"The repentance that John was preaching goes beyond making some flip comment about being "sorry". Sorry is what we are if we go to the store and bring home a loaf of pumpernickel bread when we were asked to bring home rye. The repentance that John preaches is better understood by the phrase "a contrite heart". This is a heart that finds its present condition unacceptable. A heart that seeks real and substantial change. A heart that is prepared for the coming of the Christ. This is a repentant heart for the forgiveness of sins. The question John puts before the people living in the Jordan valley and the question that people in each generation must ask is: What are those areas in our lives that need purifying? Where are the places where we have gone astray? Where the path that scripture led us was too hard to follow? Where does our indifference to injustice and oppression that others must endure stand as roadblocks to God's rule on earth?

John's voice comes down to us over the years. John's voice is the stoplight in the wee hours of the morning. It is the lighthouse guarding ships from shallow waters, calling us to change our course. Calling us to prepare the way for the Christ.(1)"

(1)  DAN SHUTTERS

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"Picture yourself looking in the bathroom mirror as you begin your beauty regimen after getting up in the morning. I'm talking about after you get over the initial shock over what you see! I don't want to gross anyone out by getting you to think of looking at yourself in the mirror. It is an essential part of the beginning of our day. If you are like me you want to have plenty of light to shine upon the blemishes and disarray and may want to squint very closely into the mirror as you begin the repair work.
So it is with repentance. Repentance puts us into the frame of mind to shine the light on our lives, to look into the mirror, and begin to see all the clutter that is there. We see the blemish of sin, we see the disarrayed hair of inappropriate behavior, we see the scraggly whiskers or caked-on make-up of broken relationships. Most of us would no doubt make a decision right then and there to start the repairs, to do something about what you see. Some would simply go back to bed!!"(2)

(2)  Ben "Benchuck" Manning, Heritage Christian Church, Silver Spring, MD

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I would like share with a story taken from the book A Sign in the Straw by Richard Hoofer.

"Henry Ford made a visit to the Berry schools at Mount Berry, Georgia. He expected a request for a grant of money from Miss Martha Berry the head-teacher of the school. But none came as he toured the buildings and grounds

As he was ready to leave, he asked, "Is there anything I can do for you?"

She smiled and said, "I would like a dime." Ford was famous for giving,out dimes to anyone.

He smiled but said, "Is that all you want? I am usually asked for gifts larger than a dime.

She smiled and said, "A dime is all I need to show you what we can do at this school."

Martha Berry took that dime to town and bought a dime's worth of peanuts and planted them.

From the harvested crop, she planted a still larger area.

Several years later when Henry Ford returned to see what had happened to his dime he was amazed. For from that dime there were acres and acres of peanuts, he was so impressed that he gave her a grant of money to build new building. Those building still stand as some of the best Gothic stone buildings in this country. All of this turned on a dime.

One little lady, Martha Berry used that gift of a dime to bear unbelievable fruit. Others would spend Ford's dimes or keep them or children would turn them into candy, but this lady makes good use of the fruit which was given her.

And this is what we do with the fruits of the changed lives we have received from God. It is what we do with the grace God so generously gives us.
The new birth given freely at our Baptism and experienced each day in daily repentance is meant to be lived.

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 I remember last winter soliciting contributions for the Lion's club eye research programs, what the Lions Club calls "White Cane" programs, I positioned myself fairly early on Saturday morning outside one of the doorways of the local Safeway. Tom Foster (a fellow Lion) was at he other door. There were a couple of men to one side of the parking lot taking turns standing on a "soapbox" preaching. One would preach for about 45 minutes, non-stop, Bible in hand and then trade places with the other who would continue the preaching. I was about 150 feet away and could hear them clearly. They were urging their make-believe listeners to repent and accept Jesus. Not one person came by to stand and listen to them. What's our reaction to something like this? How weird? Walk away? Don't go near? (I was kind of afraid one of them would come over and ask me to accept Jesus...!) Certainly not our style. Perhaps that's the way we think about John in our reading for this morning.

