acts to make a new life for ourselves, an abortion is not a redeeming act that brings life.  Far from it, most women suffer emotionally over the guilt for many years after.  In fact many never get over the second life changing words the doctor probably says ‘the procedure’s finished’.  Those words haunt these women to the point of deep depression, all while men continue to allow fellow men to push for this self-redeeming act…not even considering our God given duty to care for women, as St Peter urges ‘Husbands, … be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life.’

Mary heard these same life changing words, ‘you’re pregnant’, not by a doctor, but by God himself through the angel Gabriel.  These words could not have come at a worse time.  Mary was really still a young girl, yet to be married to Joseph and she was still a virgin.  She had fulfilled all care and duty to remain faithful to Joseph and to the law of God, and now she was going to have to endure public humiliation and disgrace, and the uneasy prospect of telling Joseph.  This baby Jesus was going to be ‘very inconvenient’.  Yet she did not run from the redeeming act of God for humanity; she did not devise her own redeeming act to try and bring normality to her life, she pondered the words in her heart.  Perhaps the promise of God ‘For I know the plans I have for you,”… “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future,’ had already been planted deep in her heart and she used them to interpret the inconvenient life changing words of the angel.

Ignoring her own inconvenience, and in total trust in the good news, she responds to the message ‘I am the Lord’s servant,” … “May it be to me as you have said.’  By faith Mary journeys to the hill country around Judea, carrying the Christ child, to see her relative Elizabeth, where she receives a blessing from her, as Luke records ‘Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear!’  She is blessed because she not only carries Jesus in her womb, the redeemer who will be a blessing to all people, as promised to Abraham centuries earlier ‘I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you;…and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.’  She is part of God’s redeeming plan for the world.  And she is blessed because she forsook her own rights and life and believed the word of promise that this ‘inconvenient child’ is going to save people from their sins.  And as with Abraham, she too, was a woman of faith, and it was ‘credited to her as righteousness.’  She is blessed.

By faith Mary continued to journey with her son Jesus, all the way to the cross, and by faith she suffered the piercing of her soul as she watched Jesus die on the cross.  But her faith was rewarded through the cross.  She was the first to witness Jesus’ resurrection.  God’s redeeming act came to all people through the cross.   It is often true for us, as it was for Mary, that Jesus the Christ child seems to be very inconvenient in our well planed out lives.  His redeeming act to bring us salvation through the cross will often mean giving up our rights, our dreams and hopes and most inconveniently, our own plans to redeem our life.  With Jesus dwelling in our hearts, he will, as he did Mary, lead us to the cross where our soul is pierced, not with pain, but with his word of the Spirit; a word that is life changing because he puts to death our sinful nature and brings us to new life. 

As we read and hear his word, and receive the sacrament of Holy Communion, where the word himself, Jesus, cleanses our conscience, he puts to death our pride, our false gods that we depend on as our right in life.  He puts to death everything that will stop us from entering the kingdom of God by revealing the sin in our lives and dealing with.  And this can be a difficult time in our life, we may even lose what we thought was most important and valuable in our eyes, as something sinful can appear good for us.  But by faith, we bear the cross of Jesus, trusting the promise that the Lord has “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’  By Faith we hear and believe Jesus words ‘What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul. 

And our faith, like Mary’s, which trusts in the redeeming act of God, which truly brings new life, unlike our own redeeming acts, will be rewarded.  By faith we trust God’s life changing word that there is another side to the cross, the resurrection; the other life changing word from Jesus, a word of good news that brings us into his kingdom.  St Paul says ‘For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin–because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.  Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.’  

By faith, with Jesus in our heart, we journey the same journey with Mary. Together with Jesus he takes us to the cross in this life and then beyond the grave to eternal life.  Yet even in the shadow of the cross we can rejoice, because it is Jesus who is leading us and his plans are to prosper us and give us hope that goes far beyond Christmas.  May this hope encourage you to ponder in your heart, the very life changing word of Jesus this Christmas ‘For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.’

 Amen

For the past few months, I have been training our dog, Sox, a purebred boarder Collie, to round up and herd sheep.   I have been going out to a place on the Dunnedoo Rd, where a guy by the name of Toby trains dogs for sheep trials.  With a few tips and a short demonstration, Sox and I were let lose on the sheep!  We actually went quite well…surprisingly.  Sox went around and around the sheep, herding them in.  Each time Sox and I went out to Toby’s place, Sox got a little better at responding to my commands and rounding up sheep, and I was getting better at being the ‘boss’.  In fact, just the other day, when Sox had obeyed every command well, I though to myself… now I’m great, no one could do better. 

Well, Sox must have sensed what I was thinking and the next time we went out, she refused to listen to any of my commands, no matter how much I shouted them.  After a short time of frustration, from the in the corner of my eye, I saw Toby coming towards me.  Sox didn’t she was to busy running amuck.  Toby stood next to me, and in a commanding stature and with a pointing glare in his eye, he commanded with a load voice ‘stop, that’ll do!  Sox froze.  She had just heard the voice of the ‘real’ boss, and I just realized someone greater then me, someone more powerful than me, had come to save the day. I had a misunderstanding about who was the greatest! 

