St Mary Magdalene, Barkway

Sunday 10 December 2006

United Service

Malachi 3.1-4; Philippians 1.2-11; Luke 3.1-6

I wonder if I asked you to describe a prophet, what you would say. I guess if I were to answer that question, my initial response would be to describe someone a bit like John the Baptist - a hairy man, not dressed very well, someone on the edge of society. I’d probably not mention the diet of honey and locusts since in my mind it was only John who ate them.

Where do we get our images of these things from? Part of the picture I draw has come from what we know about John the Baptist or Elijah, and yet in drawing an image of a prophet I have chosen to reject some of what we know about John. It made me start reflecting on how we pick and choose our images of people.

How do we decide who Jesus is for us? Who is Jesus for you?

Is he the sweet, innocent child, the babe of Bethlehem for whom we are waiting? The gentle Jesus, meek and mild? The Jesus whom one person labelled the Christ of unexamined faith?

Is he the Jesus that the Church has presented over the past two hundred years? The Jesus who has become a bit respectable?

Is he the Jesus we see in art - those famous classic pictures, often depicted as a man of the century in which he was painted, usually a white, Western complexion, a beard, and a kindly look in the eye?

Is it the Jesus who spent time partying with outcasts and eating with sinners?

I suspect if we are really honest with ourselves we like our Jesus to be a tame, loving figure who won’t cause us too much hassle. We like the message of love that he brings in theory - I wonder whether we like what that means in practice as much.

Are we ready for a Jesus who proclaims that those who are poor are more blessed than we are?

Can we cope with a Jesus who might ask us to give everything we have away?

Can we put up with a Jesus whose sense of justice means we might have to sacrifice things for the sake of others?

Can we countenance a Jesus who mixes with prisoners, murderers, rapists, drug addicts, down-and-outs, people who smell or whose mental ill-health means that they seem strange to us?

Can we follow a Jesus who calls us not to fight back when we are wronged but to forgive?

Luke’s Gospel paints both pictures of Jesus. We have the child, born in a manger, whom shepherds came to worship. We have the man who enjoyed telling a good story and partying. We have the man who loved people.

But if we look closer, we see too the Jesus who spent time with people we might not want in our houses in case we became tainted by them or our children heard things we don’t want them too.

We see the Jesus who challenged the respectable people, who pointed out that perhaps they weren’t the ones who had it right, he Jesus who seemed to be saying that God’s kingdom was for the people who are not like us - the poor, the outcast, the uneducated.

We see the Jesus who told a rich, young man to give away everything he possessed.

Following Jesus is a tough challenge.

The prophets tried to call people to this challenge. Malachi talks of a messenger who will be like a refiner’s fire or fuller’s soap. We not just talking here about our Yardley lavender scented soap or our Crabtree lily of the valley. The messenger’s cleansing is a tough one, a rough and purging one.

John’s message illuminates what this purging might mean. John preaches a baptism of repentance. Repentance that brings forgiveness.

Prophets, though most of us forget this, are not mainly people who foretold the future. At the time of speaking a prophet is someone who has a message from God to the people to whom he is speaking.

A prophet is someone who has a deep insight into their own times. Our Gospel reading makes it very clear by its reference at the start to Tiberius and Pilate, Herod and Caiphas that John has come at a particular time and to a particular place.

He brings with him first and foremost a message for his own day. His message calls for preparation, lived out as repentance.

God is about to do a new thing. Now we, of course, know that the new thing came about in the birth of Jesus, the incarnation. The people who heard John didn’t know that. They had no idea what thing God was about to do in order to being them salvation.

But, though a prophet’s message is for those of his own day, the biblical prophets’ messages have a double meaning. They are layered prophecies, which means that they have a message for other people at other times too.

John’s message of repentance is also for us who await Christ’s coming again.

John’s message of repentance is all about a return to God. It is significant that he is proclaiming his message in the wilderness.

This is about more than geography. The wilderness is not just a designation of place. In his commentary of Luke’s Gospel, Fred Craddock points out that the wilderness “recalls Israel’s formation as God’s covenant people and hence implies a return to God”.

John preached what Luke was soon to call the Gospel - the good news. And yet if we were to read beyond the six verses of our Gospel reading this morning, it wouldn’t sound like very good news.

John goes on to call those who are listening “A brood of vipers”. He urges them not to rest on their tradition in the hope of finding salvation: what counts is repentance and generosity to others, honesty and being happy with what you have.

That is a message that applies as much today as in the first century.

So, as we travel through Advent, let us heed that call to repentance and love. Let us reflect on our pictures of a safe and soft Jesus and in prayerful reflection ask whether we are missing the challenges he brought.

And if we discover that the picture of Jesus we have painted in our minds is not the true one, let us ask for courage to accept the challenge of the real Jesus, and allow him to transform our lives.