So What Do You Expect? Expect Transformation
By Dr. Tom Pace
Sunday, December 10, 2017
Luke 1:13-17

Our Scripture today is part of the Annunciation. Usually when we talk about the Annunciation we talk about Gabriel speaking to Mary about the birth of Jesus. This is the same angel, Gabriel, speaking a similar message to Zechariah, the priest about the birth of John the Baptist. Here’s the situation: Zechariah is ministering as a priest in the temple. It was a very special time when he’d be allowed to go into the very center of the temple and the angel Gabriel appears to him and tells him that Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist, is to be born.
But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John. You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth,for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He must never drink wine or strong drink; even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit.He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” Luke 1:13-17 (NRSV)
Join me in prayer: Gracious God, open us up. Open our eyes that we might see, and our ears that we might hear. Open our hearts that we might feel, and then, O Lord, open our hands that we might serve. Amen.
When I first came to St. Luke’s as the youth pastor in 1982 the church had just purchased its first computer. It was called the Wang. Believe it or not, that’s who made the computer. Wang. And I was one of three people who could figure out how to use it. So I spent a lot of time on this computer and learned how to do stuff. I loved it. It had this green screen with the little white letters on it. People would come and ask me to help them get a report. I thought, “You know, I’ve chosen the wrong profession. I should have been a computer programmer.”
Well, years have passed and I’ve changed. I have realized that I’m not as anxious to adapt as I used to be. That I resist change. In fact, my colleagues here give me a hard time because they feel like I’m missing my potential to reach people for Christ because I refuse to do Facebook or Twitter, or … I don’t even know what the others are called. Instagram and all those other things. I just like it the way it is.
Look, throughout Luke 1 and 2 as we’re studying those sections right now, the prophets, those who come before Jesus and right after he was born, they make it clear that when the kingdom of God breaks in to our world, when God decides to become a human flesh and come down here, things are going to change.
Mary says, “The powerful will be brought down. The mighty will be brought down and the lowly be lifted up. The powerful will be knocked off their thrones.”
I put another Scripture, not the one we read aloud, but in your Sermon Notes and it’s from the end of Luke 2. It’s the story of Simeon. He was an old man and when they brought Jesus as a child to the temple to be dedicated there, Simeon takes hold of him and says, “Now I can depart in peace. I’ve seen the salvation.” Then he says, “This child….” Remember, we’re talking about what we can expect when Jesus comes. “…this child is destined for the rising and falling of many.” Humm! Things are going to change.
Now with that in mind I want to maybe make it more challenging for you and more personal. You are going to change. If you and I decide to open our hearts this Christmas and let Jesus break in and be born anew into our hearts, then we are going to change. The Scripture that’s read today talks about when John the Baptist was coming. John and Jesus are cousins. We really underestimate how closely tied they are as we read the Gospels.
Because we have these parallels of Gabriel speaking to both Mary about Jesus, and Zechariah about John. Listen to what he says, “He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God.With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
There’s a word for this and you’ll see it throughout Scripture. The word is “repentance.” To repent.
I shared with you last week a thesis statement when Jesus arrives and begins to preach. A thesis statement for the whole New Testament is this: “The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the good news.” You and I are going to change.
God loves you so much that God will meet you right where you are. Just exactly like you are. And accept you and love you just like you are. But God loves you too much to let you stay there. God wants transformation in your life.
To repent is not just a command, but it’s a gift. Repentance is a gift. It says, “You don’t have to live this way anymore. You can be different. And I’ve come to bring transformation into your life.”
Look, too often what we do is skip all the way from Christmas to Good Friday. And we say, “Those are the good holidays.” So we do Christmas. Jesus has come into the world, and then we think in our minds, “He came into the world to die on the cross to save us from our sins.”
Look, he came into the world to do that, yes, but along the way he taught us a whole new way to live. He said to them, “Come, be my disciples. Follow me. Live like this. This is how we’re going to live. This is our pattern of life that we’re going to live. Repent and live this way. Change!”
So I think there are three things, three components or three ingredients that go into this repentance. And here’s the first one. The first one is truth.
To see the world and especially to see your own life, the condition of your heart, the condition of your behavior, the values that you actually live – not the ones that you pay lip service to, not the ones you actually live. To take a look and see the truth.
I put that Simeon passage in there because this particular verse just jumps at me: “So that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed.” The truth will come out. You’ll see the truth of the consequences of how you’re living and face up to it.
I have become enamored with Charles Dickens lately. I don’t know how, I guess something just led me to Dickens. One of the nice things about being a pastor is that you have time to chase rabbit trails for a while, and I did. Dickens is such an interesting character. The reason I mentioned him here is that he wrote A Christmas Carol, which you’re familiar with I’m sure. He wrote it because he was out of money and the creditors were after him so he wrote this story.
He was a Christian, but he didn’t believe in organized religion. But he wrote a book called The Life of Our Lord which is a summary of Jesus’ life. He wrote it for his children and he insisted it not be published until after he died. His children then insisted that it not be published until after they died, so sixty years after Dickens’ death The Life of Our Lord was published. It talks about how Jesus lived and what mattered to him.
