Life is fragile, and one day this person who is a bit jaded,battered and confused in life decides that God might just be real, and he might just be available. So he decides to give it a go by turning up at church. Picture the scene and imagine this person is us, is me, and is you.
You step into the church building slowly, wondering what you are letting yourself in for. What is there to lose really? You might even perceive God somehow, and at the very worst you won't, and it'll all just be dull or slightly irritating. So anyway, you are getting a feel for the place now and the unusual smell and atmosphere, and you are deciding where to sit and settle down quietly when all of a sudden you spot the vicar making his way towards you. No sweat you say to yourself, this is the Church of England after all, if he notices you at all he'll probably just smile and say something polite and forgettable, and then you can just smile back and find your seat.
But this particular vicar looks a bit crazed, and suddenly he jumps up onto the top of the pew right in front of you, fixes his stare into you and starts: "You viper..! You snake..! What do you think you are slithering in here for?"
"Erm, Pardon?"
"What right have you got to slide up and expect God? What made you crawl out of your cosy hole and come in here?"
Well, its not dull but it's hardly a service with a smile is it? This crazed vicar is doing exactly what John the Baptist is doing to the people who turn up looking for a baptism in the Jordan and a relationship with God. So what exactly does John the Baptist think he is doing then - has the desert sun addled his overheated brain? After comparing the people to serpents he tells us that God won't really be there for us like a parent just because we happen to be in the family.
But he doesn't stop there. He goes on to say that if we don't repent and bear good fruit we'll be chopped down like dead trees and burnt, or if we don't repent and produce good grain we'll be thrown into the air by a winnowing fork, and blown away like chaff in the wind. Well I don't know about you but I have had better welcomes in this world. It's hardly 'Hello there, good to see you again, shall we talk about the weather, take care and do mind how you go now won't you'. Would you be back again the following week to be called a reptile which needed burning?
And yet Luke tells us that this is John the Baptist preaching good news to the people. Does it make you like me wonder how heart warming John's really great news is or how cheery his utterly amazing news might be....
But then the really funny thing is that next these people stay on.
They ask John what they will have to do to be with God.
So he tells them.
Share clothes and food and to be happy with your pay. He tells the despised taxmen not to overcharge people and the powerful soldiers not to threaten and extort money from anyone. Most of all though he talks about repentance and how it is necessary.
Repentance? What does that mean then?
In the New Testament repentance is translated from the Greek word metanoia, which literally means to think differently after, to have an after thought, or to have a change of heart and mind, or a change of consciousness.
At the start of this story I spoke about life being fragile, but that God might just be real, and that he might just be here for us, so one day when we are feeling a bit jaded, battered and confused in life we decide to give him a real go. Maybe that means we think differently after God, we have an after thought, a change of heart and mind and consciousness.
It is a short life we have here, and St Isaac of Syria said: "This life has been given you for repentance. Do not waste it on vain pursuits.".
John the Baptist is not very polite and very middle of the road Church of England but he is saying that if God is real for us we will change, and be different to the way we are when he is not real for us, that when God is more to us than just being in the right place and saying the right three letter word then we will see differently after being in that same place and saying that same word. We will have a change of consciousness, and our consciousness is one of the few things our science has not been able to fully pin down about us. It cannot be fully measured and understood and in that sense it is the place where the creator can have a real life of his own within us.
We can repent and rethink and notice the parts of our hearts and minds which always fail to produce good fruit being burned up. We can allow our useless dead old chaff to blow away into the wind like it would have done from a Jewish farmers' winnowing fork, and we can spiritually build up our grain stores to give us new life despite ourselves.
"His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire." I like to think of Jesus as that unquenchable fire, which we can all move towards and which we can all move away from.
If we only see him as an on off switch which we either assent or fail to assent to once and for all time then we won't be allowing God to change our consciousness for real. We all know people can reflect the warmth and light of the fire at times and in ways which don't seem outwardly religious or Christian.
But this is exactly what John the crazed Baptist wants to say to us, that God loves us and can be real for us provided we keep on turning to him and allowing him to change our minds and to to reveal the real fruit of good news, and despite our short and fragile journey in this creation.
The people by the Jordan questioned whether John the Baptist might be the Christ, and so John answered them saying, "I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie."
The untying of sandals was a slave's task, and this slave John ended up being beheaded for his calling people snakes. But the good news he preached to God's people is a journey to take, not an place to end.
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