Sermon from January 23, 2000
I have never met a dull person. Every person is like a mine in which are hidden precious jewels in the rough, but only that person can give another person permission to discover those hidden treasures. We give others permission when we work and play together, but we really admit people into our lives when we tell them stories about ourselves. Careful listeners begin to discover the drama that plays out in every person.

Becoming that kind of listener also exposes you to certain risks. It is always possible that someone else's story may have an impact on your own. That story may subvert and begin to change yours. That happened to me when I was a small child.

My mother hired a domestic helper to come to our house and clean and watch after me, while she worked. The domestic helper was the first black person I ever got close to. I cannot remember her name, and I do not know how long she worked for us. What I still remember vividly around 1944-1945 was that woman's joy, when she told my mother that her husband was coming home from World War II. It meant that she could not work for us any longer. I did not understand then or later why she could not. I desperately wanted to have her around me. I wept bitterly when I realized that she would no longer be part of my life. I loved her.

How much am I to attribute to her, when, twenty years later, I stood on the street at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in 1963 and saw police arrest two young black men, about my age, just for being black and for being on that particular street at that particular time; and, unaccountably, my sympathies were with the young black men, not with the police?

I said a couple of weeks ago that it is disturbing to learn that those who told you the story of life, got part of it wrong. It is upsetting. And let me tell you, changing part of my story was not easy, especially the story told about blacks and whites in the Old South. That story, insofar as it was my story, began to change in the summer of 1963, and may have begun to change with that sweet black woman, who nutured me and loved me in the 1940s. But change it did.

But in fits and starts and over many years and influenced by others who told a different story my story changed. I came to accept a new social order, a new way of thinking about black people, a new way of thinking about the past. There is a name for change like that. It is called repentance, and I would like to explore with you the meaning of repentance and its relevance to a personal relationship with God. We can do that in another episode of the longest-playing story on the planet. Look with me at Mark 1.

Let's start again at the beginning and add a few more verses. The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

It is written in Isaiah the prophet:

"I will send my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way" –
"a voice of one calling in the desert,
'Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.'"

"I will send my messenger ahead of you," said the Lord, and 500 years later He sent him. Time had met its match. Here were purposes that had endured through vast ages and across many cultures. Here too was a community of believing people, the Jews, that did not dismiss the ancient writings of scripture as irrelevant, because they did not think of them as nothing more than human inventions. They read them as God's intentions for His people. His redemptive purpose toward Israel had not changed; so, whatever He said about Israel was relevant, whether He said it yesterday or 800 years ago.

That faith was rewarded when John the Baptist raised his voice in the desert country west of the Jordan. He was a preacher and a forerunner, and God raised him up to prepare Israel for the moment for which it had been called into existence. Preparation defines the ministry of John the Baptist. Therefore, it is important to pay attention to the preparations he made. Verses 4-5 tell us much of what we need to know.

And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.

We do not call him John the Baptist for nothing. He insisted on water, lots of it. He insisted on having people down into the Jordan River and immersing them good and proper. But what compelled people to submit to that and to do so in large numbers? The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him, (v. 5).

Part of the answer takes us back to the Old Testament quotes of verses 2-3. Those quotes would awaken Jewish hopes for a reversal of Jewish fortunes and the return to a golden age of Israel. By using those quotations Mark seemed to be saying, "The fulfillment of Jewish dreams has come at last, and we are to look for that fulfillment in Jesus Christ (Jesus Mashiach), the Son of God." For that message to get about in Jesus' day was to stir revolutioary dreams.

Jesus did the same in His preaching. Look down at Mark 1:15, which gives the dominant theme of Jesus' preaching. "The time has come," he said. "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!" Here we strike another mother lode. "The kingdom of God is near." "The fulfillment of your dreams is right around the corner."

But John the Baptist and Jesus tempered revolutionary fervor, and they did it in the same way. Verse 4 says that John was preaching a baptism of repentance. Jesus' message also said, "Repent and believe the good news!"

The national dreams of the Jews went down deep, and John's and Jesus' preaching had followed them down deep into the soul of Israel and wakened a giant. But still, they were not calling on people to sign up as soldiers in a revolutionary army; they were calling on them to repent .

A combination of national fervor and repentance brought the crowds to the Jordan basin. That's what compelled them into the water and under the water. John's message went a step further. Verse 8: "I baptize you with water, but he will baptized you with the Holy Spirit." Whatever people thought Jesus was going to do, they would just have to wait to find out.

So, here was the situation. John the Baptist had tapped into Israel's most profound national aspirations. He was the talk of the town. Expectations reached a fever pitch. And when people wanted to know what to do, they were told, "Repent!" and "Wait!" Waiting is not exactly something you do. It is more a state of mind while you do any number of other things. But repentance was something people could do, and confessing sins and being baptized in the Jordan gave an outlet to their bursting  hopes.

Now we come to the issue of this passage that speaks with such urgency to our situation. What, exactly, were those eager Jews doing when they repented? What is repentance? I would like to answer this question first by seeing just how much we can learn from Mark 1 and the parallel stories told by Matthew and Luke.

