But I do think some people come to church to sleep better or feel better about themselves. Especially around Christmas and Easter of course. Their thinking may go like this: “If I go to church Christmas Eve then that shows God I care a little and then I can basically forget about the real meaning of Christmas and just go about my normal life. As long as I pretend that I care and act like I am religious, I can fool God or at least fool other people. The Christmas Eve service is just a little road block in the way of our holiday cheer. But at least going makes us feel better and makes us look good.   

In some ways John “the Baptist” as they called him is like the Season of Advent in the church–an annoying, unpleasant, yet persistent speed bump on the road to celebrating the birth of sweet baby Jesus.  That's usually how Advent is portrayed: a time of waiting and preparation before Christmas.  However, this Advent we would do well to recover the dual meaning of this church season.  Advent is not only a time for preparing to celebrate the first coming of Jesus, but also His second.  That preparation requires that we listen to John's preaching.  John's main message is, repent!  The kingdom of heaven has come near.  The time is short.  Bear fruit worthy of repentance.  This is a message that many preachers have shied away from, especially this time of year.  However, our neglect of John's message really does us no good.  Too often the Good News has been transformed into news you can hear any place else.  "I'm okay.  You're okay."  "God is nice; therefore, we should be nice to each other."  The teeth of the Gospel have been knocked out, the bite removed; the radical, transforming power of God to pick us up, dust us off, wipe our slates, and turn us around has been muted.

Some pastors are afraid that a John the Baptist type tirade will offend people.  I’m not one of them—I don’t really care if I offend someone as long as it’s done in a loving manner and it is the truth. If then it still offends, then so be it. Modern people do not like to hear about sin and repentance.  John's message will anger people.  It will.  But there are people in churches all over who are desperate to hear that God wants, expects, and makes possible repentance.  That God can take our pitiful, broken little lives, turn them around and make even us bear fruit for the kingdom.  Tremendous freedom comes with that message. And so I seek to follow in John's footsteps. I seek to preach news, good news that is worth hearing.

A preacher named Michael Turner gives the following illustration. “John the Baptist wouldn't have lasted a day in the United Methodist church in which I grew up.  He could've maybe been the preacher down at the Pentecostal Church of the Second Blessing in the metal building out on the outskirts of town, but not at my home church.  It's not that we were some big, downtown metropolitan church.  We weren't.  Mine was a small, mill-town church.  Good Methodists; good citizens.  Well, we weren't all that good, but we weren't all that bad either.  Law-abiding, tax paying, comfortably middle-class.  We were the kind of church that liked our religion in small, controlled doses.  Nothing fanatical.  We were perfectly happy for God never to say anything to us other than what we expected to hear already, and what we expected to hear was "I'm okay, you're okay."  "God is nice; therefore, we should be nice to each other."  So, if John the Baptist had pulled up on moving day looking like "captain caveman" with his unkempt hair and scraggly beard, moved his wardrobe of one camel's hair outfit into the parsonage closet, and put his box of locusts and jar of wild honey into the pantry, eyebrows definitely would have raised.  We've seen eccentric preachers before, but John would have taken the cake.

I can hear the gray-hairs talking now: "Is that our new preacher?"  "Couldn't be. Must be the moving guy." "Nope, that's him.  Marvin's on the Pastor/Parish Relations Committee, so he's already met him.  Marvin said he was a doozie.  Who did we offend to get a pastor who looks like this?"  "Well now, let's not judge a book by its cover.  As long as he loves the people, visits Aunt Betty in the nursing home, and takes care of our shut-ins, then we can deal with odd clothing and a rough appearance."  But the first time John stepped into the pulpit and unleashed one of his fire-breathing sermons that would have been the end of him.  The Pastor Parish Relations Committee would have held an emergency meeting, called the District Superintendent, demanded a move.

