SERMON - It's Your Life That Counts

John the Baptizer is out in some really terrible territory preaching that folks need to Repent and be Baptized. Folks, Michael A. Turner states, “John’s main message is, repent! The kingdom of heaven has come near. The time is short. Bear fruit worthy of repentance.” Rev. Turner reminds of how we have taken this message and taken the bite out of it. We have given up our scriptural language for that more popular psychological works and concepts like, “I’m Okay. You’re Okay.” “God is nice; therefore, we should be nice to each other.”

We have taken John’s message out of the desert where it was difficult and dangerous for people to travel and made the message so that we hear it in our easy chairs. We have come to a time when we just don’t want to deal with sin, I mean our real sin, and so we don’t know what it means to repent – really repent.

Well, I want us to spend some time with this text and see where we are led. Watch out, the Spirit is at work and we do not know what to expect – or do we?

“John the Baptist wouldn’t have lasted a day in the United Methodist church in which I grew up. He could’ve maybe been the preacher down at the Pentecostal Church of the Second Blessing in the metal building out on the outskirts of town, but not at my home church.
            It’s not that we were some big, downtown metropolitan church. We weren’t. Mine was a small, mill-town church. Good Methodists; good citizens. Well, we weren’t all that good, but we weren’t all that bad either. Law-abiding, tax paying, comfortably middle-class. We were the kind of church that likes our religion in small, controlled doses. Nothing fanatical. We were perfectly happy for God never to say anything to us other than what we expected to hear already, and what we expected to hear was “I’m okay. You’re okay.” “God is nice; therefore, we should be nice to each other.”
            So, if John had pulled up on moving day looking like “captain caveman” with his unkempt hair and scraggly beard, moved his wardrobe of one camel’s hair outfit into the parsonage closet, and put his box of locusts and jar of wild honey into the pantry, eyebrows definitely would have raised. We’ve seen eccentric preachers before, but John would have taken the cake.
            I can hear the gray-hairs talking now: “Is that our new preacher?”
            “Couldn’t be. Must be the moving guy.”
            “Nope, that’s him. Marvin’s on the Pastor/Parish Relations Committee, so he already met him. Marvin said he was a doozie. Who did we offend to get a pastor who looks like this?
            “Well now, let’s not judge a book by its cover. As long as he loves the people, visits Aunt Betty in the nursing home, and takes care of our shut-ins, then we can deal with odd clothing and a rough appearance.”
            But the first time John stepped into the pulpit and unleashed one of his fire-breathing, spit-flying sermons that would have been the end of him. The Pastor Parish Relations Committee would have held an emergency meeting, called the District Superintendent, demanded a move.
            That’s what I suspect. But, the people at my home church have surprised me before.”

Listen to John’s message: “You bunch of snakes. What do you think you’re doing slithering down here to the river? Do you think that a little water on your skin is going to make any difference?

This is a scathing message and people were coming out of the woodwork to hear it. Our Bishop, Will Willimon, tells this story of attending a funeral of a relative of a member of his church. “It was held in a small Independent Baptist church in North Georgia. Time came for the service, the family processed in, the preacher started to preach.
            Apparently, the preacher really got worked up and started to shout, “It’s too late for Sam. He might have wanted to do something different with his life, but it’s too late for him now. It’s all over for him. He doesn’t get another chance. But it ain’t too late for you. People drop dead every day. Why wait? Today is the day. Repent! Make your life count for something. Give your life to Jesus! You never know what tomorrow may hold. Repent!”
            After the funeral, in the car going home, Willimon says that he turned to his wife and said, “That was terrible. I would never do that to a grieving family. That had to be the most manipulative, inappropriate, tacky funeral homily I have every heard.”
            His wife responded, “You’re right. Of course the worst part is: It was true.”

Patsy reminded Will that inappropriate, tacky or whatever, what drew folks there was that it was true. It may be that what drew people to John the Baptizer was he was telling what is true – then and now.

John says that he baptized with water as he called and demanded repentance. Of course, there is no way to repent unless one recognizes one’s sin. He was saying, “Name your sin!” Come and be washed clean.

He goes on then and says that the one coming after him would baptize by Spirit and Fire! I’ve heard any number of sermons, preached my share, on baptism, the Spirit but never before on being baptized by fire. What did he mean that Jesus would baptize with fire? Does that have anything to do with us? I think it does.

We talked about Jesus baptizing with fire in our Bible Study groups this past Wednesday and none of us had ever heard a sermon preached on it. We played around and wanted to make this a little more comfortable by saying that it must be spiritual rather than actual fire. However, I believe Jesus was talking about actual fire in his message. Jesus was to baptize with the Spirit and with actual fire.

In this part of the country when ever one speaks of fire from a biblical passage our immediate thoughts go to that place we call hell. Now, this may be exactly what John meant but I’m sure that is not the only possibility and so I want to look at other meanings as well.

The Reverend Barbara Brown-Taylor minds us that fire in the Bible is extremely important and does not always point to the unquenchable blazes of hell. She writes, “Throughout Holy Scripture, fire is the one reliable sign of the presence of God. God speaks to Moses out of the burning bush; a pillar of fire guides the people of Israel through the wilderness after their escape from Egypt; when Moses goes up on Mount Sinai to get the Ten Commandments from God, it looks to those down below as if the mountain itself is being devoured by fire.
…This is not safe fire; it can still burn and kill. But it is God’s own fire, the fire of God’s presence, fire that wants to speak to us, guide us, instruct us, save us.”

I’ve come to believe that we will all face the baptism by fire with Jesus. It is the most powerful and unquenchable fire ever known. More powerful than anything we can imagine. More pure and hot than the fires of hell. The Fire of Jesus is God’s Fire.

John tells how the grain will be separated from the chaff and the chaff burned. It is the purest grain that is desired and the chaff has fulfilled its purpose of protecting the grain. It is the heart that is gathered and transformed into various life-giving substances such as bread and cereal. The chaff is burned away.

The grain is what sustains life and gives new life. Just like the process of refining silver and gold our Lord is refining each of us. His baptism of fire begins as soon as we say, “Here I am.” The refining begins and continues all our lives and perhaps on into eternity – I don’t know. The fire is that pain burning that is evaporating the sins as we name them and repent. Jesus’ baptism of fire is his bringing us to that place of actually seeing and claiming our sin and then our repenting.

Now, repentance is most interesting and Tom Long states that it is a “…slippery word, a “weasel word.”” We say, “Lord forgive me for my sins!” and then we go merrily on our way. This is not what John or Jesus is talking about. We are to reach back into our past, near and far, and make amends when possible as we ask forgiveness. John was not talking about a cheap forgiveness.

Remember what happened when the Pharisees and Sadducees showed up for baptism? He ran them off because this is not about looking good, being nice, or meeting the expectations of those around us. The Baptism of Fire is to Change Our Lives. You see, it is our life that’s important. As John said, Matthew 3:8, “It's your life that must change, not your skin!” Jesus is going to use the refining process to make us pure. Each of us is that important to our Lord.

Pulpit Resources, Michael A. Turner, December 9, 2007, p. 50.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 51.

Ibid.