All Scriptures quoted are from The New Revised Standard Version unless otherwise quoted.

When a sixth grader was asked to identify William Shakespeare on a history exam, he wrote that Shakespeare was “the greatest writer of the Renaissance. He was born in 1564 supposedly on his birthday. He is famous only because of his plays. He wrote tragedies, comedies and hysterectomies, all in Islamic parameter.” Asked to identify Handel, of Messiah fame, on the same test, another student wrote that, “Handel was half German, half Italian, half English. He was very large.” If we’re going to know either Shakespeare or Handel any better than that, we’ll need someone else to introduce them to us.

In some ways, John the Baptist doesn’t seem qualified to introduce Jesus on the world stage. There’s very little of what we would call a Christmas spirit in what he had to say. Aside from his choice of neighborhoods for a home, he clearly had no wardrobe sense. His diet might come close to pleasing those wishing for a greener earth, locusts and wild honey! Beyond his physical appearance and habits, his message was rather disturbing, don’t you think? He wouldn’t be asked to preach in any church whose primary mission was to either entertain people or at least make them feel better than when they entered the sanctuary. Yet, when God went to introduce Jesus to us, he put John the Baptist center stage with words like these. “‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?’” Vipers? Not to mention “‘chaff’” and “‘unquenchable fire.’”

We don’t tend to pay much attention to John, even if he was, as some people actually believe, the first Baptist. One colleague refuses to even preach from this text because he finds John’s message so repulsive. We ignore John at our own peril. If we are distracted by what appears to be locust-eating lunacy, we misunderstand something very fundamental about John’s message about genuine repentance, its relationship to confession and the connection of it all to the coming of Jesus. We also fail to remember that the only people who ever make a real difference in this world and the only people who make a real difference in the Kingdom of God are those who stay true to their own convictions, no matter what the cost. John models for us what that kind of faith looks like.

This is the season of Advent. Mr. Hair, who actually had no hair, taught me Latin in High School. At least I can tell you that adventus means arrival or coming. Christians celebrate Advent as the arrival or coming of Jesus. John’s assignment was to give definition to the first Advent. At the heart of his message were calls to repentance, confession and baptism. In Jesus, the very Kingdom of God was coming to earth. John’s message was meant to set the stage for Jesus’ coming by calling for spiritual renewal on our parts as preparation for that coming. Another way of putting that would be to say that we will get out of this season what we put into it. If there is no spiritual preparation for this season we will likely find it passing us by and our wondering in January whatever happened to Christmas.

As John preached his harsh message, people came out in droves confessing their sins and getting baptized as signs of their personal encounters with God. Go figure! The harder John preached, the more people came in response to it. The means of preparing for this coming was to, with their one voice, admit to their sins and be baptized as a witness of a new adventure with God. In all of these years of church attendance, have you ever made that confession?

Last night, Tim Tebow won the Heisman Trophy. This is the first time the Heisman has ever been awarded to a sophomore in college. When he arose to accept his award, it was hard not to notice that he gave thanks to his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Have you made that same public confession? All Tebow did was take advantage of this remarkable opportunity, with his one voice, to make his confession, one that would be heard by millions. Has even one person ever heard you say, with your one voice, “Jesus is my Lord”? Have you made your confession?

Preparation for Christ’s coming didn’t mean getting dressed up, like we do for church, but, dressing down, like when we are preparing for a doctor’s examine, when we will be probed deeply in order to discover what ails us so that the proper medicine can be prescribed. John wants us to dress down so our souls can be seen for what they really are. To confess means to open up. We can also confess good things we believe or know, like the fact that we believe in Jesus. Part of what it means to be Christian is to “confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord’ (Romans 10:9, NIV).”

Christian confession also includes opening up about what we’ve been hiding from God, our sin. We’re promised that, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9, NIV).” As John told the people that Jesus was coming, they got ready by confessing their sins. They told God their hidden story. With their confession they discovered the promise of God for themselves, that once we tell God the truth about ourselves, we have nothing to fear about what God will do with that information. We have nothing to fear in telling God what he already knows about us.

To confess our sins means to agree with God about our sins and then to discover that God still cares for us anyway. Have you ever made a confession of some wrong-doing to someone whose love you need? You disappointed or failed them in some way and then discovered that they still love you anyway? If you haven’t, you’ve never really lived. Have you ever made your confession to God and discovered how much he still loves you. If you haven’t, you’ve never really lived. May I go further to ask if you have ever been baptized as a confession of your faith in Christ? If not, why not? Will there ever be a time better than now?