The idea of repentance has received a bum rap. We treat it as a dirty word. But it's an important word to consider for us to prepare ourselves of this Christmas season. The call to repentance is first of all a call to take a close look at myself. That's not all that repentance is, but that seems to be the starting point. I'll be talking about repentance in two ways this morning...the process of repentance and the act of repentance. The process of repentance involves getting ourselves to enlarge our awareness of who we are before God, others and ourselves. The act of repentance is the moment of decision, the change of mind, as the Greek word for repentance, "metanoeo", suggests by definition. The process has more to do with the positioning and preparation of ourselves so that we can make a decision. This sounds oversimplified...but bear with me.

If I am going to prepare myself to go somewhere in the morning, sometime in that whole process of preparation I want to consult my image in a mirror. I want to check myself out in a mirror to see if I am presentable for public. Is my hair combed? Is my tie on straight? And I certainly wouldn't try to put a razor to my lovely face without looking in a mirror.

That's what repentance starts out being like... looking in the mirror and beginning to make a decision about what you see and what you are going to change. I know some people who change their clothes two or three times before going out of the house in the morning. I don't know about you, but the decisions I make about changes about myself as I look in the mirror depends on where I plan to be going or what I want to be doing.

from a sermon by Benjamin C Manning

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Tour and a Turn Around
 
A backslidden member of Dr. Philips Brooks' parish called at the study to request that his name be dropped from the roll. Dr. Brooks reminded him that the step he proposed was a serious one and appealed to him to reconsider. However, the man was insistent.

Just then a poorly dressed boy entered the study with a note scribbled in pencil on crumpled paper. After Dr. Brooks read it, he challenged his visitor: "My friend, this note is from a poor, sick woman who is requesting that I visit her. I must go to preach a funeral message in a few minutes. Would you be good enough to go along with this lad to his home and supply whatever his mother needs?"

"Certainly, Dr. Brooks, I shall gladly do that for you and for her," was the answer. He followed the lad down the wide street into narrower streets and finally, into an alley. The boy stopped at a shanty whose half-open door, held by one hinge, led into an unlighted room. When the stranger stepped in, the half-blinded woman welcomed him, "Oh, Dr. Brooks, I knew you would come! You are God's man. You always come to the call of trouble. I am sick and hungry, but first I want you to pray for me. Please pray."

The backslider had not prayed in years. Should he tell her that he was not Dr. Brooks? While he was hesitating, she pleaded, "Oh, pray for me." His heart would not let him refuse the request. He dropped on his knees. Following his first sentence which was a petition for himself in his own backslidden condition, he prayed for her and closed the prayer. Then he explained, "My dear woman you have discovered by this time I am not Dr. Brooks. He is conducting a funeral and he sent me to help you. Oh, how you have helped me! What do you need?"

She told him anything would be appreciated. There was no food, fuel, or medicine. Accompanied by the son, they went to a store, filled a basket with fruit and goodies which the lad carried home. He then ordered and charged to himself, groceries, medicine, and coal to be delivered.

Hurrying back to the pastor's study, the man, no longer a backslider, found Dr. Brooks in his study. Renewed in spirit, the man extended his hand and said softy, "Oh, Dr. Brooks, I do not want to be dropped from the roll: I am all right now sir, I am all right."

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Repentance
Real Sorrow

Two little boys were playing together one afternoon. They had not been playing long when the larger boy took advantage of his weaker playmate. Georgie, the smaller one, too proud to complain, withdrew some distance and sat by himself, manfully winking back the ready tears.

After a short time, the larger boy grew tired of his solitary play and called, "Say, Georgie, come back. I'm sorry." Georgie, warned by previous experience, did not respond to the invitation at once. "Yes," he replied cautiously, "but what kind of sorry? The kind so you won't do it again