life changing faith

A Month before Christmas I had a party. I gave it a name,
“Matt's Early Christmas Party”,
I invited 90 of my closest friends from all around Britain.
I took 3 days off work in order to tidy my house.
I cut down my spending the month before so that I would have some money to buy party food and drink.
I planned this party so well that it was going to be the party of the century.

Out of the 90 people invited 3 people turned up
Out of the 3 days I took off work I only used half a day to tidy
Despite my saving I didn’t have as much money as I wanted to spend.
This party was no longer a party and became 3 friends watching a film.

Life destroyed all my party plans.
Life got in the way of the 90 people and stopped them coming to the party,
life meant that I always found something more interesting or worthwhile or fun to do during my time off work,
life meant that my money still had to be spent when I was trying to save,
and Life meant the party of the century wasn’t even a party.

How often does life get in the way of our plans? Too often is the answer I would give, but then again I guess part of the problem is the way we plan and prepare for things. One important thing I forgot to mention about my party planning is that I only decided 2 weeks before the party that I was having it. So despite me planning the party really well, I didn’t really give anyone else time to plan the small things like how they were going to get to mine, who would look after their kids, who would cover for their time off work etc etc. So no it wasn’t really a massive surprise that the party didn’t work.

Our first reading in Malachi shows Gods a lot smarter than me, “Look! I'm sending my messenger on ahead to clear the way for me.” Not only was God sending someone to do the groundwork before his arrival, he even had enough sense to tell everyone about 500 years before Jesus’ arrival. Now if that’s not planning ahead I don’t know what is.

The thing is God clearly doesn’t want everyone to be preparing for a date, or a party, he wants everyone prepared for a person, for him, and so he doesn’t tell them when to expect him, or the messenger. Infact the message version of the passage says it like this “Suddenly, out of the blue, the Leader you've been looking for will enter his Temple” Why doesn’t he just say on the 25th of December in 24 years and at 2pm my messenger will arrive, surely that would have been so much easier.

I believe the reason he wasn’t precise was because he wanted us constantly prepared, because when you are prepared all the time it’s a lot harder for “life to get in your way”. He does tell us what to expect and what we are preparing for, he even tells us he is going to send someone before the event to help us prepare but he doesn’t want us to be working towards a date, he wants us constantly prepared.

So what does being constantly prepared mean to us now that both the Messenger and the Messiah has already come and how should this effect us when we, in all honesty, are all christmassed out and are just about recovered from all the turkeys etc we ate in honer of celebrating the birth of Jesus.

I was talking to someone the other day; they are a Christian but described Christmas as their most hated time of year. She said “I don’t celebrate Christmas because it is a pagan festival with no real importance to me or my faith”. A Christian who thinks Christmas isn’t important that’s shocking isn’t it, but then the more I spoke to her the more the idea of being constantly prepared kept hitting me. She prefers to celebrate Christ’s birth every day of her life than to make a big thing of it once a year. She feels that people will see God through her more if she is constantly worshiping and celebrating God coming to earth than they will from her holding a big party once a year, and she feels that not making a big thing out of Christmas gets more people talking to her about her faith than doing a big thing.

Don’t worry I certainly am not saying we are wrong to celebrate Christmas, I love it and would deeply miss it, but what I am saying is if God urged people to be constantly prepared over 500 years before the first “Christmas” then maybe, just maybe, he wants us to constantly be seen to be celebrating the fact that he came and to be constantly prepared that he will come again. For my friend Christmas is every day, maybe that’s the effect the passage in Malachi should have on us.

So what happened when the Messenger arrived then, well The Message version of out second reading tells us that “In the fifteenth year of the rule of Caesar Tiberius Zachariah's son, out in the desert at the time, received a message from God. He went all through the country around the Jordan River preaching a baptism of life-change leading to forgiveness of sins, as described in the words of Isaiah the prophet: Thunder in the desert! "Prepare God's arrival! Make the road smooth and straight! Every ditch will be filled in, Every bump smoothed out, The detours straightened out, All the ruts paved over. Everyone will be there to see The parade of God's salvation."

Let’s break this down a bit

“A Baptism of life change leading to forgiveness of sins”. This one line challenges me on its own. Now Baptism is a massive symbol in our church whether you believe in infant baptism or not, and this is because of the idea of us being washed clean, but in the context that it is written Baptism was total submersion, it was about someone being 100% submerged into water and was to symbolise the fact that their whole life was changing, they were being totally submerged in Gods love, the sins of their lives were being totally forgiven and their lives were totally changing. Clarissa went through a life changing experience when she went into the cocoon in our story earlier and she came out as a beautiful butterfly, imagine how even more beautiful the transformation is when its Gods love that we are cocooned in.

We are told what John preached was life changing stuff and then we have the details, Johns Job description, and what better job description to use than a prophesy from Isaiah. John’s job was to prepare for Gods arrival, to smooth and straighten and to make sure that EVERYONE will get there to see “The parade of Gods salvation”.

It is very easy to see why many of the people who heard and saw John at work could have mistaken him for the Messiah, as his remit is what I would expect a Saviours remit to be.

Baptise people, yeah that’s simple anyone can do a religious act like that, but to preach life changing and sin forgiving stuff, now not everyone could do that could they?

Ok so John had a hard job, but he was the Messenger it wasn’t going to be easy was it? What’s that got to do with us?

Firstly I believe that the life changing message that John preached through Baptism was the very same that we have all heard and reacted to through Jesus. This means that if we have become Christians then we should be 100% submerged and changed. There are many sermons that can be preached on how we should change and in what ways etc and I don’t feel that it is that area which God wants me to focus on today, but it is still important to remember that the event we have just celebrated, Christmas, is a life changing event and that maybe we might still have to change even if we are happy the way we are.

Secondly I believe that the job description is not only Johns, it is ours as well. Yes Jesus the Messiah has come but surely that makes it even more important for Gods people to smooth out the bumps, to straighten the bendy roads, and to re-direct the detours so that everyone will be there to see the parade of Gods salvation.

The woman I spoke about earlier has taken this job description and sees the seasonal Christmas as a potential blockage in the road which may stop some getting to see the parade and so she has gone about removing it.
How can you do the same in less extreme ways?
Is there a way you can make sure people see that Christmas should be an everyday thing and isn’t just an excuse to party once a year?
Is there something you should be doing now and in the future to improve the access and so help others on the right path?

Finally the word in the description is EVERYONE. It says very clearly that all our work is done so that EVERYONE will be there to see the parade of Gods salvation. This means even more now because society is so mixed up, because religion appears to be more about hatred than about love, because human issues such as race, sexuality, gender etc have become more important to us than God.

Sometimes in our eagerness to help in the roadwork we become another ditch or another hole in the ground which in turn stops people from getting to see the parade. We have to find a way to get beyond our own prejudices or preconceptions, to love the sinner not the sin, to avoid being judgmental, so that we are truly trying to help everyone not just those we think are worthy.

We have been given a life changing experience of a life changing faith. We are asked to be constantly prepared for Gods return and we have been given the task to ensure that everyone else is at the parade when it happens. How do you do it? That’s a question you need to ask God.

Amen