I want to think about fate for a moment. Fate is that feeling that your life is not free. When I first traveled to Cambodia, I met
soldiers who had been wounded and seem to have given up on 
life. Part of their feelings seem to be their view of fate. They had
encountered a bad karma and there was nothing to be done.
I was on the bus last year with a student who had been to Turning Stone Casino near Syracuse. He was a poker player. And I was fascinated by his willingness to bet all the money he had taken which was $500, borrow $600 more from his roommate and end the weekend with a profit of about $50. I looked a deck of cards and felt that I would have no control over a game. He felt like he learned a lot from the weekend and was planning to go back and win big.
Malcolm has helpfully provided us this morning with a winning poker hand This is not just a good hand. This is a phenomenal hand. This is what you dream of nights on your way to Turning Stone. Except that it rarely happens. The chance of getting it is one in 2,598,960. And most people realize that they will never get that hand.
Christmas is a bitter sweet time for many people. They are not happy in life. I think that all of us make choices in life or have them made for us that have consequences that we did not foresee. Now our lives are living out those consequences and we feel trapped. If only I had started saving earlier, if only I had worked out more, if only I had studied earlier, if only I had married differently, if only I had moved away from home, if only I had chosen friends better…… Do you ever have thoughts like that?
So Christmas is that moment where we spend more than we can and eat more than we should to show ourselves that fate does not control us. Maybe we don’t have a royal flush poker hand but we would like to feel that we at least got some spades. William Temple writes
The world, as we live in it,
is like a shop window into which some mischievous person has got overnight,
and shifted all the price-labels
so that the cheap things have the high-price labels on them,
and the really precious things are priced low.
We let ourselves be taken in.
Repentance means getting those price-labels back in the right place.
This is possibly true for you. And I can guarantee that it is true for the neighbor who lives next to you or someone in your family.
We are looking today at the beginning of the gospel of Mark where the people were feeling trapped. They were living under the domination of war and Rome. So they actually feel a hunger inside. How else can you explain that they leave the city and travel to see John the Baptist in the wilderness? They wanted to escape the trap of fate. They wanted a new deal spiritually.
And John preaches about Jesus Christ. It sounds like a regular first and last name to us. But it was not. It was two names. Jesus is the name -- the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Joshua, which means "God saves." And Christ is the title -- which means, "anointed." In the OT, prophets, priests, and kings were anointed with oil as a sign of their being set apart to their respective offices. Jesus was set apart by God to set people free from their fate.
I hope that you leave today with new freedom. That is the hope of Christmas. Take it home with you today
The Canadian writer Margaret Visser believes that North American society is slipping from a belief in freedom to a belief in fate. Lottery and gambling increases. The governors plan to settle Native American land claims is to give them rights to four huge casinos that people of the metropolitan area will travel to and gamble.
For others, it is manifest in the belief that our DNA determines everything about us, that we are doomed by our genetic inheritance. And for all of us, there is the feeling that President Bush is spending so much on this war of choice that it will take our lives and our children’s lives to pay it off. Alan Greenspan just this week warned that US spending threatens to overwhelm us and affect the globe.
Visser reminds us that Christianity overcame the belief in fate that hung like a dark shadow over the ancient Mediterranean world. She recognizes that Christianity smashes fate, but she also sees that a belief in fate can reappear at any time. She claims that this is happening now. A new despair is gripping American culture.
The passage read a few minutes ago is the opening of the Gospel according to Mark. Mark's Gospel, perhaps the first one written, says nothing about the birth or early days of Jesus. It does not begin with a babe in the manger, but with a word of prophecy, one that addresses fate.
Consider the scene. Prophecy has been silent in Israel for centuries. Now there steps on the stage a figure who dresses and eats like a prophet, who dwells in the desert like a prophet, and most importantly, speaks like a prophet. What he does is proclaim a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
Mark reports this to us as the start of the good news about Jesus Christ. Good news? The opportunity for repentance is good news for us, because it strikes out against the misleading belief that our lives are controlled by fate.