Let's start with the action of the crowds who came to the Jordan to be baptized by John. Look in the middle of verse 5. Confessing their sin, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. Repentance means first that I agree with God that something in my life has gone seriously wrong. I agree so strongly that I am willing to publicly acknowledge that. The crowds did that by confessing their sins at the River Jordan.

This does not mean that people indiscriminately told their worst secrets to any and all who happened to be listening. We have no biblical evidence that people did that, and nothing in the practice of the Church for 2000 years encourages that kind of thing. We know from the Gospel of Luke, which gives out more information about this event, that people asked John for counsel on how to live differently. And that brings us to a second characteristic of biblical repentance.

Repentance means first that I agree with God that something in my life has gone seriously wrong, and second it means that I agree to change what has gone wrong. The Gospel of Matthew confirms this second characteristic of repentance. According to Matthew 3:8, John the Baptist said, "Produce fruit in keeping with repentance." We cannot be satisfied with lip service. We need to walk the walk as well as talk the talk.

There is a third reality involved in biblical repentance that we can learn from the ministry of John the Baptist. I said a moment ago that preparation defines the ministry of John the Baptist. He was preparing his generation for the appearance of the kingdom of God by calling it to repentance. Therefore, it is right to say the behavior we are to repent of and replace has no place in the kingdom of God.

It is a jolt in everyday life to learn that someone we thought liked us turns out to dislike us intensely. It is a jolt to learn that God, whom we think of as loving and compassionate, has some very definite ideas of what kind of behavior He will and will not tolerate in His kingdom, and we are guilty of behavior He will not tolerate.

In one of His parables of the kingdom (Luke 13:27-28), Jesus said this about God's treatment of the unrepentant. "But he will reply, 'I do not know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!' There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out." Repentance is the act by which we prepare ourselves to be admitted into the Kingdom of God.

So, what have I said so far about the nature of biblical repentance? Repentance means first that I agree with God that something in my life has gone seriously wrong, and second it means that I agree to change what has gone wrong. Third, it means we are preparing ourselves to be admitted to the kingdom of God by renouncing behavior that has no place in the kingdom of God. That brings us to a fourth feature that belongs to repentance. Baptism in water is the sign that says publicly, "I have taken my place among those who are preparing for the kingdom of God by repentance."

I will have much more to say about baptism next Sunday when we focus on the baptism of Jesus. For now let me just say this. From the rainbow in Genesis to the elements of Holy Communion and baptism God has given His people signs that confirm to them generation after generation His gracious and saving intentions toward them. We need these signs, and they carry enormous power.

But now, we have to get back to Mark 1 and ask a pressing question. Were all those people who came down to John at the Jordan for baptism sincere in their repentance? Were all the people baptized at BVBC a few weeks ago sincere in their repentance? The answer is, we do not know as God knows, but we are to give them every benefit of a doubt. Assume the best. Be prepared to go the distance. Don't ever give up on your brother or sister in Christ who has said publicly in the act of baptism, "I have taken my place among those who are preparing for the kingdom of God by repentance."

There is something you may find helpful here. Let me teach you a Hewbrew word from the Old Testament. It is the word shûb. "It is the twelfth most frequently used verb in the OT," (Theo. Wordbook of the OT, Vol. 2, 909). It simply means, "turn." "Better than any other verb it combines in itself the two requisites of repentance: to turn from evil and to turn to" God, (ibid.).

Now, let that picture of turning your life around go to work and help you be patient with Christians who do not seem to live up to their professions of repentance. To repent is to turn and go back to God. But some people have a lot further to go back than others. A person with 40 years of ungodly habits may need a decade or more to go back far enough toward God that he or she seems to have caught up with someone else whose repentance had begun in his twenties. I am willing to give people like that (and there are lots of us) ample space to learn new habits of holiness.

There is one more habit of holiness I want to touch on lightly. It is the deepest truth of repentance. There is a gospel song the Church sings called At the Cross. The first two lines go like this: "Alas! And did my sovereign bleed? And did my sov'reign die? Would he devote that sacred head For sinners such as I?" That is not exactly what Isaac Watts originally wrote. He wrote: "Would he devote that sacred head For such a worm as I?" I can understand why it won't do in our therapeutic age to go calling yourself a worm, but I still think the jury is out on the wisdom of that change.

There is an authentic experience of repentance in which the issue is not that I have done bad things, but that something is fundamentally wrong with my person. That realization prompted Isaiah to say, "Woe to me! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips," (Isa. 6:5). It has nothing to do with clinical depression or a bad self-image. It has everything to do with a moment of devastating self-knowledge. The Bible calls it a broken and contrite heart (Psa. 51:17). I do not say you should seek this self-knowledge. Wait for God to do the unveiling.

I do say that within this congregation, in this dangerous age in which we are free to do anything we can get away with, we are holding on to behavior that will have no place in the kingdom of God. In Christ's name I say to you: Repent! The kingdom of God is at hand. Prepare to meet your God. Turn from the evil that threatens to enslave you. Turn, turn again toward home, turn your face to the compassionate Father who has never taken His eyes off your retreating back. Respond now to what you've heard.