Sermon Tone Analysis

Lord, we come to hear your word and learn to live by it, prepare our hearts & minds & bodies and souls to receive what you have for us today – Amen

 

If I was to tell you that something was - Awesome … or – Unbelievable

Do you think that what I was going to tell you something that might strike you mute, fill you awe and be so overwhelmed that you were frozen still in disbelief

Do you think that might happen?

Probably not – you would probably be expecting something a little special

Or a little out of the ordinary

 

We live in an over-communicated world

Where we are bombarded with words and images flashing to us in split second speed – from TV, radio, newspapers, billboards, the internet, emails and the list goes on and on…

Our attention is ‘the prize’ of marketers and story-tellers alike

Words and stories have lost some of their zing – in the ever-increasing cycle to grab our attention

We have become a little inoculated from the power of the message – particularly the message - God’s word

This might have happened to you today, maybe even during the reading of the Gospel – say on the 1st two verses

It may appear to us – modern over-stimulated people, as nothing out of the ordinary

 

/In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea (e-tur-e-a) and Trachonitis (Tra-con-i-tis), and Lysanias (Lai-SAY-nih-uhs) ruler of Abilene, 2during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness./

To our modern ears Luke is merely stating the date in some funny old way

 

But Luke is doing much more than that – Luke the master of contrasts – juxtaposing one image with an opposing image

 

Luke is placing this story in the entire wider narrative of human history, in the time of emperor…

            This is a grand vision to speak of a momentous event in time

                        Wide angle shot of the whole of the middle east…

Luke lists seven leaders both secular and religious.

Along side this company, John is nothing, the son of a small town priest.

We start out with a wide angled lens

                        We have a Roman Emperor, the most powerful man in the world

                                    The lens Narrows to the governor of the Judean region – Pontius Pilate

                                                Narrowing again to the Hebrew leaders of Herod and his brother Philip

                                                            Then the high priests Annas & Caiaphas

In this company – in this setting we are told the *awesome* – *unbelievable* story

That/ – the word of God came to John,/

Son of a little-known priest – in the wilderness

 

            The word of God came to John

 

When we read the bible, we read of many prophets – but we can not lose sight of the fact of the magnitude of this event

            The word of God came to John

 

He tells us that this was all foretold before – that this is not some out of the blue – random occurrence – but that the prophets had spoken about what was to come, from our reading in Baruch and also as it is written in Isaiah the prophet:

 

/“Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you; he will prepare your way.

3 A voice of one crying out in the desert:  ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.’”

/

 

This voice in the wilderness - the heralder of the upcoming most important man to ever live is none other than John the Baptist

           

John the Baptist   ?

That crazy guy in the wilderness  ?

                        Who wears camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist?

Who eats locusts (grasshoppers) and honey

This is the one that God has chosen to fulfill part of the prophets’ message?

John is a prophet himself?

Speaking God’s word to the world - preparing the people for the coming of the Lord?

You gotta wonder about God’s marketing strategy

He lives in the wilderness away from everyone

People have to travel from the whole of the Judean countryside and from Jerusalem, just to hear him tell a message of someone that was to follow him.

If it were me, I would not have chosen that time - how many people can you reach that are going to walk to hear a wild man in the wilderness.

I would have chosen today, when we have so many ways of communication

I would have put up a billboard on a major highway going into a major city, where thousands would see it

– better yet, all the major highways – into all the major cities

–        even better still, I would broadcast on TV and radio and interrupt the internet with the message

- now that is how to communicate a message

 

Or is it   ?

Would it be just another message – to our modern ears ?

John serves as the hinge of history, drawing to a close the age of the law and the prophets and inaugurating the age of redemption when, in the words of Zechariah ‘John's spirit-filled father’, /"by the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us..."/(Luke 1:78).

Maybe… maybe there is something to ‘convicting the heart’ of one who had no possessions and lived in the wilderness, the middle of nowhere - serving God’s message – telling of the great one that is to come

Maybe it matters that those that are to hear the message have to travel for it

Maybe news of “The Christ” needs to be heard personally from a man full of conviction and passion and that you need to invest something of yourself to receive it

 

Maybe that is the start of the preparations – investing yourself in the news – the good news

 

But John the Baptist did stop there – His message was not merely that the Lord was coming

 

John told, ‘all that had a desire to hear’ his message, that they needed to prepare for the Lord’s arrival

            Prepare our hearts

                       

Now in Roman times, when news that emperor was coming to town

            People would get busy – making the town look its best - They would fix the road

They would smooth out bumps – they would work out the strange curves and make them straight

            Then as now – when someone special is coming – you get ready – spruce up the place

 

 

John in the wilderness is calling for nothing less

John is, of course, not worried about appearances – he was, after all, a wild man living in a wild place, eating bugs and wore camel’s hair

 

John is worried about their hearts, their inner beauty

And John is living up the prophet’s role and calling the people to *‘turn towards God’*

All the prophets called the people to *‘turn towards God’ *– repentance

Repentance is not merely saying sorry – but saying sorry with your whole life – and living turned away from the things that you were sorry for

Repentance means change - Sin is that which is ‘out of step’ with God’s will

John’s repentance is *from* worldly ways *towards* Godly ways

From sin towards righteousness

And John is symbolically marking ‘this life altering confession of sins’ and repentance by baptizing all those that do

 

John, as the last of the Old Testament prophets, is ‘preparing a way for the Lord’

Why might people have been attracted to this message?

Why would they seek out this crazy guy in the wilderness traveling, in some cases, long distances, to hear what he was saying

I believe that deep down, when we take some time for intimate personal reflection,

I believe that we all know that we are faulty, we are all sinners,

We might on the surface look bright and shiny, our worst acts might be well buried

But deep down we all know that we are in need of cleaning, we all need the rebirth of baptism, of dieing to sin,

Of repenting (turning away from one way and towards something else)

We all need the healing grace and mercy that comes coupled with repentance,

With acknowledging our falleness and being transformed from that to something better.

This isn’t the typical advent message – and yet it is the preparing for the ways of the Lord.

One might ask themselves ‘why does this matter so much to John?’ – why does he care so much about others, that he has become this person, and lives this life

            I am sure that there were others things that John could do – the son of a priest

                        …The Ancient Hebrews, in those days would have known their scripture

In fact those that became teachers, Rabbis, and John became a famous Rabbi, would have memorize the entire holy scriptures – what we Christians call the Old Testament – by the age of 14-15 – that was just the foundation for learning

                        And undoubtedly John would have felt convicted by passages such as 

 

Ezekiel 3:17-19

/I have appointed you a watchman for the house of Israel.

When you hear a word from my mouth, *you shall warn them for me*.18

If I say to the wicked man, You shall surely die; and you do not warn him or speak out *to dissuade him from his wicked conduct* so that he may live: that wicked man shall die for his sin, but I will hold you responsible for his death.

/

/19 //If, on the other hand, you *have* warned the wicked man, yet he has *not* turned away from his evil nor from his wicked conduct, then he shall die *for his sin*, but you shall save your life./

John was not a product of our clever post-modern era, where truth is relative

Relative to the eye of the beholder

                        No, to John the Baptist – God’s word of confession of sins and repentance, once given,