River Road Church Baptist

December 7, 2003

Dr. Cecil E. Sherman

“Getting Ready for Jesus”

John 3:1-6

The text was from one of the gospel readings about John the Baptist. He appears in all four. We get a glimpse of the Roman world. It was bleak—bleak for nearly everybody. Oppression by government was common. Hard labor was normal from childhood to death. Disease was unchecked and mysterious. Women were second-class. Children had next to no rights. Slavery was common and harsh. Jews especially had traveled a hard road. At the time of the birth of Jesus, it had been 400 years since Judah had a prophet. Rome ruled, Jews chaffed, temple religion was boring and greedy. People were asking serious questions: Does life have meaning? Has God forgotten us?

Onto this dark stage stepped John the baptizer. All of the gospels mention him, but two gospels tell us Nativity stories. All four talk about John the baptizer. He was ascetic, withdrawn, almost forbidding. He ate strange foods, dressed differently, lived in the Judean wilderness. Anybody in his right mind would have found another place to live. John began preaching what we would call a revival. It caught on. It met a need and filled a hunger and people flocked from habitable places to the Judean wilderness to the Jordan to hear John. John’s revival was a preview to Jesus. He’s called the forerunner. He was the first to get ready for Jesus. Now, in due time Jesus is going to come to John, accept his baptism and John is going to pronounce an identity upon him, “This is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” and he will baptize him. And the spirit of God will come down upon him, but that’s future, after the text that is the lesson today.

What did it mean to get ready for Jesus in the text? We can start there. Maybe we can go further and talk a little bit about what does it mean to get ready for Jesus to us? First thing John did was baptize people. Self-baptism in that day was common. Women after childbirth would immerse themselves. It was a purification rite. Males would baptize themselves; gentiles who chose to become Jews were circumcised and then would self baptize themselves. This is different. John gave it a new meaning. John’s baptism was a vow to rededicate the self to God and the law. It was an outward sign of an inward change. But John wasn’t just baptizing people; he was baptizing people after something happened. The thing that gave baptism content was the repentance that came before it and the baptism was the outward sign. Repentance was a change of mind, a new direction of will, and an altered purpose in life.

Now, repentance is disturbing to us. Repentance works on the assumption that I am guilty. We don’t like that. In fact, you can find whole schools of thought that say guilt is bad and to the extent that religion fosters it, religion is bad. And shaking guilt, well that becomes their stock and trade. I’ll help you stop feeling guilty. Then religion comes along and talks about repentance and to what point do you repent if you don’t think something’s wrong? Something is wrong not out there; something is wrong in here.

I’ve got a hunch that folks who come to church really don’t buy the business about shaking guilt. If that’s so, church people have a residual honesty and it needs to be curried, stoked, enlarged, not so we will feel guilty, so you can deal with guilt in a way that brings about forgiveness that leads to wholeness that leads to a society you can live in. There’s another way to deal with guilt. John was confrontational as he pushed repentance upon these people. I almost winced when I heard Barbara read the words, “You brood of vipers. Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” Now, that’s not designed to get a crowd. Strangely it did, because there was an authenticity in John the baptizer that had not been found in the professional religionists those people had seen. This guy tells us the truth. And so they’d stand there and take it, even though he sometimes whipped them with his words.

The third part of it – he tied repentance to confession. People were baptized by him in the river of Jordan confessing their sins. About 500 hundred years ago Protestants gave confession to Catholics. Since reformation, Protestants don’t do confession. I’ve never been to a confessional booth in my life. But there’s something here we need to play with. Though it can be abused, confession lets us say our sins to somebody in the family of faith, it puts us on record, and we become accountable to each other; and that’s good. Too many people in all denominations have a label that they don’t feel any sense of accountability to each other. Now an inner circle in every church does. There are too many people in the margins. This kind of a practice is one of the ways we get honest with each other if we do it right. Now, can you mess up confession? You can mess up everything. Anything can be counterfeited. But this idea has something in it that smacks of honest and moves toward integrity and that gets us in the right direction. John tied this repentance and confession to baptism. Until they confessed they were not baptized. Until they repented they were not baptized and in theory, every church does the same.

Last thing John did was to tell people to do right. I tried to think of some theological word for that. But I decided that I might slip into a language some of you don’t know. Everybody knows ‘Do right.’ Good religion is not just a way to believe. With John what you believed had to be lived. Plain people saw in John authentic religion. They asked him, “What then should we do?” You say we’ve been bad, how can we be good? And he can forward with the most straightforward answers, “Whoever has two coats must share with the fellow who has none.” He didn’t say, “Ask the fellow who had none why he had none.” “Whoever has food must share with those who have none.” To tax collectors, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed.” Stop policing people. To soldiers, “Stop using your power to extort, to abuse.” Act right. Notice John’s ethical rules were personal, grounded in life, immediate. This could be heard the wrong way but

I’m going to say it and hope it’s heard right. He didn’t tell folks to stamp out war. He didn’t tell folks to feed everybody who’s hungry in Asia. His rules were much more immediate. What would this mean to us? Well, I’m going to play with John’s words, interpret them, you understand that; but see if this rings true to the text. Students, stop cheating. Businessmen, tell the truth about your products and pay your help fair wages. Married people, keep your promises and if you produce children, parent them. Citizens, pay your taxes, and don’t fudge. Laborers, come to work on time and work all day. Share with the needy you can see. Live simple, orderly lives with special care for those in need. That’s it. It’s not complicated, but it’s got an edge in it.

Decorating a tree, buying gifts for kin, going to parties this season are not wicked exercises. I’ll do some of them myself. But they don’t get you ready for Jesus. We get ready for Jesus when we identify with the people of God, repent of our sins, confess them to somebody in the family of faith and live orderly, caring lives. A long time ago that’s how they got ready for Jesus. Some of it still applies.

CES; lmk, mt