John the Baptist was a great man of God.  He spoke with authority, with insistence and determination in his words.  He was preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sin.  So great was John that many of the people of Israel came out to hear him and hoped that he may have even been the messiah, Luke records ‘The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Christ.’

What is greatness to you?  What makes someone great?  What about a great man or woman of God, what faith or actions might make them great…who comes to mind?  Have you ever wondered about yourself, what makes you a great person before God? We often hear of great people doing great things for God.  And there are times in our life of discipleship when we are convinced we are doing great. 

In the book ‘Faith Like Potatoes’, the author told how he would hand his crop over to the Lord and say ‘Here it is, Lord.  Your crop of maize’.  And when it was nearly dead from lack of opening rain, he prayed ‘Lord, your crop is dying’, and sure enough, God brought rain to grow the crop.  Perhaps a great person before God is someone who has committed their whole life to prayer and giving everything to God for his work, as the potato man.   Your prayer life…how great are you?

Being great before God may be seen by us as a verb, an action word, an imperative, as Jesus himself urges ‘For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.’  Perhaps greatness before God is measured by religious commitment; how passionately we say the Creed, how neatly we dress, whether we sing with gusto the latest Christian songs or by the number of church events we turn up to. Look at the greatness of the Pharisees, as Jesus mentioned.  They went to every religious event.  They knew the scriptures well and adhered to every command of God and kept every day holy, not just the Sabbath.  Is that what makes a great Christian?  How great are you at being religious…greater than the Pharisees?

Luke records John’s harsh words to the religious and sanctimonious of his time, when they came to him to be baptized, something you’d think would have pleased John, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.’  John was great enough to know that these outwardly religious people were coming to be baptized by him, not because they were repentant and intended to turn from sin, but because they thought their outward action of being baptised would make them great before God, like every other religious act they had fulfilled.  They believed to be great before God, or to be righteous, was within their human power; God had set out the ‘way’, be baptized, you just had to tick the boxes.    

The error of active righteousness or active greatness before God is riddled throughout the church, just as it was among the Jews in John’s day.  Luther called this active greatness before God a theology of glory.  It is glorious to us because, like me with training Sox, we mistakenly take ourselves to be the boss.  Its glorious because we don’t have to admit sin and daily repent.  Its glorious because we are the ones who choose to follow Jesus.  Our decision for Christ and our choice to be baptized is what makes us great before God. A self-made greatness, that leaves us uncertain about our personal salvation in times of temptation, despair or doubt.

John was not a prophet of glory.  John was a herald and prophet of the cross and of death and new birth.  He was only a voice in the desert saying, ‘I baptize you with water. But one more powerful than I will come, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.’  He didn’t promote himself, he promoted the coming Christ as the more powerful one because he is the ‘righteousness of God’; he is the one who will make all humanity, you…me…great before God by his greatness alone, through a baptism of the Holy Spirit and of fire. 

John’s baptism cleansed with water, Jesus’ baptism cleanses with the Holy Spirit and fire.  For you and for me, for everyone, Jesus was born in a stable as a baby, born to be one with humanity and was baptized in the Jordan with the water and the Spirit.  Then he was sent to the cross to die, the baptism of fire, cleansing us of the wrath and judgment of God our Father.  A baptism of fire that cleansed and dissipated the Father’s anger over our sin, clearly heard in Jesus words ‘my God, my God, why have you forsaken me.’  And he raised Jesus to life to live forever as the Son of God who, through baptism, the Holy Spirit and fire, brings many sons to glory.

Baptism, Spirit and the fire of the cross is what makes us great before God.  A greatness before God that is given to us by one more powerful than us; a greatness that is received by faith.  A greatness that is in God’s hands which leaves us in no doubt about our righteousness before God; in no doubt about our salvation, as Jesus himself said ‘who ever believes and is baptized will be saved.’  And it is precisely in baptism, as John foretold, that we are infused with Jesus, our life becomes his, as St Paul says ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.’ 

Robert Kolb, a Lutheran pastor and theologian wrote ‘At the cross God meets his human creatures where they are, in the shadow of death…only at the foot of the cross can true human identity be discovered.  There, realising whose I am, I realise who I am.’ 

A great Christian is known by all three witnesses; baptism, Holy Spirit and fire.  All three bearing witness to your salvation.  Yes, even the fire.  The fire of the cross in our life; the fire of suffering and persecution for Christ’s sake; the fire of our own death to self and death to sin, as we daily repent and seek God’s forgiveness and new life in Christ, as St Paul said in Romans 6:11 ‘count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.’

So praise be to God, each one of us can boast in the certainty that we are great Christians before God. All of us have received the three great witnesses, but our boasting is not about ourselves, but about Jesus, the one who is greater, as Stuart Townend writes in ‘How Deep the Father’s Love’; ‘I will not boast in anything: no gifts, no power, no wisdom.  But I will boast in Jesus Christ: his death and resurrection.’  

Amen