Preparing for the Kingdom of God

Sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent Year A
Isaiah 11:1-10
Psalm 72
Romans 15:4-13
Matthew 3:1-12
Preached at St. John’s Lancaster

Advent is a time of preparation; but preparation for what? Different people might answer that question in different ways. One might look forward to holiday visits with children and grandchildren. Another might prepare for the most profitable retail shopping season of the year. A third might anxiously prepare for the most wonderful gifts to be opened after Santa Claus makes his annual visit. But John the Baptist had something different in mind. He was preparing for the Kingdom of Heaven to come, and he was sent by God to help others prepare as well.
The kingdom of heaven is that long awaited day when God would break into the world in a way which had been foretold by the prophets of old. As the ancient carol says, Isaiah t’was foretold it. “And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots: And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge, and of the fear of the Lord; And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord: and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears: But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. And in that day, there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious.” When Jesus Christ was born into this world, the beginning of the fulfillment of that prophesy was fulfilled, and its fulfillment goes on today, and every day until our Blessed Redeemer returns in glory.
You see, since the coming of Jesus, everything has changed. The world is indeed turned upside down, and will never be the same again. Old things are passed away, behold, all things are made new. John, by the power of God’s revelation, knew these things; and he was commissioned by God to proclaim the time of preparation to them, and to us.
The Bible makes it very clear that our entry into the kingdom of God, our salvation if you will, is completely God’s gift to us. St. Paul in his letter to Bishop Titus (2:11) makes it clear that it is the grace of God which brings salvation to us. It is the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf which brings us salvation. Jesus is explicit about that when he says at the institution of the Holy Communion (Mt:26-28) “This is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.” Perhaps the most explicit statement of this great truth of our faith is made by Archbishop Paul in his letter to his beloved friends at Ephesus, (Ephesians 2:8-9) “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.”
If then our salvation is a free gift of God, procured for us by Jesus even while we lived as slaves to sin, and if we can do nothing to earn it, why does St. John the Baptist, the forerunner, call us to repent? Why does he demand in such clarion terms that we be sorry for our offences against God and man, and reform our ways?
First, a gift has a giver, but it also has a recipient. Have you ever given anyone a gift that they did not open, or even acknowledge? It might have been something quite wonderful, but because it was not accepted and acted upon, it was of no use to anyone. Think of Salvation, or membership in the Kingdom of God, as the Lord’s gift to us. It is there, and it is a reality whether we accept it or not. But to benefit from it, to be a part of it, we must accept it. In the words of St. Paul, (Romans 10:9) “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” The act of faithful belief is the act of acceptance a loving God has decreed for entrance into his kingdom.
Second, and this is where the process really gets interesting if you are a student of human psychology. Do you remember the fable of the ant and the grasshopper. The ant worked diligently all summer to store his winter’s food. The grasshopper played and did as he pleased, but never worked to lay in the winter’s supply of necessities. When cold weather came, the ant was vindicated by his survival, and the grasshopper’s foolishness was evident to all who saw his corpse. The Grasshopper didn’t put victuals aside because he really didn’t believe he would need them. Most people who don’t respond to God’s gift of salvation don’t fail to do so because they are bad and nasty people. They just don’t really think they need to do so. Perhaps they are well intentioned agnostics or even principled atheists who see no evidence for God. They help their neighbors and are kind to animals, but they see no need of God in their lives. Many others are simply too busy, often doing good and necessary things for people they love deeply. But there just isn’t time for God. I’ll admit that there are some folks who are just nasty and brutish, but I’ve not run into very many of them in my 56 years. To respond to God’s gift of love, to enter the kingdom of God, we humans need to see a need for doing so. That is basic psychology. And that is where repentance comes in. The kingdom of God promises us a time when the foolishness and corruption of human government will be replaced by the everlasting rule of the true King of Heaven. It promises us eternal peace and harmony. It promises us a world of plenty and hope and deliverance from all which has the capacity to kill or destroy. It represents in its ultimate fulfillment the triumph of God over selfishness and greed and sin of every kind. And it will put our guilt and shame over those past acts which have so complicated our lives as far away from our memories and our relationships as the east is from the west. If we really see a need for a renewed world like God promises, then we also eventually will come to see that most of the mess in this current world is of our own doing. We have neglected our responsibilities to our neighbors and ourselves. We have failed to tend this garden in which God placed us. We have sought to control others for our own benefit. We have been lazy, and lustful, and disrespectful. We have expected others to do our work for us and been satisfied with our ignorance. Perhaps all of us have not done all of these things, but as a species, we are guilty as sin, and all of us have had a hand in at least a few of the things I have mentioned. When I realize my yearning for “the kingdom of God” with all its blessings. When I humbly acknowledge that my mistakes and attitudes have had a hand in making a world so unlike the kingdom of God. Then the natural human response to such a realization must be repentance, which is little more than genuine and heartfelt grief, followed by changed attitudes and behaviour. Grief is a natural human psychological response to the realization that I am responsible to some degree for spoiling this wonderful place where God has put us, and that I am responsible to some degree for the divisions that exist between me and some of the people around me, people who were created by God to be my sisters and brothers, and my fellow pilgrims on the road to the Kingdom of Heaven. And so John only asks of us that which is so natural to us all, that we be sorry for those things we have done which have served to spoil this garden of God’s delights which we call our world and our relationships with others.
But there is a second step to repentance. Has anyone ever told you they were sorry, but you knew it was a lie, a social convention designed to smooth ruffled feathers and escape some temporary unpleasantness? What would have convinced you that the persons grief and sorrow was real? I daresay the only thing that would have worked is if they changed their behaviour and stopped doing that thing which had been so offensive in the first place. Without a real effort at changed behaviour or attitude, the words “I’m sorry” ring with a hollow cynicism.
Saint John the Baptist was sent by God to tell you and me that the Kingdom of God’s reign has broken into this world, And that it is in the very real process of being established, with or without our help. God offers it to all of us as a free and unmerited gift, just because he loves us. But he is a gentleman, and will not force any of us to receive this great gift he offers. It is his hope, and this is the Baptist’s message, that you, and I, and everyone else in the world will rejoice that the beginning of the Kingdom is upon us. It is his hope that we will look around us and see the need for what he offers. It is his hope that you and I will recognize that we have all done things in the course of our lives that have hindered the establishment of the Kingdom temporarily, and have hurt people we ought to love. It is his hope that we will be so sorry for these unthinking and cruel actions and attitudes that we will cry out in grief, ask his help, and do better in the days to come. And finally, as we live into this reality which is the Kingdom of God, it is his desire that we see with a new clarity the wonder and truth of the Lord Jesus Christ’s sacrifice for each of us, and that we will with joy confess public ally that Jesus is Lord of our lives, and believe with all our hearts that God has raised him form the dead to proved the truth of it all. AMEN.