In my attempts to be helpful at home, I occasionally try to do my part with the dishes. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, the dishwasher doesn’t always dry the clean dishes very well. Now and then, I’ll be in a rush to get the dishes all put away before Nancy gets home. Then, when she walks in the door, she’ll be grateful and there will be hugs and kisses. It’s always a grand time, unless, in my attempts to be helpful I get in a hurry and drop one of the dishes because it slips from my fingers and breaks into hundreds of pieces on the floor. I rush to the closet for the broom and even use a wet rag to clean up the tiny specks of glass off of the floor thinking Nancy won’t notice. I do this, not remembering that there is no such thing as a woman who bought all of those dishes who doesn’t keep daily census of them.

“What happened to one of these plates?” she’ll ask. “What plate?” I rebut as I try to fake my way out of it. Before I know I’m having to do what I should have done all along, just tell the truth about what I was hiding. One of the most beautiful things about our relationship has been that I have never confessed one thing to Nancy, not one, that I did not find her loving me on the other side even more. Do you believe if my wife could love me that much that God could you love you that much?

It is amazing how much we keep hidden from God out of fear that he won’t love us. As we do, we live with a void of peace. Confession means to open the door of our soul to the God who has come to find and heal us. John was offering a baptism of water to be followed by the Holy Spirit’s baptism of fire. Confession and baptism bring both cleansing from sin and empowerment from within to live in ways that honor God. If Christmas works the way it should this year, if we have participated in confession and repentance as we are called to do in preparation for the coming Christ, we won’t necessarily have more things when it’s over but we will have more power to use the things we have to honor God in our families, homes and lives.

At an Adult Sunday School party some time back, a game was played called, “I have never.” But, this is the way it works. Everyone sits in a circle and is given twenty-five pennies and some kind of dish is placed at the center of the circle. The games starts when the first person says, “I have never,” and then finishes the sentence by confessing something they have never done. Those are the easy confessions, the ones others make, right?! Then, it gets tough.

Everyone in the circle who has done what that person confessed to never doing has to get up, walk to the center of the circle and put a penny in the dish, thereby making their confession. They don’t have to say a word. But, by walking to the center and dropping in a penny, they’re making their confession, telling part of their story.

For example, someone might have said, (let’s make it G-rated) “I have never slept during a sermon.” Everyone who ever has slept during a sermon has to put a penny in the dish. We might raise some serious money if we did that regularly.

It’s tough, isn’t it, when it’s time to drop your penny, isn’t it, to make your confession? True confession always costs more than a penny. The failure to confess always costs far more. Isaiah, hundreds of years before, told the people they were sick from head to toe, the bruising was deep from their unconfessed sins (Isaiah 1). The night is dark and long, like winter time in the soul, when we carry around unconfessed sin.

Interestingly, something else happened. People heard each other’s stories. Secrets kept long hidden came to light and relationships were forged on new levels that might have forever remained superficial. It was all meant for fun. In fact, it was the acting out of what ought to happen in our relationships with God and each other all along. Every time we tell each other our story, make our confession, we open the door to relationship, with each other and with God. There is no family or church that is healthier than the secrets it keeps.

If you need a little help telling your story, just remember that Jesus is the only one who can sit in the circle and legitimately say, “I have never.” He never turned away from his Father. There were no secrets between the two. Jesus “was tempted in every way, just as we are, yet was without sin (Hebrews 4:15).” Certainly, one of the reasons Jesus lived a sinless life was because he spent a lot of time talking about the temptations he was facing. Have you ever even confessed just your temptations to God? We will never be sitting in a community of faith when there is not someone else needing to make the same confession as ours. After many years serving as a pastor, I can assure you that there is no confession you could make this very morning that several others among us would not also need to make. Our common bond is not our perfection or our holiness but our common confession, “Jesus is Lord.” That makes our relationship with God possible. It also makes our relationship with each other possible.

Our common bond is not just that Jesus came for all of us, it is also that we all needed him to come for us. Have you admitted that need, with your one voice? Wouldn’t today be a good day to do so? You have, as John did, only voice.

What is your confession?