A Sermon on Repentance and the Nearness of God’s Kingdom

A sermon on repentance and the nearness of God’s kingdom, for St. Peter Lutheran Church in Greene, Iowa, on the second Sunday of Advent, December 4, 2016.

The texts this week are Isaiah 11:1-10 and Matthew 3:1-12.

Before the sermon, I taught the kids as a children’s message the chorus of this song by Bryan Sirchio. The congregation seemed to enjoy it as well!

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rkm0uXH7TS0″]

He ate bugs for lunch, yuck, yuck, yuck.
He ate bugs for lunch, yuck, yuck, yuck.
He ate bugs for lunch, yuck, yuck, yuck.
John the Baptist ate bugs for lunch.

Isn’t that a fun song? When else do you get to say “yuck, yuck, yuck” in church? It’s a catchy song, and it tells us something about this guy, John the Baptist. It tells us he’s a little unique, not quite normal.

Of the four Gospels, two of them, Matthew and Luke, tell the familiar Christmas story of Joseph, the virgin Mary, and the baby Jesus in a stable, because there is no room for them in the inn, the story of angels singing to shepherds.

John tells the story from a different perspective, speaking cosmically of the eternal Word becoming flesh, of the Lord of the universe coming and dwelling with us.

Mark’s gospel has no birth narrative. He doesn’t even mention the Christmas story.

And yet, all four of the Gospels tell about this character, John. Something about his message is important, perhaps even more important than the details of Jesus’ birth.

If you paid attention to that reading, you might have realized John the Baptist is not a good fit for people who like religion nice and organized. He doesn’t appeal to people who like to gather in the still, quiet peace of Christmas Eve, singing carols in the candle-light. His message is more urgent, more demanding. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

The way Matthew tells it, John the Baptist is a sort of wild man, a religious radical. He’s wearing strange, simple clothing made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he’s out there in the wilderness. We know from Luke’s version who John’s parents were, and that he’s Jesus’ cousin, but in today’s reading, all we’re told is John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea. He’s a mysterious, compelling figure, the kind of fire and brimstone preacher we don’t see much today, the kind of prophetic voice no longer common even then in Israel.

He seems to be living on a diet of locusts and honey, eating bugs for lunch, as a sign of the urgency of his message. He doesn’t have time for anything else, anything fancier. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.

And his message isn’t especially appealing either. Sometimes I’m a little concerned about not offending too many people as I consider about what to say in a sermon. John the Baptist has no such fears. He’s never heard of political correctness. Pharisees and Sadducees, religious leaders, upstanding citizens curious about his message come to him, and he fails completely at hospitality. He doesn’t ask them to put on name tags, or ask them where they’re from.

Instead, he calls them out. “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” You think you’re safe because Abraham is one of your ancestors? You think God loves you because you grew up in church? You think this message is only for those others, the really sinful ones, the people everyone knows need to repent? Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees, every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

This is not a nice message. You don’t go hear John preach, and shake his hand afterwards and say, “Nice sermon today, Mr. Baptist.”

And yet, wrapped up in his radical, scary, off-putting warnings, behind his strange clothes and insults, there is a message of hope. There is a call to peace, a promise of new life. John’s demand of repentance is the first step, not the last word. Repent…for the kingdom of heaven has come near.

To repent means to turn around, to stop what you are doing. It means to apologize and say you’re sorry, but it’s more than that. Repenting means changing your life, giving yourself over to God. It means recognizing the kingdom of heaven is near, and so this world isn’t everything.

This is a message for desperate people, for people in trouble. John’s first audience isn’t the well-off Pharisees and religious leaders; he’s speaking to the poor, the suffering, the ones at the edge of giving up. The people who urgently need a sign of hope, an indication that God cares about them too. John speaks to the ones who have been waiting for centuries for a messiah, a savior, the people at the end of their rope.

When you’re in a desperate situation, when you’re next to a hospital bed, when your house is on fire, when the enemy is threatening your homeland, you don’t want a nice, calmly mundane message that it’s ok, because God is somewhere watching over you.

When you’re in the wilderness where John comes from, you need something more blunt, more visceral. Repent, turn around, change your whole life, because the kingdom of heaven is near, and that means everything changes. God is breaking in. John’s message is for the hopeless, the ones who need the world to be flipped around, the ones in the shadows who need the light to break through.

It’s the image in the first verse of the reading from Isaiah. Get out your bulletin and read that first sentence with me, on the back of the bulletin, from Isaiah 11:1. “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.”

A stump looks dead. A stump is what’s left when the tree is cut off, killed, cut down. A stump is good for nothing. Today, we pay professionals to come remove dead stumps so they’ll stop taking up space in our nice lawns. It’s the corpse of a tree.

Here, Isaiah is talking about the stump of Jesse. If you remember your Bible history, Jesse is the father of King David, the greatest king of Israel. Since David’s time, hundreds of years earlier, the monarchy has fallen apart. The kingdom has split, the people have been defeated and taken into exile. The promise that God gave to Israel of an everlasting kingdom seems forgotten. All that’s left is a useless, dead stump, the corpse of a kingdom, the relic of a promise.

And yet, out of that stump comes a shoot, a glimpse of new life.

Out of death comes life. Out of betrayal at a last supper comes the promise of God’s presence. Out of torture and death on a cross comes salvation and love for the world. Out of the tomb comes resurrection. That’s the way God works.

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.

And this new life, this new hope, this promise changes everything. No more will there be war, or suffering, no more hurt or destruction on God’s holy mountain, in the kingdom of heaven. No more school shootings, or cop killings. No more racism or hatred. No more cancer, or starvation, or flooding.

Instead, the wolf shall live with the lamb, a calf shall lie down with a lion, and a little child shall lead them all. Justice and mercy shall prevail. Peace and love will triumph. The whole earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord. Everything changes. As we’ll hear on Christmas Eve, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined.” (Isaiah 9:2)

That’s a powerful promise. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near. The light is coming. Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Don’t let anything block God from coming, don’t let anything stand in the way of God’s promise.

John’s message is that one who is more powerful than him is coming after him. He’s the messenger, the herald preparing the way. God is on the move, on the way. God’s kingdom is coming. The promise of redemption, of peace, of hope is nearly here.

For those in the wilderness, this is good news. No matter how desperate the situation looks right now, no matter how bad whatever’s going on might be, no matter how dead the stump looks, God is coming. Not because of any credentials you have, or how good you are. Not because of who your parents are, or how long you’ve been in church, but because God has promised to come, and God is faithful.

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near. God is coming. Come, Lord Jesus.
Amen.