A Sermon preached on The Second Sunday of Advent
at The Anglican Church of St. Thomas the Apostle, Kefalas, Crete,
on the10th of December 2023, at 11:00 am.

The readings were Isaiah 40:1-11, Psalm 85:1-2, 8-end, and Mark 1:1-8.    

I’ve now done two sermons on the Four Last Things, on Death and Judgement, so I really should do the next one on Heaven, and the one after that on Hell. The problem is, there’s no way to make the connection given what the readings are doing.

So, how about I preach on repentance instead, eh?

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

So, we read in verses four and five of the first chapter of Mark. Repentance here seems to mean confessing sins, being baptized, and being forgiven as a result.

John has been described as a homeless man, someone who lives off whatever is at hand, whether honey or locusts (” a spoonful of honey helps the locusts go down . . .”) , and he is definitely not part of the establishment or conventional society. And yet he is clearly charismatic (in the secular sense), drawing people to himself, somehow getting them to tell him their most secret and scandalous doings, and then offering them God’s forgiveness. He doesn’t make it easy – they have to go to him, presumably some distance; it’s a little over fifty km from Jerusalem to the traditional site of where he baptised. He does all this without the imprimatur of the religious elite in Jerusalem, or from the scribes, the Pharisees, the Saducees, or the Essenes, the Herodians, the Zealots, or any of the other Jewish groups in Judea. He is sui generis, in a class of his own (although he does have his disciples). He offends all of the groups in Judea, Samaria, and Galilee, and in time one party, the Herodians, are so ticked off that they imprison him, and ultimately put him to death.

The gospel portrays him as a prophet, and as the one who foretells of the coming of one who is greater than he and who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.

How does this all fit together?

Repentance is subversive. It subverts our fallen nature. Our fallen nature, our warped instincts, do not want us to be aware of our defects and faults, but wants us to continue as we are. If we become aware of our arrogant pride, our greed, our anger, our envy and jealousy, our lust and unhealthy desires for things and using people as objects, our gluttony and our sloth, well, maybe we will begin to think they are unhelpful, unnatural, and maybe we will want to live and become the beautiful creatures God has made us to be.

The problem is that it is hard to let go of these things. Indeed, some of us think we are defined by the mix of all these characteristics. What will be left if we lose these things? Won’t we just become empty shells?

And that’s where Jesus comes in. By being baptized with the Holy Spirit, we let go. John the Baptist and his baptism with water for the forgiveness of sins takes us part way, but not all the way. God may forgive us, but God wants to do more with us. God wants to change us, to renew us, to resurrect this fallen humanity into something like the image of Christ Jesus.

The Greek word μετάνοια, metanoia is usually translated as repentance in English, but it literally means “change of mind”. Our minds need to be refreshed by purity of desire, a willingness to restrain oneself, love filled with empathy and care, diligence and responsibility, patience, kindness, and humility. And these characteristics, which we can associate with Jesus, is what we want to be filled with. We want to be filled with Jesus.

John the Baptist prepares the way for Jesus, but we as individuals need to prepare ourselves, our souls and bodies, to receive Jesus as the one who sends the Holy Spirit into us and makes him like himself, his very body. But we cannot do it on our own. We need God to act – in the person of Jesus, in what has already been accomplished, and in the person of the Holy Spirit, filling us up.

Okay, maybe that’s what heaven really is – being in the presence of the Divine, “who art in heaven”, and being subject to God’s rule and will “on earth as it is in heaven.” We find heaven on earth by experiencing the transforming grace of God, something that begins with repentance as usually understood, but does not end with our action, but with God’s. So on this Second Sunday of Advent let us indeed repent and confess our sins, alone to God or to another person, but let us open ourselves to the one whose sandals we are not worthy to stoop down and untie, and, when we nevertheless try to do so we cannot, because we find him already kneeling before us in sacrificial love, washing our feet, redeeming us, giving himself and his life for us, and making us whole.