[Propertalk] Sermon points - Matthew 3:1-12 - Part 4

[Joe Parrish]

Perhaps the best and simplest definition of "repentance" I've read comes from Richard Jensen in Touched by the Spirit. He also relates it to baptism. 
<>In repenting, therefore, we ask the God who has turned towards us, buried us in baptism and raised us to new life, to continue his work of putting us to death. Repentance is an "I can't" experience. To repent is to volunteer for death. Repentance asks that the "death of self" which God began to work in us in baptism continue to this day. The repentant person comes before God saying, "I can't do it myself, God. Kill me and give me new life. You buried me in baptism. Bury me again today. Raise me to a new life." That is the language of repentance. Repentance is a daily experience that renews our baptism. [p. 49]

http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/matt3x1.htm

Brian Stoffregen
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But the world today is still in need of voices, who will dare cry out in the wilderness - in the socio-economic-political wilderness, calling for sincere and sustained efforts to address such massive problems as starvation, AIDS, genocide, educational failure, the criminal justice system, and war; and also in the ecclesiastical/religious wilderness, where too much shallowness, hypocrisy, insincerity, pretension, apathy and dishonesty still abide. 

http://www.theafricanamericanlectionary.org/PopupLectionaryReading.asp?LRID=118

Aaron L. Parker
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It is an important theme in Matthew that Jesus will be the judge, but something else must happen first which puts it all in a different perspective. In his life and his deeds Jesus models and explains the criteria for the judgement, demonstrating what really matters. The result is a transformation.
We see its beginnings already in John. Put negatively, there are no favourites: everyone must be immersed in the waters; everyone must join the transformation. Turned into positive terms, this also means: no one is to be written off as inferior or worthless. Every person matters to God. We are into the logic of love which flows out from the ministry of Jesus, embracing the unloved, including the outcasts, lifting up the fallen, inviting those beyond the pale, finding a place for the sinners. It does not contradict John, but it throws him off balance. The notion is so powerful that compassion will come to be seen as God's very heart and being, a totally new way of seeing God's reign and expounding hope. 

http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/MtAdvent2.htm

William Loader
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Matthew has told us of Jesus' descent from King David, his birth and infancy, and the coming of the wise men. Now he leaps forward to about 26 AD. John appears in the "wilderness", the arid region south and east of Jerusalem, an area where only hermits lived. His call to repentance, to turning back to the way of life to which Israel committed herself in its covenant with God, is like that of Old Testament prophets. His message about the nearness of God's kingdom, of the time of complete fulfillment of God's promises for humans, is a central message of Jesus. 

http://www.montreal.anglican.org/comments/archive/aadv2m.shtml

Chris Haslam 
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Repentance and judgment are serious business, but one does not force fruit. Fruit springs forth out of a new orientation, out of knowing one's place as a child of God's promise. In baptism's call to such response as God's children, we experience the transforming power that links "being" (children of God) and "doing" (bearing fruit), between "faith" and "action." Matthew will hold this wholeness before us throughout the gospel. 

http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=12/9/2007&tab=4

James Boyce, 2007
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