A call to repentance implies that we can repent, that we can take a path different from our present one. Thus fate does not determine our lives. We should not miss the first word of this Gospel, "Beginning" (Greek: Arche). We are reminded of the book of Genesis, which begins, "In the beginning." Just as that book describes the beginning of all creation, Mark now describes the salvation work of Jesus Christ -- the first step of repair.
John's is "a baptism of repentance" (v. 4). We tend to think of repentance as feeling guilty for our sins, but guilt is just one aspect of repentance. The Greek word, metanoia, means a change of mind or a change of direction. When we change our thinking, we will respond by changing our direction as well.
"The Greek word (for repentance -- metanoia)... has been immeasurably deepened by the influence of the Jewish concept of tesubah (lit. 'turning' or 'return'), which has its root in the call of the OT prophets for the nation to return to its God and implies a total change of spiritual direction"
A call to repentance implies that we are saved, not by acquiring stuff, but by emptying ourselves of whatever crowds out God. What matters is opening ourselves to God. God wants to be in our lives, and this is good news. Mark's announcement is part of the world view that the Bible reveals, a world view that says change can happen. We are not doomed to repeat the old cycles.
Time is not simply circular, it is also linear, because God does new and wonderful things. He creates the world, calls Abraham away from home, delivers Israel from Egypt, and promises that someone special is on the way. God keeps doing new and wonderful things. For each of them, there is a before and an after, and each one brings God's purposes that much closer to fulfillment.
It is from the biblical account of divine intervention that American society derives much of its notion of hope, of progress, of learning and enlightenment and discovery. When we expect progress in human rights, or look for the next generation to have it better than we do, or imagine that some day a cure for AIDS or cancer will be found, then we participate in this stubborn belief, rooted in Scripture and deep in American culture, that real change can and does occur.
Centuries after the last prophet has fallen silent, who then comes announcing to Israel once again that change can happen, that repentance is possible, that God is doing something new and unexpected? This herald is John the Baptist. Most importantly, this John the wilderness man announces that change can happen, that repentance is possible, that God is doing something new, something unexpected.
John's message invites us to become wilderness people in our time. We become wilderness people like him when we live outside the destructive myths of our society, when we recognize we are not controlled by fate. All this makes us wilderness people, wild men and wild women and wild children, beyond the comprehension of a sad-eyed and captive culture.
John announces the possibility of repentance. Repentance. That's our word in English. It carries a sense of sorrow about the past. Repentance is what we do to acknowledge the mess we've made, with perhaps the recognition that we may make this mess again.
Repentance, our English word, needs to give way to the original Greek of the Gospel. There the word feels different. It is metanoia. This word metanoia means changing your mind, seeing the scene differently. More than our word repentance, this Bible term metanoia is a wild word, one suited for wilderness people.
The contemporary poet Scott Cairns has produced a poem about metanoia in the New Testament which concludes with these lines:
"The heart's METANOIA,
on the other hand, turns
without regret, turns not
so much AWAY, as TOWARD,
as if the slow pilgrim
has been surprised to find
that sin is not so BAD
as it is a waste of time."
Its time hear the sweet whisper of the Holy Spirit in your own soul. You have been feeling trapped by life. We all have low opinions of our freedom. Some people grieve that sickness when they should have their eyes on the strength that God can give to keep going anyway. Some people grieve their loss when their hearts should leap at the hope of friendships yet to be with God’s help. Some people mourn their limitations when God calls us to accept our gifts more fully. God offers the gift of freedom at Christmas. With the all the other gifts that you will buy, can’t you at least sit down this winter afternoon and pray, if God wants to free me, what is one area where the Lord would give me a gift?
And then if you have compassion for our hurting community, you simply must join this time of invitation. Bring friends with you to the Christmas musical, to the Peace March, and to Christmas Eve. These events are all filled with fun and beauty, but their real message to our neighbors is that the Lord says, repent, turn from old ways and expect a new deal.
We grieve the loss of 14 young soldiers these last two days and the continuing agony of Iraqis. It is only through a prophetic voice in the wilderness that we dare to have hope or proclaim it. But we do. Peace is still possible and national renewal.
