May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.
So once again, Christmas is coming upon us fast and , as always, taking us all by surprise. Today is already the second Sunday in Advent and just to get you worried about how little time you really have, there is only one more service here at Calveley before the Christmas services. There are now only two more Saturdays left for getting yourselves organised and, on the assumption that now seems to apply that we can shop 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, there are 18 shopping days to go.
I don’t know about you, but no matter how much time you allow at this time of the year, stress levels always rise. In our house this is partly due to the different approaches taken by my wife and I. My approach to Christmas shopping - which I suppose is typically male, is not to worry too much. I might have half an idea what I am looking for but if I see something else that will do then I’ll get it. If I forget someone then that’s too bad and I can always wrap up a bottle of wine on Christmas Eve if I’m really stuck.
My wife has a much more professional approach. She goes out with a list of all of the people who we need to buy for - which seems to get longer each year as people have this annoying habit of producing babies which not only means we have more presents to buy but also gives me even more names that I can’t remember. If she does not return with the right gifts against each name she get’s very frustrated and my comments of ‘What does it matter, they’ll never remember who gave it to them anyway’ is never taken as helpful.
As a dutiful husband, however, I feel it is my role to help with this task of Christmas shopping and so each year I take a day off work and report for a day’s bag carrying duty in Chester or Nantwich or wherever. The theory behind this is that two heads are better than one but this is not a good theory when it leads to a clash of the shopping cultures. The problem boils down to the fact that I like shopping and my wife doesn’t. I know this sounds odd but I think it will make sense as I explain. I see shopping as an interesting way to pass a few hours and a change from work - a little holiday if you like. As such, I feel it should be enjoyed.
This involves going somewhere pleasant and scenic, ensuring that there is plenty of time set aside for a decent lunch and of course coffee and afternoon tea. My measure of success is therefore not - how many gifts we bought, but whether I had a pleasant time buying them. My wife measures success by the tangible results in the boot of the car - hence the clash of cultures.
And so begins the long run up and preparation for Christmas. Still to come are the pleasures of Christmas cards, wrapping all of those presents, cleaning, cooking etc. etc. We seem to go through this endless period of preparation each Christmas but never stop to ask ourselves what it is we are preparing for.
All of the running around that we do in preparing for the material aspects of Christmas far outweigh the period of preparation we give to the spiritual aspects and at this time of Advent we are reminded about this failure to prepare - and in particular we are reminded this Sunday when we read and hear of John the Baptist. John’s role in life was to prepare the people of Israel for the coming of the Christ and his challenges 2000 years ago hold true for all of us today.
Almost thirty years had passed since Jesus’ birth when John burst onto the scene and he caused quite a stir. He was, after all, unique. He wore odd clothes and ate strange food and preached an unusual message to the Judeans who went out to the wastelands to see him. The reason he wasn’t locked up was that the Judeans were very tolerant of the strange behaviour of holy men and prophets but John did not aim at uniqueness for its own sake. He aimed at obedience. He knew he had a specific role to play in the world - announcing the coming of the Saviour.
This wild looking man had no power or position in the Jewish political system but he spoke with almost irresistible authority. People were moved by his words because he spoke the truth with an absolute assurance, challenging them to turn from their sins and baptising them as a symbol for their repentance. They responded by the hundreds - but even as people crowded to him, he pointed beyond himself, never forgetting that his main role was to announce the coming of the Saviour.
John’s use of Baptism served two purposes. Firstly, it was a traditional form of initiation for converts to Judaism so the Jews would have been familiar with the symbolism of the act of baptism. The chief reason was, however as a tangible sign of repentance. Repentance happens inside a person and God’s cleansing action is invisible to the individual and to the observers. John’s used water to cleanse externally as an outward sign of the inward cleansing.
John’s theme of repentance - as valid for us now as it was for the Jews at that time, means - literally, turn around, about face, make a 180 degree turn in the direction of yo9ur life. Turning from the kind of self centredness that leads to the wrong actions and towards God. John tells us clearly how to do this - in two easy steps. The first step is to admit your sin. Then God will receive you and help you to live the way he wants. Only God can get rid of sin. He doesn’t expect us to clean up our lives before we come to him - he expects to meet us, flawed as we are and to take all of the sin and hate and replace it with love.
This makes the first part of our preparation for the coming of Christ easy - much easier than preparing for the secular side of Christmas. John’s message offers us a simple path of preparation - all we need to do is to admit our sin and bring it to God. He will do the hard part. He will take our sins to himself. He will clean us and make us new. He will prepare us for the coming of His Son Christ Jesus and he will guarantee us eternal life.
Then comes the second part of John’s preparation. He tells the Pharisees and Saduccees - and all of us “Produce fruit in keeping with your repentance”. Now this is where it gets a bit tougher. This is when we find that we have to do our bit when God does his. God will trust us in our repentance and forgive us of our sins but if we then turn around and behave exactly as before then our repentance, our about face, was false and meaningless. Hence John’s message to ‘produce fruit in keeping with our repentance’.
God looks beyond our words and our religious observance to see if our behaviour in real life matches the piety of our words and prayers and we must constantly ask ourselves - does it? We can fool ourselves into thinking it does but we cannot fool God and when we come to face him we need to be sure that we have truly produced fruit in keeping with our repentance.
So, our spiritual Christmas preparation requires us to do two things. Repent of our sins and then live up to that repentance by ensuring that our lives really have taken an about face - away from a focus on ourselves and towards a focus on God. Let’s finish by asking for God’s help in this, the most important job we have to do in preparing for Christmas.
Be with us Lord at this Advent time of preparation
Help us to face you with our sin
Rejoicing in the knowledge of your forgiveness
Be with us Lord at this Advent time of repentance
Help us to change our lives
May our thoughts and words and deeds reflect your loving light
Tom Crotty