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St. Andrew's Church
An Anglican Church • Grimsby, Ontario, Canada
Preached by
Stuart Pike
Rector
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Advent 3 C - The Baptist's Cry
St. Andrew's Church, Grimsby
17 December, 2006
Luke 3 : 7-18
During my stint in the military I was posted for about 5 months to the Navy port of Esquimalt in Victoria, B.C. where I lived in Barracks and worked for the Base Education officer by day. Strangely enough for one of the first times in my life most of my evenings and weekends were simply time off. I was taking no courses so I didn't need to study for anything. My barrack room was a typical military cell and I had no television so I needed to do something to keep myself busy.
I explored the beautiful city of Victoria. It wasn't long before I felt the need to connect with some sort of Church community. On Sundays I would go to Base Chapel, but I found another really interesting community in downtown Victoria. It was called the Mustard Seed. It was basically a Christian Street Mission. It operated a coffee house of sorts in a store-front. I first encountered the Mission when I was in Victoria for a beautiful summer evening and I went out for a walk. I walked into the Mustard seed and was asked if I would like a cup of coffee. There were a few sofas and chairs and some tables around and before long I was engaged in conversation with an upbeat group of young adults and I learned something of their Mission. They wanted to be a Christian presence in downtown Victoria, to reach out to those in need and to anyone who came to them. They gave food to the hungry and helped to find shelter for those who needed it.
I would visit the Mustard Seed now and again and eventually I would go one night per week and help out. Not long after I found the Mustard Seed, I met David there, who was a young man about 18 or 19. He had been without a fixed address for over two years since his parents threw him out. Most of his time in High School he had been into drugs and alcohol. It took over his life. Eventually he was selling the stuff in order to get enough money to keep himself high. He lived on the streets of Vancouver. He joined a gang and got himself a tattoo on his arm with the gang symbols: a skull and a dagger. The only reason why he was in Victoria was because he was running from a bad drug deal. His own gang was out to get him.
At the Mustard Seed, David found a community that welcomed him in. They helped him find a small bachelor apartment, and they gave him food. He got a job in a grocery store. And he stayed a regular visitor at the Mustard Seed. On any give night you might find David and me talking with a couple of street people, the volunteers at the Mission and perhaps a prostitute who needed a cup of coffee. It wasn't long before I would look around me and think to myself, "These are the type of people that Jesus hung around with." The outcasts, the poor, the sick and the sinners.
About a month later there was a sign on the Mustard Seed door announcing that Baptism classes would soon start. It was one night a week for eight weeks or so. This particular denomination only baptized adults. David joined the class along with half a dozen others. About halfway through the class, David came in with his upper arm in a bandage: he had saved up to have his tattoo cut from his arm by a plastic surgeon. David's whole life was turning around and he even bore the mark of his transformation in the scar on his skin. David knew that baptism was about transformation too. He understood that the road that he had been on was ultimately leading to sickness and death. He wanted to change direction and choose life. Part of this new life was joining a Church community which reached out to others.
I have baptised many people over my 18 years as a priest. I get people phoning me or inquiring about baptism all the time. I must confess that I have never been tempted, nor even thought of answering them by calling them a brood of vipers! It doesn't seem like an intuitively pastoral response. But it seems to have worked well for John the Baptist.
John the Baptist preached a good fire and brimstone sermon, and the people just seemed to eat it up. They couldn't get enough of it. They streamed to the Jordan river in droves.
His message was clear: you've got to repent, and you've got to show that you have repented by bearing fruits worthy of repentance. Repentance isn't a word that we use very often today. It has fallen out of favour with our popular culture. It sounds like a judgmental word. It sounds like a grovelling word. That's a wrong interpretation of the word.
Repentance doesn't mean grovelling. It means to turn ones life around. Repentance means walking out to the Jordan River and being washed in it - going down under its surface - and then bursting back out of the water into a new life and a new direction. Repentance means taking a new path - one that is aligned to God's way. Repentance means choosing life and health. Repentance was what David was doing when he chose life.
John the Baptist tells the people that their repentance must show in what they do. If they have two coats, they must share with anyone who has none. Being aligned to God's way must make an observable difference in our lives. Living in God's way means living lives of justice with others.
John the Baptist's voice echoes the prophets of old: Amos, Jeremiah, Zephaniah, Isaiah. I particularly like the end of the Gospel message when he predicts that there is one who is coming whose sandals he is not worthy to untie. John the Baptist says: "He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; bu the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire." So with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.
This is good news!? Of course the answer is that the good news isn't about the fate of the chaff: it's about how Jesus is gathering the wheat into his granary. And we are called to be wheat.
This is indeed good news, if we bear the fruit of our new life in Christ. We do this in the ways in which we reach out to those in need: the outreach which we support at the local, diocesan, national and international level. It is reflected personally in each of us in the myriad of choices we make day to day regarding others: their needs and our generous response. What a day it was when the whole troop of volunteers and regulars at the Mustard Seed went out to a local Baptist Church which had a large immersion tank. We watched as David and the others were baptized. The full dunk! This was the essential sign of David's transformation.
Those days were a time of transformation for me as well. It was during that time in Victoria that I experienced the sense of call which led me out of the Canadian Forces and which brought me to seminary in London, Ontario the next year. Central to my sense of call has been my need to help others. That has been my path to renewed life May we each choose life. Amen.
