Re-gifting and re-pentance.

You ever get some junk for Christmas?  'Noooooooo' you may say 'Pastor Jim, I have loved and appreciated every gift I have ever gotten and no matter what, I open and am excited by all treasures beneath the tree.'

Of course you do.

But for those of us on planet earth, we live in a different situation.  You see, even though a gift may be a great

idea, even though it may be great on paper, it may not be quite right.  It might be clothing that is not quite the right size, it might be a video game for the wrong system, it might be a good that you already own, or anything like that.  It's something you might otherwise want, but, well, it just doesn't work out as exactly what you can use.

And I'm being generous.  Those are the things that are so right for you that you already own them, but there's also a chance that someone might buy something for you that you have zero interest in whatsoever.  Something you don't want and can't use.  And that's the deal that you have sometimes, when you open a gift and in no way shape or form desire the contents.  And that means that you might not want to be stuck with the gift in question, because you're never going to use it.  But what to do with it?

Well, there's a good chance that you might just give it away again, a phenomenon known as regifting, which I'm more in favor of than you might expect, since if you're not going to enjoy the gift, you might as well give it

to someone who might enjoy it.  But hold the phone, because there's a really good chance that you might have been given a gift receipt along with the gift.  This is something that all of us should do all the time, include a gift receipt with all gifts, as there is a chance, an outside chance, that someone might not want what they end up with.

Now think of the Israelites of the first century.  For a long time, they had waited for the coming of the Messiah, and for the return of Elijah, who was to prepare the way for the Lord.  And they knew what they wanted, too.  They were living in one of the most humiliating times in their history, as the Romans had moved in, and showed no sign of weakness whatsoever.  The nation of Israel was held down and controlled by the Romans in every way, and your choices for guys in charge were Pontius Pilate, Roman governor, or Herod, the tetrarch, who was basically a Roman puppet.  And you didn't want either.  You may have craved the days in which the Israelites were a dominant major player in the world, and a controlling power in the region, but now, well, it wasn't looking good for them.  Israel is small.  Like, really small.  It could fit into Saskatchewan 31 times, and that's contemporary Israel!  There's a good chance the borders of Judea in the past may very well have been smaller!  This was a tiny part of the world, occupied by a nobody people in the middle of nowhere.  They didn't have the military might to overthrow the Roman empire, and there wasn't much chance that the Romans were just going to emancipate them back to regular life and self government.  They wouldn't be much of an empire if they did.

So, they were waiting for divine intervension.  They were looking God to appear and lay the smack down on the Romans, and beat them into submission, reinstating Israel as the chosen people.

And then John the Baptist showed up.  And things went from bad to worse.

If the good people of Israel ever wished that they'd been given a gift receipt, this was the time.  They looked at the message of John the Baptist, and all at once, wished that they could send it back.  The message of John the Baptist really started to cut them to their core when they came out to the Jordan river to see what the fuss was all about.  And John gave them the exact opposite from what they desired.  What they wanted was for John to show up and promise that God was going to descend from the clouds, sweep away all the people that they didn't like, and would set up a reign full of them, and people like them.  That's what people
are secretly talking about these days when they talk about the rapture, it's what they desire, is to have God, the God of heaven and earth, save them and people like them, and banish people who are not like them to the dustbin of history.  And what they were surprised to find was that John the Baptist did not espouse the idea that God was going to ride in on a white horse and beat on the Romans.

Instead, John talked at great length about repentance.  In fact, that's almost all he talked about.  Repentance repentance repentance.  "Repent" he says "for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!"  And what people didn't like about this, was that John didn't seem to be talking to foreigners, telling them to get in line with the Pharisees and Saducees.  Instead, he called them a brood of vipers, told them to bear fruit in keeping with repentance, and warned them not to fall back on where they were born and who their parents were.  He told them, in no uncertain terms that God could, if he chose, raise up from the stones children for Abraham, which is clearly true, as even the birth of Isaac, Abraham's son, was a miracle, impossible without God's intervention.

This call for across the board repentance affronted the Pharisees and Saducees, who were living under the assumption that the Messiah would return, set up a throne, and institute an order in which the world would be made to be more like them, or perish. But God had in mind a different order, a good and just order, an order in which people were pushed not to be more like other people, but more like what God would and did have in mind.  The question that John gets after he promises that the axe is at the root of the tree, is from the terrified people 'what shall we do?'

John answers not with a comparison to people who are doing well in his eyes, but with a comparison to God's laws: "Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none and whoever has food is to do likewise."  Wow!  Anyone who wanted to show up and preen before John and be lifted up by him as an example would be disappointed, when John just told them that there was a divine law that they weren't keeping up with . They were frauds and extortioners just like people today are.

And so, the question that they ask 'what shall we do?' is answered by John with simple terms.  Be perfect, just as your heavenly father is perfect.  Okay, that's good advice, right?  If you are fearing the wrath that is to
come, if you are fearing being burned with unquenchable fire, if you are fearing the axe at the root of the trees, then just be perfect, not be more like each other, but be more like God.  Simple, right?

Oh, wait.  You're not perfect?  That must be very hard for you.  You must be human.

And now, we get to the core of what John was talking about, and why people shouldn't have been trying to return him for a better prophet.  He pointed out sin, but he told you about a way out.  Bear fruit, he says, in keeping with repentance.  Repent, repent, repent.  Rend your hearts, and not your garments.  Turn from your life of sin, and turn to Christ.  John knows that you're not going to be perfect, he knows that the requirements placed upon you by God himself are far too big for you to ever meet up with, so he tells you not just what perfection is, but what to do when you fail.

Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand.

And this is what Advent is still all about.  It is about repentance.  It is about turning back from your sin, and bearing fruit in keeping not with perfection, but with repentance.  It's not about doing better, it's about being forgiven.  What you should be thinking about in the season of Advent is repentance, thinking about not just that is a baby being born in a manger, but why that baby had to be born in the first place!  Because we should have come with a gift receipt!  We ended up being wrong, we ended up being bad, we ended up being the sort of thing that God would not want, and would certainly want to take back.  And he had a choice, to either make us into what he wanted, or to get rid of us and start again, with axes, roots of trees, and unquenchable fire.


Aren't you glad he threw away the receipt?

Blessed Advent, everyone.

PJ.