COMING,
READY OR NOT
The
2nd Sunday in Advent, December 9th, '07, at Christ Church, Mandurah
MT
3:1-12
Notes: 1. Coming, Ready or Not is our
theme here at Christ Church, Mandurah during the weeks of
Advent. These 'work-sheets' are an opportunity to do some
preparation for hearing the Gospel preached each Sunday & be
better prepared
for our worship together. Last Sunday, in the Three Year Cycle of
readings we began Year A again,
focusing this time on Matthew's Gospel.
2.These
notes are for use in Groups, or personally. It would help to
read the Gospel beforehand, & keep it to hand.
Prayer:
for Preparedness
in every sense.
Warming-Up
Exercise:
(Say 2 mins, for Groups): Does what we wear ever affect how people hear
what we're saying, or vice-versa?
Some
Questions to help us Enter Into The Story and make it our own:
1. If
'repent' means something like 'turning our life back around in God's
direction', how are we going to do that so we're ready for God's
Coming in any & every
sense? Can we see any signs that the Kingdom
of Heaven / God's Reign, or Rule, has 'Come
near', is 'at hand', or, as one modern
translation (Complete Gospels) puts it, 'is closing in'? Does any one of these
ways of putting what JB says about God's Coming speak to us more than
another?
2. If we can't see
any signs of God's Rule breaking in, are we missing something? Might we
be looking in the wrong kind of places? Are we more likely to see signs
of God's Rule (to stick to that term) up in the sky, down on the earth,
among us, inside us & others?
3. Is today's
wilderness more likely to be inside us than outside, despite the high
profile 'wilderness' seems to have in the Oz psyche? Can we expect to
find God 'out there somewhere' if we're not also looking for God 'in
here' somewhere too?
4.
Would we take any serious notice of anyone
who looked & sounded
like John the Baptiser today? How was it that he had such an impact,
not least on Jesus Himself back in those days? If we want to challenge
people to turn back in God's direction today, is our problem lkely to
be more: a) the content of our
message, or what people think
is the content? b) the way we go about putting it across? c) our own
uncertainty about what the message actually is? d) that people switch
us off because they see a gap between what they hear us saying &
what they see us doing - or not doing? e) that we often seem to be
waiting for God's Coming
rather than enjoying the fact that He has
Come, is Come, etc.?
5. Do we need to find new &
more Jesus-like imagery for what happens when the Fire of God's Spirit Comes on us? Has our own
experience of being 'baptised with Holy Spirit' been something in which
others can see God Come?
Prayer: stemming from our
experience of God's Coming as
we've used this work sheet.
