Advent 3
Bishop Ray Sutton

The U.S. standard railroad gauge (distance between rails) is four feet, eight-and-one-half inches. Why such an odd number? Because that's the way they built them in England, and American railroads were built by British expatriates.

Why did the English adopt that particular gauge? The people who built the pre-railroad tramways used the same gauge. They in turn were locked into that gauge because the people who built tramways used the same standards and tools they had used for building wagons, which were set on a gauge of four feet, eight-and-one-half inches. “Why were wagons built to that scale? Because with any other size, the wheels did not match the old wheel ruts on the roads.

"So who built these old rutted roads? “The first long-distance highways in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions. The roads have been in use ever since. The ruts were first made by Roman war chariots. Four feet, eight-and-one-half inches was the width a chariot needed to be to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses."

It is easy to get stuck in a rut. Of course the challenge is to get out of a rut without getting in a worse one. Change without changing what is right, only changing what is wrong. Here is where we meet the message of John the Baptist Sunday. Today we read of the last of the great prophets, who called for change. He was sent to prepare for Christ with a one word message, “repent.” In our Gospel lesson for the day, John is in prison (Matthew 11:2). He was there because he called for a king to repent for marrying someone in his own royal family.

Earlier in Matthew’s Gospel he records John’s one word message that got him into so much trouble, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (3:2). The word repent means a complete change of person in thought, word and deed. As Patrick Morley in his book, I Surrender, has implied, repentance is the subtracting of those things from one’s life that are contrasting to God. He goes on to explain, “that the Church’s integrity problem is the notion that we can add Christ to our lives, but not subtract sin. It is a change in belief without a change in behavior." He goes on to say, "It is revival without reformation, without repentance." Putting it another way, we cannot add God to our lives without subtracting those things that are not pleasing to Him.

I can’t tell you how many times people have told me as they have plunged their lives into chaos through a reckless course contrary to the Lord and His Word, “But I still love God and He loves me.” My response is always, “What does that have to do with it? . . . You’ve put something in your life that the God you say you love says you should not be doing. Your behavior will eventually crowd out God. Which is it going to be?”

I realize that such a message sounds hard. It is hard. But then anything worthwhile is hard; what really counts in life is never easy. The ministry of John the Baptist, and even Jesus, was hard in that they called for repentance. Yes, even Jesus called for repentance. Both men told humans that certain behavior was not acceptable to the Lord. This behavior crowds out the Lord so it has to be emptied. In other words, humans must make a commitment to change if they want God in their lives. If He’s added, then some things have to go, they have to be subtracted. That’s the message of repentance.

Okay, as I said, this is the hard part of the Good News of Christ, a real John the Baptist sermon for us. But although we might not recognize it, one of the great gifts of Christianity is a mechanism for change. A famous fourth century Bishop, St. Augustine, laid the ground work for modern concepts of personal change, even psychology. In his classic work, Confessions, he used personal pronouns to describe himself and his condition before and after he received Christ. In so doing, he taught the responsibility to change. As Leo Tolstoy once wrote, “Everybody thinks of changing Humanity and nobody thinks of changing Himself.” John the Baptist and Jesus called for a commitment to personal change with their message of repentance. So it should be part of the Gospel message today. As our collect prays, “Grant that ministers and stewards of thy mysteries may likewise so prepare and make ready thy way, by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just.”

No doubt, the message of repentance is not popular any more than it was in John the Baptist’s day. As someone has remarked, “Some people will change when they see the light. Others change only when they feel the heat.” In either case, the Lord has His own inscrutable ways of getting us to change. Sir Isaac Newton wrote in his First Law of Motion, “Everything continues in a state of rest unless it is compelled to change by forces impressed upon it.” I wonder what God might be compelling you and me to do as we prepare to make more room for Him in our lives. Might there be a need to do some subtracting of something? If it’s something that doesn’t need to be in our lives, then we’ll feel better when it’s out. It no doubt may be a challenge that will take much light and heat. Nevertheless, our lives are always better with more of the Christ in them. So as one sage has advised, “If we put off repentance another day, we have a day more to repent of, and a day less to repent in.” Let’s prepare for the true meaning of Christmas by heeding the word of John the Baptist and Jesus. Let us consider what thought, word or deed needs subtracting to make more room for Christ in our hearts. Let us “repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Amen.