Caught And Held By The Baptist’s Call

Zephaniah 3:14-End  Luke 3:7-18

I ran the old coach driving business for many years with day trips into the desert my speciality.

The desert is a place full of strange people and amazing sights and my little outings were really popular. Come and visit the world’s  oldest snake charmer, a woman who hasn’t stopped singing for thirty years. The actual original burning bush where God first spoke to Moses and an amazing whirlwind that just keeps going round and round whilst everything else  is still and quiet

I’d always throw in tea at one of the little villages  the way back, got a good contact out there, special rates!

Well on this particular day that I’m going to tell you about – the coach is full.

New excursion. Lots of interest from the regulars. There’s a man who’s been living out there for years and has become all self sufficient and that and he’s been saying that the Messiahs coming – like, any day now, and he’s been really laying into people about how they need to get ready for it.

Now I a religious man, keep all the observances, just like you, but all this well, it sounded slightly dodgy. So when we get there I’m aiming to stay with the coach, – got a book load of Sudoko to get through – bit of nice music on me MP3. Good life this coach driving business.

There’s  crowds of people on the roads, some from as far as Jerusalem itself, all trailing out to see this  guy. So busy that the AA have set up some temporary car parks – but they’re half a mile from where he is now – down by the river by all accounts.   Back  by 2  I tell the trippers.  Got to go then, if you want your tea. Now I’ll tell you an amazing thing.  Dropped them all off  right then and there – and never saw one of them ever again.

Let ‘em go to begin with, but then I’m getting curious – so I put all my bits away and make my way over to the place where this John is speaking – and  I can tell you  – there was something different in the air that day – something that made me realise that this was no freaky sideshow. There was something real and urgent about this man and his message.

And you know I never went back to that coach. It’s still rusting away in the temporary car park for all I know and for all I care.

I’ll try and explain what really struck me about him. To start with it was the way he spoke – with power and authority – but like you, I’ve heard enough  speakers who know how to work the crowds  and then never deliver.

This guy, this Baptist, lived it and breathed it, you could tell.

Now in my faith we’ve got loads of cleansing Rituals. Things we have to do before we eat, before we sleep, before we pray or if we’ve been somewhere or done something. Wash yourself – we’re told and the outer action expresses an inner intention.

 The way we did it was always personal – you know, between you and God, now, here’s this John, knee deep in a great big river, and getting people to confess their sins out loud, and  to one another and then have their whole bodies thrust under the water.

 I hung back to start with, but I got this sense of people being able to help one another, be honest with one another, see that actually we’re all in the same boat when it comes to getting things wrong – so surely there’s way to help each other to getting things right.  I could  see that all this confessing, facing up to yourself, wasn’t leaving people wallowing in guilt, no it was setting them free, and I began to think I wouldn’t mind a slice of that.

The second thing about it was that you had to come out here in the middle of nowhere for it to happen. We had been used to going to a special place, you know, like you come to church,  all ritually cleansed and made holy, but here was John calling people to repentance in the dirty old river.

It made me think that maybe we should do our business with God out in the real world a bit more – not in a place set apart – and when he started talking about a Messiah coming, a Messiah who would be like God coming extraordinarily close to people and meeting them slap bang in their daily lives – I could see how important it was to be washed clean in an ordinary place – and in front of everyone else. For this is where God wants to make his home. That’s what John said anyway.

Then the last thing that got me was the way John really laid in to the religious leaders of the day. You should have seen them squirming with embarrassment as he called them all the names under the sun.

The funny things was  that  John was not making his call to people who had no faith, his was a call to those who had faith already but were getting too big for their boots about it.

 We had become used to thinking about ourselves as the insiders, chosen ones,  and all these Gentiles as being beyond the pale. John was saying, enough of that, get yourselves sorted out first. Change your life – before you start worrying about anyone else’s.

Stop being so focussed on yourself and get things focussed on God .and not just in a pick and mix sort of way but the whole jolly lot of who you are and what you stand for.

So I just went splashing into the water, still in my coach driver’s uniform, hat on my head, ticket machine round my shoulders and I never went back. I just went forward to be a disciple.

A disciple of the one who was to come –that Jesus of Nazareth.

Now you don’t live in those times I know that, and you might be wondering what a motor coach is doing in the middle of the New Testament, but what’s important is the links you can make from that story to this..

Realising that we’re all in this business of repentance together and that encouraging each other out of our failings might be precisely what the church is for.

Not restricting God to the occasional appearance in church services – but believing that the Christmas story hovering beyond next Sunday – is about God walking in the world, and our joy in finding him there.

And that before we can be good witnesses to other people – we have to attend to our own spiritual health too – from top to bottom of the church community we stand under the same principles. Complete repentance is embraced by utter mercy.

That’s what caught me, all that, I pray that the Baptist’s words will catch you too.

RH 13.12.09