John’s message: "You bunch of snakes!" (What a way to start a sermon!)  "What do you think you're doing slithering down here to the river?  Do you think that a little water on your snake skins is going to make any difference? It's your life that's got to change, not your skin!  If your life is changed, people will be able to tell.  You'll bear fruit.  And don't think you can pull rank because you are a descendant of Abraham.  Descendants of Abraham are a dime a dozen.  God can take these rocks and make them into descendants of Abraham.  What matters is your life. Is your life bearing fruit?  Because if it is deadwood, then it goes into the fire.  Repent!  The kingdom of heaven is near."

That’s a tough message.  Scathing.  Yet crowds came. People from Jerusalem and all Judea braved the elements and journeyed out into the desert to hear John preach.  You couldn't get that kind of preaching at First Church Jerusalem.  They came to hear John's message of repentance.  People were being baptized.  Lives were being turned around.  Transformed.

In his autobiography, Gandhi often speaks of his life as an "experiment with the truth."  Early in his life when he was thrown off a train in South Africa, he learned an important lesson that he carried with him his whole life. Because of South Africa's racist laws at that time, Gandhi, on his way to practice law after earning a law degree in England, was tossed off a train.  He was told that because he was "colored," he could not sit with white people in first class on the train.  Gandhi had in his pocket a letter from the Queen that certified that he was an attorney.  "Attorneys can't be colored in South Africa," said the angry train conductor.  Gandhi clung to his seat and even though he was beaten, he refused to move.  He clung to the truth that he knew about himself.  For the rest of his life, Gandhi was ever convinced that truth will always win out over lies.  His whole life became an "experiment with the truth."  That is, his life became a test of the truth.  Can truth make its own way in the world?  Is truth more powerful than falsehood? Can confrontation with the truth change lives?

Enemies of the truth can beat you, can even take your life, but they cannot defeat the truth.  The truth is always more powerful than its enemies.  This is what Gandhi taught his followers and, working with millions of his fellow Indians, he led the movement that liberated India and won a country its independence, leading to the largest democracy in the world.  His "experiment with the truth" worked. Martin Luther King, Jr., read Gandhi's autobiography while a student at Boston University.  He immediately saw its relevance to the evil practice of racial segregation in America.  King knew the truth—God has created all people equal and it is evil to treat people otherwise.  He became convinced that ordinary people, clinging only to the truth, defending the truth in a nonviolent way (for the way of truth needs not violence to establish itself), can move the world. John the Baptist came preaching the truth, the truth about us. He came nonviolently, doing nothing to move his hearers but speaking the truth.  John spoke the truth about our collective condition.  He spoke out of the conviction that truth could make its own way in our hearts.  John spoke out of an implicit conviction that the truth is transformative. When the truth is spoken, and when the truth is heard, hearts are changed, lives are done over, transformation is given. John called on people to change in light of his message. Repent!  Having held up the mirror of truth to their lives, John was sure that radical turning around, complete repentance was possible.  John the Baptist performed an "experiment in the truth."

Later, in another Gospel, Jesus would say that He was the way, the truth, and the life.  Jesus Christ is not only the way, not only the life, but He is also the truth.  Jesus is, in a way, Almighty God's "experiment with the truth."  Here is a truth that bursts upon the world, explodes, intrudes, and changes everything in its path.  Here is truth, not as an abstract idea or concept, but as a human being, a speaking, moving person who intrudes among us and, in the process, changes us.  John the Baptist is the first act, the forerunner of the truth who is Jesus Christ.  John is the first step in God's great "experiment with the truth." The repentance John preached is not a mid-course correction; it is more radical than that.  The repentance John preached is not repudiation of the past; it is more complex than that.  It calls for us to look behind before we dare to move ahead.  It calls for us to encounter the past we have lived through but have not fully experienced, the past we have inherited but not inhabited, before we enter a future we do not yet comprehend.  Maybe we don’t see ourselves as snakes as John the Baptist labels the religious leaders who come to investigate what he is up to. But we should recognize that a good dose of repentance may be in order for us. John’s message was simple: “Repent, because Jesus is soon coming.” It’s the same message this morning. It’s simple, but it isn’t easy. That is, turn around, go in the other direction. Repent. Amen.