A sermon preached by the Rev. Scott D.
Nowack on December 4, 2011
at First Presbyterian Church, Kilgore,
Texas.
“Return,
Restoration & Redemption”
Isaiah 40:1-11
Mark 1:1-8
What
is on your mind as you get ready for Christmas?
Chances are that repentance and confessing your sins are not on the top
of the list. Yet how much better it is
to come to the manger on Christmas day with clear eyes and a pure heart rather
than eyes and hearts clouded by the secularization of the season. There are many people who, rather than seeing
Advent as an opportunity for spiritual growth, are thinking about the in-laws
who are visiting, what they’re going to get for their spouse, how they’re going to pay off their credit card
debt, who’s going to babysit the kids
during the Christmas party, how to handle Uncle Leo who always drinks too much
of the eggnog, whether to serve turkey or ham, and whether it’s feasible to get
Grandma from the nursing home and include her in the festivities.
Maybe
there’s more to Christmas than this.
John the Baptist reminds us that there is.
The
role of John the Baptist is that of the one who “prepares” the way. He prepares the way that leads straight to
God by proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. People came from the city and the country to
be baptized in the river Jordan to prepare for the coming of the promised
Messiah.
The
Jewish people were very familiar with this type of “bathing”. Ritual washings in large baths called Mikvahs
were a regular part of the life of a Jew.
The point of bathing in these mikvahs was not to be made germ-free or
physically clean with soap, but rather they were for “spiritual cleaning”. It was done before meals, high holidays,
times of prayer, and religious services.
Symbolic washing and purifying was woven into the very fabric of Jewish
ritual as described in Leviticus 11-15.
It must be noted that John the Baptist was taking the practice of
“spiritual cleansing” in a mikvah to a new level. He was proclaiming a baptism for forgiving
sins, a practice reserved solely for converts to Judaism. What Mark is suggesting here is that God’s
people were preparing to come “home”; to come back to God ready to receive the
one the prophet Isaiah spoke of in our text this morning.
If
we wish to return to God, we need to prepare ourselves. We need to be prepared. It starts with confession and confession must
be made to three different people.
The first one is to confess to yourself; to be
honest and open with yourself. It is a
part of our nature that we close our eyes to what we do not wish to see,
especially our own sins and shortcomings.
I have no doubt when the prodigal son left home he thought he was all
that, that he was the man, the myth and the legend. But before he took his first step back home,
he had to take a good, hard, long look at himself and confess his sinfulness
and shortcomings. There is no single
person harder to face than ourselves; we continually get in our own way. But the first step to getting right with God
is confessing our sins to ourselves.
The
second one is confessing to those we’ve wronged in the past. The human barriers have to be removed before
the divine barriers can go away. We
can’t turn to God confessing our sins until we say we’re sorry to those we’ve hurt
and offended.
In
January, 1697, on a day of fasting called to remember the Salem witch trials,
Samuel Sewall slipped a document into the hands of his pastor, Samuel Willard,
at Boston’s Old South Meeting House. Mr.
Sewall, one of the seven judges who had sentenced twenty people to death in
Salem five years earlier, stood silent before the congregation as Willard read:
“Samuel Sewall, sensible of the reiterated strokes of God upon himself and
family…desires to take the blame and shame of it, asking pardon of men, and
especially desiring prayers that God, who has an unlimited authority, would
pardon that sin and the other sins…”
Sewall believed that eleven of his fourteen children had died as divine
punishment for his involvement in the witch trials. His only spiritual hope was confession as
public as his sin. It can be said that
to make a confession to God is easier than a confession to one we’ve hurt. There can be no forgiveness until we are
humbled before the ones we’ve wronged, as Mr. Sewall sought to do on a cold
Sunday in Boston.
The
third one is confessing our sin to God.
Where pride ends, forgiveness begins.
It is only when we say, “I have sinned” those have the opportunity to
say, “I forgive you.” We will not
discover God’s forgiveness for our lives if we try to relate to God on equal
footing. We must come before God on our
knees with humble and contrite hearts if we wish to receive forgiveness for our
sins. Sin and repentance are the only
grounds for hope and joy; the only grounds for reconciled, joyful relationships. No matter where you find yourself, you can be
restored and redeemed if you are willing to prepare the way.
Anything
that you do if you want it to last requires extensive preparation. Any teacher will tell you that to become an
effective teacher is simple. You just
prepare and prepare until drops of blood appear on your forehead. Preparation is the key to doing anything in
life.
All
athletes, before they compete, must prepare themselves for their
competition. When I ran cross country in
high school, I couldn’t just show up for a meet or an invitational and expect
to run a good race. It required
extensive preparation: an effective running training program, eating right, and
staying healthy. I couldn’t skip
practice and expect to be prepared to run that week. Preparation was the key to succeeding.
Any
musician will tell you it takes years of preparation to learn how to play a
musical instrument. You must practice,
practice, practice. There is no other
way to do it. My band teacher in high
school would always yell at me that I didn’t practice enough. I had to take my trombone home and practice
over the weekend. Since he was my best
friend’s dad, he knew when I practiced and when I didn’t based on my social
calendar on any given weekend. If I
wanted to play well with the wind ensemble and jazz band, I had to practice and
prepare well in advance of the concert.
If I didn’t know the music, I wasn’t going to perform. It’s that simple.
In the same way, we must prepare ourselves to
return to God by confessing our sins so we may be able to receive the savior
we’ve been waiting for; the savior we’ve been hoping for with clear eyes and a
pure heart. The hope in Advent is not
grounded in the possibilities we can see in the human community, but in the
faithfulness of God that is not conditioned by human fickleness and
uncertainty. It is God who is faithful,
who comforts us, who loves us, who cares for us.
John the Baptist is preparing us to be ready
to receive the coming King. A new era is
about to be born; God’s mercy is soon to be made evident in fresh, new ways
that are beyond our understanding. The
Jews in exile no longer had to fear the power of Babylon. The Jews in Jesus’ day no longer had to fear
the power of the Romans. We here today
do not need to fear, for there is every need to be very grateful and glad we
have a savior who fills us with hope, peace, joy and love.
Let
us prepare the way of the Lord with hopeful anticipation!
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