The Second Sunday after Epiphany           January 20, 2008

Isaiah 49:1-7

Psalm 40:1-10

1 Corinthians 1”1-9

John 1:29-41

All four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, depict John the Baptizer introducing the ministry of Jesus. In a sense, John is like the watchdog that makes sure that no one walks into holy territory unawares.  John’s focus was on repentance: It was what his baptism was all about. It’s important to keep in mind that John’s baptism was not about becoming Christian, because John himself was not Christian. Christian baptism, according to our Catechism “is the sacrament by which God adopts us as his children and makes us members of Christ’s Body, the Church, and inheritors of the kingdom of God.” (BCP p858)

But when John waded into the waters of the Jordan River and people queued up to come out to him, we could say that he was cleaning them up for their audience with God.  He raged at them to change their lives and to get ready, because God was about to do something very powerful. Folks listened.

Here’s John the Doberman. Put yourself in this situation: “You’re taking a stroll after a good dinner and there’s a sniper three houses up who’s going to shoot you and that’s why the dog’s barking at you so fiercely. He’s trying to warn you.

“Pay Attention!”

He’s baying at you to get you out of the reverie of contentment: Pay Attention! This is about life and death!”

Those gathered at the banks of the Jordon have heard the message: They realize that they need to repent because they have confused God’s ways with their ways. They have accumulated sins like the floor under your bed accumulates dust bunnies.

These folks realized that all they had to do was consent, repent, return to the Lord and they could start their lives all over again before they even dried off.

The past would lose its power over them: What they had done, what they had said, what they had made happen and what had happened to them, would no longer run their lives. All those memories of guilt, of not acting, of not caring, of not “stepping up” would wash away with the current.

They would no longer hear those nagging voices in their heads that told them how bad they were, how ruined they were, how resentful and resented they were.

Instead, in the silence that followed, they would be freed to hear, really hear, that still small voice of God telling them how loved they were.

As scary as John was, no wonder people walked for days just to get to him. No wonder they stood around after their turns were over just to hear him say again and again: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

What sounds like a threat to us, sounded like a promise to them:  We hear guilt, they hear pardon.  No matter how many times many of you hear me say that repentance is from the Greek word “metanoia” which means change course, to think differently, you get caught up in the counter of repentance, paranoia, and there is refusal to come to God with genuine remorse and a desire to change.

But there is need to acknowledge that repentance is saying out loud (even if it’s just in the auditorium of our hearts) that we sometimes are selfish, and that we are people who sometimes do or not do things that grieve the heart of God.

And sometimes we need to take all that foolish pride and throw it on the ground and stomp on it. Sometimes we may need to do that.

But a lot more often we deal with fragile egos and despair. And what many of us need to repent of is not pride and vainglory, but of despair and the inability to shake off the affects of sin: What we have done and what others have done to us. These are the things of spiritual death.

I’m thinking of the man who was molested by his uncle 40 years ago and is still keeping that promise that no one, including and especially God, will not get close to him, ever.

I’m thinking of the single mom who was abandoned by her husband with a whole slew of bills and cranky kids, who now makes herself available to any man who gives her an inkling of attention and support.

I’m thinking of the guy who just can’t find a job, so he starts hitting the bottle hard and his wife even harder.

On this anniversary of Roe V. Wade, I’m thinking of the 40 year old woman who in a misspent adolescence had an abortion, and now grieves inconsolably for her lost child.

We can go on and on, thinking of examples of things that lead to spiritual death. These are sins in the purest sense of the word, things that lead us away from God, and therefore away from life. Oh, we still may breathe and function in other ways, but we do not have that life that truly is from God.

And this is where the power of the message of John the Baptizer comes in so strongly from this morning’s Gospel lesson: “Here is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”  Here is the one who takes away your sin and will bring you life.

I’ve been thinking a lot about death this week. We have loved ones who are on the precipice of death, some of whom I have been tending. This and pondering this week’s lessons got me to thinking about a basic axiom:

“Life has to be lost so that other life can live.”

We start with the basics: something has to die for us to eat, whether it is plant or animal.  You may be the strictest of vegans, but you live only by the death of the plants you eat.

Most of us aren’t vegans, but we don’t like to kill things. We want our meat and chicken and fish to come in nicely shrink wrapped packaging, so we don’t have to think about the process of butchering.

All primitive tribes know that there is a direct link between the shedding of blood and survival, whether it be for food, or the destruction of an enemy.

Even Darwin spoke of the need to “kill or be killed” as a means of the survival of the fittest.  We back away from that, but think about the flies we spray or the mosquitoes we swat, or the ants we curse and try to kill that invade our kitchens.

There is something about the need for life to be lost so that other life can survive, even thrive, that forms the basis of our faith.

Christ died to save sins.

Christ died so that we might have life, and have it abundantly.

I like the language of the King James Bible: “Behold, the Lamb of God that takest away the sin of the world.”

This does include your sin and my sin.

This is why the intensity of John the Baptizer’s message is so important. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Are you on course, or have you gotten off course? Are you on the path of life or have you strayed? In your heart you know.

And behold the lamb, who dies so that you may have life. Blood was shed so that you might live. Whenever we lose track of this basic axiom of the faith, we lose track of the basic reason Christ came: to bring us life, when we were caught up in sin and self-preoccupation, he brought us life.

Do you need to be barked at, like the Doberman warning you of impending doom?  More likely, we need a friendly reminder that Christ takes our sins more seriously than we do, and that he will do anything, including dieing, to bring us to life.

Amen.