Advent 3 St Peter's 14 December 2003 

Revd Mark Bonney

The front of my paper last Sunday there was fascinating selection of statistics they made me stop and think. Here are a few of them:

· 100m children in the world have no access to education
· the rich countries of the world spend juts $1.4bn a year on aid for basic education
· the Americans spend $28bn each year on pizzas
· Europeans spend $11.2 bn on ice cream each year
· The British govt has spent $5,6bn on the Iraq war - the same amount as is required annually  to ensure that all the world's children go to primary school. That also represents 10% of the total that the US has spent so far on the Iraq war

It made me stop and think for a number of obvious reasons: I'm very, very lucky indeed - I'm probably also profligate with the good things I have. For some of those statistics to move in a more favourable direction it requires action at levels that are far above anything I operate at - and if they were to change how would my own lifestyle have to change, and how willing am I for that to happen? 

The justification I read in the paper this week for going ahead with the building of a new fighter plane - a weapon of considerable destructive capacity - wasn't that it was really needed, but that it would provide jobs for the economy - we live in a topsy turvy world. My grasp of economics is undoubtedly simple - if not simplistic, and if some afterwards could tell exactly where the Chancellor borrows $27bn from I'd like to know because I'm struggling to make this stack up! But it's not economics that I dare to think about this morning - rather it's that far more scary word - change.

For any of these things to be different there has to be change - and most of us, if we're honest don't like the idea of change.

The heart of this morning's gospel reading is the call to change. Having endeared himself to the crowds by calling them a "brood of vipers" John the Baptist tells his listeners to "bear fruit worthy of repentance."

Repentance- it's a word that gets a little watered down - often taken to be synonymous with saying sorry - but it means a great deal more than saying sorry; sorry is just for starters - repentance asks for more. The Greek word it translates is metanoia - it means turning around - a radical facing in a different direction- a radical change. 

In today's gospel John the Baptist is radical because firstly, in v8 he places non-Israelites on the same footing as Israelites: their ancestry and lineage count for nothing - there's nothing to be gained by bleating on about Abraham, or whatever - it's the fruits of genuine change that are required. And it's genuine change that vv10-14 exhibit; and interestingly, in this elegant summary of John the Baptist's teaching, the gospel writer, as is his wont, suggests that those most capable of change are those so often seen as outsiders - the tax collectors, the soldiers. Throughout Luke's gospel the Pharisees and the religiously correct are made to be particularly impervious to the kind of repentance, the radical change, which is needed to enter the kingdom. That's always rather chilling for the professionally religious like myself.

Marjorie reminded us last week that Luke's gospel looks as though it had two starts - the first edition as it were beginning at ch3 and then the birth narratives being tacked on later - the first draft, as is the case in Mark's gospel begins uncompromisingly with the call to repentance with John the Baptist. The challenge of this is that we cannot be Christians - we cannot be followers of Jesus Christ and not change - change, metanoia, repentance is at the heart of the Gospel message; and it can only be good to change - though we are often so fearful. The demands of John the Baptist that we've just heard don't really go beyond a basic call to generosity and honesty - Jesus was to offer some rather more exacting challenges - things like "where your heart is, there will your treasure be also."

The change that each one of us must undergo as a follower of Christ will be different: but if we're to be fit for heaven all of us will have to change! "As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be" talks of God and not of us.

We need to pray and discern what that means for each of us. One way perhaps is to start with Jesus' summary of the Law "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind and all your strength and your neighbour as yourself." - and ask ourselves - what stops me doing that? What needs to be changed for me to love God, to love my neighbour - to love myself? Advent is a particularly good time to ask those questions - what things are getting in the way of Christ being born again in my heart this Christmastide.

Change- for better or worse is all around us in the world: change only for the better is at the heart of the Gospel - and that gospel change is at the heart of this Eucharist: ordinary bread and wine become the vehicles of God's grace - the calling down of the Holy Spirit upon the bread and wine and upon us doesn't leave things the same - whatever we may happen to feel things are different. Here we receive the strength and grace to go and bear fruits of repentance. 

The big things of the world that need changing with which I began remain challenging - and frighteningly so. It takes courage, bravery some would say foolhardiness to for example vote at an election for a party that'll make us worse off than we are now - not many are prepared to do that, and not many parties are willing to do it either: whether we like it or not we're all caught up in the terrible inequalities and injustices of the world. But if we change in small things - if the repentance of the gospel begins with us then one important step has been taken and is not wasted- we are called to live lives changed by the Holy Spirit and lived to the glory of the one and only living God who is Father Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.