In September when we were in London I went with Tim to a place called Speakers’ Corner.  This is a section of the one of the big parks in the city centre called Hyde Park.  The custom is that on Sunday afternoons anyone who has anything to say comes to Speakers Corner.  They bring with them their soapbox and stand on it and just speak.  And people gather around and listen and heckle and argue.  It’s great fun, if you like that sort of thing.  And of course people can say whatever they like as long as it doesn’t incite violence.  Tim goes there every week to practice his debating skills and develop his ideas.  And that afternoon in September there were one or two speakers who were a little in need of psychiatric help – like the man who announced that God sent him satellite messages; and there were those who spouted ideas that were downright offensive, like the woman who picked out a black man in the crowd and said that if he wanted to be truly black he should go and live in Africa.  And among the mad and the bad there were some very sincere and reasonable preachers – Christian, Muslim, Marxist - anything you could think of actually.  Now I’m sorry to say that perhaps the worst examples of arrogance and judgmentalism came from the Christians.  I was really rather embarrassed.  There was one preacher in particular who would just not listen to anyone else’s opinion.  I got into a discussion with him, but it was clear that he had no respect for anyone who disagreed with him.  So, before I’d even really said anything he said that I was speaking the words of Satan.  And I thought, ‘is it that obvious?  Who told you?’  And I said, “with respect we’ve never met and you can’t judge a person like that’.  And he replied that God had given him a supernatural ability to identify followers of the devil.  And I thought I’d gotten away with it.

And I wondered where Jesus would have been that Sunday afternoon if he’d been in London.  I suspect that he would not have been at Speakers’ Corner, preaching to a crowd.  I suspect he’d have been in another part of the city.  Maybe a seedier part of town, in a pub or in the red-light district spending time with those whose lives were broken and who were desperate for forgiveness, love and God.  He would have been looking for the lost, not debating with the self-righteous.  Now, as for John the Baptist, I suspect he’d have been at Speakers’ Corner.  The John the Baptist we read about in the Gospel just now would have been the first one there – not just with his soapbox, but with a portable sound system too.  And if I’d been in that crowd that day, maybe I’d have dismissed him as one of the crazies or one of the embarrassing Christians.  And maybe I’d have cringed as I thought to myself, “Oh dear.  Look, you’re not doing our cause any favours here.  Talk about the love of Christ, stop condemning people - don’t spout judgment - show them God’s grace.  Then they’ll maybe listen and turn to Jesus.  And even if they don’t at least they’ll have had a positive experience of a Christian preacher.  But, John, look at you.  Get a haircut.  Go to Oxford Street and get some nice clothes, lose the camel hair.  And stop eating locusts.  Eat burgers, not bugs.  Your image is terrible.  How can you expect to win any converts looking like that, and preaching the way you do?”  You se, I know what I’m talking about.  I went to seminary.  I attended preaching classes.  I know that you begin a good sermon with something innocuous and amusing.  Make the congregation feel comfortable with you, tell them a joke, then when they’re nicely relaxed and trust you, then you can slip in the hard challenge or the difficult call to change.

Contrast that to the opening words of John.  “You brood of vipers.  Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?  Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.  And don’t begin to say ‘we have Abraham as our father.  For I tell you, out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.  The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not bear fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”  But as we saw last week, John’s job was to prepare the way for Jesus; to get things smooth and flat so that the Messiah could come.  And for that to happen John had to ruffle some feathers.  And he had to make people aware for their spiritual needs, their sins.  Because if people don’t know of their own guilt then they’re not going to respond humbly when the Saviour comes.  So John had a difficult job to do, and it involved helping people understand their need for the Messiah.

I want to focus on two parts of John’s message this morning.  The first is that challenge he issued to ‘produce fruit in keeping with repentance’.  Now there’s a popular image of repentance as saying sorry to God and getting on with life as normal.  Here though, John is saying that true repentance is more than an apology.  It involves changing the way we live.  If we say sorry to God but don’t change, or don’t make the attempt to change, then our repentance is not genuine.  You see, repentance is not about the past, what we have done, but actually it is really about the future – how we will now live.  And God is not fooled.  He knows when we say sorry but don’t mean it.  So when we say the confession in our services, we are making a decision that this time we’re not going to repeat those things.  Now, of course, we may fail again in the same way, maybe hundreds of times, but we need to have that intention to live right from now on.  And if we do then we can be absolutely certain that God hears our confession and forgives us.  That’s what John means by the fruit of repentance.  The fruit of repentance is a changed life.