What you see is that Dickens didn’t invent the story of A Christmas Carol. It’s taken right out of the Bible and it’s the story of the rich man and Lazarus that Jesus tells. Here’s the difference – the rich man actually dies first and then he sees what he’s done. He sees the truth of his life. So Dickens said, “What would it be like if you could see that when you were still alive and repent?” So indeed he does. There’s a point at which you have to see the truth.
Do you ever get glimpses of clarity? “So this is what I am? This is how I’ve been living. This is apparently what I really believe, not just what I talk about.” The first step to any change in an organization, in a person, or in a world is that we catch a glimpse of the truth. This is who we are.
The second component is we have to have a direction, we have to know how we’re to live. And so we get the Scripture to teach us how to live. Here’s what the Scripture says, and we read it just a moment ago from the angel Gabriel to Zechariah. He said that the promised child would “…turn the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous.”
This idea of disobedient, and obedience, sometimes I think we sometimes get a bad feeling about it. Like it makes us these automatons or robots that just do what we’re told. That’s not the picture we get of obedience in Scripture. What we get is this desire to know what God wants for us.
Psalm 119 is one of my favorite psalms. It’s the longest of the Psalms so you can’t just whip out and read it really quickly. It’s about the ordinances of God. Listen to what it says in verse 20: “I am consumed with longing for your ordinances, O God.” In verse 26: “My soul clings to the dust; revive me according to your word. When I am told of my ways…” That’s truth. “…when I’m told of my ways you answered me. Teach me your statutes. Make me understand the way of your precepts and I will meditate on all your wondrous works.” Then my favorite: “I open my mouth and pant, longing for your commands.”
David Lamb, an Old Testament scholar calls that “Ordinance lust.” Where the Psalmist says, “I pant…”
The image that I got was where one of the scholars talks about those dogs that do field trials. When they sit, they’re waiting to get the command to go. And they’re poised, right on the edge. It’s like they’re saying, “Come on! Give me the command! Come on, tell me what to do!”
That’s the picture that we have of this incredible desire to know what God wants for us. That’s what the obedience image is. It’s not like being an automaton.
I’ve used this image. If I decided I wanted to take organ lessons from Rob Landes… poor Rob if I did! I’m not, so do not panic. He’d retire early. He’d say, “I’m sorry - I’m done!” But if I went to him and Rob said, “Here’s how you move your feet.” And I said, “You know, I don’t want to move my feet that way. I really prefer moving my feet this way.” Rob would say, “That’s fine, you can move your feet that way but you’ll be a crummy organist if you move your feet that way. It doesn’t work that way. If you want to play the organ well this is how you are to play the organ.” Sid Davis tells the choir, “You sing this part this way…” It’s not because Sid is on some sort of power trip, but because Sid wants the music to sound great. That’s the deal.
So when God says, “Here’s how you are to live,” God is saying, “I want you to have an awesome life. I want you to be part of my glory.” And here’s how you’re going to do it. It’s not intended to sort of squash us, or constrain us or confine us, it’s intended to show us how to live. We face the truth of how we’re living and we turn away.
Now one more key component. We’re actually not just given a set of rules, an instruction book. That would have been easy for God to do – to send us an instruction book. Like Ikea where they describe how to assemble the furniture. It doesn’t work that way with God. God sent us a rabbi, a living human being. God said, “I’m going to come down and show you. I’m not going to send you a book telling you how to do it. I’m going to come down and show you.”
So when we have that kind of rabbi, that kind of teacher, what we do is we trust him. You have to trust this rabbi that is chosen to come and teach us how to live.
I am a terrible golfer. Every once in a while I get a desire to get better so I’ll take some golf lessons. The instructor will say, “Stand like this. Lift your head up. Keep your arms straight.” And I think, “That just feels weird.” And the instructor says, “Just trust me. Would you trust me?” That’s what Jesus is saying and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes what we do is say, “That just doesn’t make sense, Jesus. To turn the other cheek when someone slaps you? Seriously? They’re just going to run over you if you do that. Seriously – if someone takes your coat then I’m going to give them my cloak as well? Come on, that’s not realistic. Sell all I have and give my money to the poor? No, no, you don’t mean that…”
Here’s what Jesus is saying to us, “Just trust me. Here’s the pattern we’re going to live by.”
So what I would tell you is that when Jesus comes into your life, if you will open your heart this Christmas and allow the kingdom of God in Jesus Christ to break in, you’ll be changed. You’ll be given the gift of repentance. And your fear will become faith, and your greed will become generosity, and your selfishness will become servanthood. Your lust will become love, you will be different. Expect it.
Gracious and loving God, we thank you that you have chosen to break into our lives. We ask that you would show us the truth of how we live. Show us the truth of what’s in our hearts so we can’t pretend anymore. Then, God, show us how to live and give us the courage to trust you. In the name of Christ we pray. Amen.