In the Oscar-winning film The Mission there’s a vivid and moving image of a man who truly repents and bears the fruit of that repentance.  The film is about a Spanish slave trader in the 1700s played by Robert de Niro, who has no regard for other human beings and no respect for God.  He reaches the depths of his depravity when he kills his brother in a dual over a woman.  But this is the turning point in his life.  A Jesuit priest visits him and de Niro’s character confesses his life of sin.  And the priest sets him a task as a sign that his repentance is genuine.  He takes him to the Amazon rainforest, where there is a Catholic mission high in the jungle above the waterfalls.  And to make amends de Niro gathers together all the symbols of his crimes, power and violence into a big sack and carries them up the mountain, high above the falls.  In this sack are swords and armour, and it obviously weighs hundreds of pounds.  But with this burden on his back he climbs.  But he doesn’t do it alone.  The Jesuit priest climbs with him.  He never speaks to him, he never lends a hand, and he never reaches to grab him when the load gets too much and he loses his footing.  He just goes quietly next to him, knowing that de Niro must take responsibility alone for the sins he has committed against God and other people before his repentance can be truly genuine.  Finally, exhausted beyond imagining de Niro reaches the top of the waterfall, where he’s met by the members of the tribe he had exploited in his slave trading.  They are now Christians and members of the mission.  And de Niro cuts his sack of weapons from his back, hurls them into the waterfall and breaks down, a man relieved of his sin and beginning a new life of service to God and human beings. 

The other part of John’s preaching that I want to mention are his words to the crowds: “The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same… (to the tax collectors) Don’t collect more than you are required to… (and to the Roman soldiers) Don’t extort money, don’t accuse people falsely and be content with your pay.”  And I believe that those three instructions probably sum up the Christian life.  Compassion for the poor, (The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same), honesty, (Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely), and being satisfied with what you have in life, (be content with your pay).  I don’t think there’s anything missing there.  What are the hallmarks of a life that is truly lived following Christ?  Compassion, integrity and contentment.  Certainly that is the life that Jesus lived – compassion for those in any kind of need, integrity – living according to what he knew was right before God, and contentment with what he had, even though his circumstances were not ‘good’ – he owned nothing, and his life was certainly not free of suffering and difficulty.  And those three things are what we see in the life of Paul – compassion, integrity and contentment.  In today’s epistle reading we read him writing, “Rejoice in the Lord always; I say it again ‘rejoice’.  Don’t be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

Compassion, integrity and contentment.  Think for a moment of the person you most admire.  The person who showed Christ most clearly to you.  I bet that they had threes three qualities – compassion, integrity and contentment.  In other words they loved people.  They had big hearts.  They were generous and thought good of others.  They had integrity.  They were faithful in their relationships, honest in their dealings with money, stood up for what they knew was right, even when it was costly, and they spoke the truth in love, even when it was more convenient or advantageous to bend the truth a little.  And they were contented with what God had given them.  They received with gratitude whatever God gave them – be it plenty or little, health or suffering.  No one has a hero who was miserable.  No one’s idea of a role model is someone who is quick to complain or see the negative.  Now you may have a particular person in mind; maybe a family member, a church leader, a friend.  They possessed these three godly qualities – compassion, integrity and contentment.  And now think about yourself.  Are you anyone’s hero?  Does anyone look to you for inspiration and leadership?  Are you a role model?  You know there are so many famous people in sports, entertainment, politics, people whom our culture holds up as role models.  And many of them try to live up to their billing.  They see it as part of the exchange – they have received silly amounts of money and fame and power, and in exchange they see the need to live positive lives.  But we know too that all so many of our role models have feet of clay.  They are not known for modeling compassion, integrity and contentment.  Now we are not famous and no one looks to us for these things.  Or do they?  Because if we are involved in the life of a child – we have that duty to demonstrate a life that is true to God’s calling of us.  If we hold any position of authority in any walk of life – paid work or otherwise – we have that obligation to model Christ’s life for others who respect us or look to us.

So this morning we’ve come a long way.  We started with a wild, camel-hair wearing, locust-eating prophet and we end up with you and me.  And after 2000 years that desert-man’s challenge rings out to us as loudly and clearly as it did to Roman soldiers, tax-collectors and citizens.  “Compassion, integrity and contentment.  May those things be what you and I are known for.