'A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. His delight shall be in the fear of the LORD. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins. The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.'
--Isaiah 11: 1-10
'In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said,
“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”
Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
“I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”'
--Matthew 3: 1-12
The second Sunday of Advent is one of those days that makes me chuckle a bit. Because despite the fact that when I read the text from Matthew I said, “The Gospel of the Lord,” the Lord Jesus doesn’t actually make an appearance. It’s more like the Gospel of John the Baptist. Did you know that there is a small religious group that believe John the Baptist was the Messiah and the last of the prophets? They’re called the Mandaeans, and their number ranges from about 60,000-200,000 followers worldwide, most of whom are in Iran, Syria, and Jordan. This is a Mandaean Gospel if ever there was one, but that doesn’t make it any less of a Christian message, just because it’s John’s time to shine. The Baptist is both the inheritor of the prophetic witness of folks like Isaiah and the forerunner of Jesus; and they all are, effectively, calling folks to heed a particular message.
That message is one of metanoia, a Greek word that means “to turn oneself around,” and is generally translated into English as “repentance.” It can be a loaded word, and to be sure, a lot of preachers have misused it in such a fashion that folks think that it means they have to beat themselves up. To practice metanoia, though, is not to drown in self-imposed punishment, but to re-orient one’s self – heart, mind, and spirit – toward the grace, mercy, and love of God. It’s a paradigm shift, a changing of one’s whole attitude and self.
Jesus himself uses the word metanoia 14 different times, and like John, he will use that word in conjunction with another word that has been somewhat misused and misrepresented in our modern parlance, hamartia, which is an archery term meaning “to miss the mark,” but that gets translated into English as “sin.” John, as the forerunner, sets the stage for Jesus, urging people to heed this message of turning from their sins. To turn, to repent, as John articulates it, is itself a way of coming closer to God. Whatever drove the Pharisees and Sadducees out to see what John was up to was of a curiosity than a genuine desire to turn themselves around, which might be why John calls them a brood of vipers, an insult even Jesus will employ after John’s death.
John’s message of repentance is one that calls folks to a sense of responsibility, looking deep into their own hearts and being truly honest with themselves, not hiding behind their egos or their place within a given community. The Pharisees and Sadducees were satisfied with being children of Abraham, that seems to have been enough for them. Modern Christians, too, have a version of that. We are satisfied with calling Jesus our Lord and belonging to a specific church. That seems to be enough. But such an attitude runs the risk of viewing sin as a kind of psychological dilemma, purely spiritual in nature, and not tied to the choices that we make on a daily basis. We pray, “God, guard my heart!” but then we get all out of sorts by what some might call “first world problems.” We ask Jesus, “Make me more prayerful, help me carve out time for spiritual practices!”, but then we say to him, “Geez, look at my schedule?! Maybe I’ll try again tomorrow.” We ask for the mental assent to new life, but how often do we get to the actions that lead to the life-changing turn? We become like the car whose blinker keeps indicating that it’s going to turn any minute now….and is still blinking 10, 20, 30 miles later.
John’s invitation, which Jesus will carry forth, is to prove by the very way we live that we have, indeed, begun to turn. And make no mistake, this is not a one-time thing. We don’t suddenly turn around and realize we’ve got it all figured out – “Oh hey, Jesus! Didn’t see ya there!” - and keep walking along, now fully changed or enlightened. It takes doing again and again, that’s why metanoia is a spiritual practice; we gotta work at it all the time. It’s not a destination, it’a journey, one we embark on through prayer, personal confession, and those other practices that turn us away from our egos and toward the transformed life that Jesus has to give us. There’s a lovely story about when Father Thomas Keating, the architect of Centering Prayer, was leading a group of nuns in the practice, and one of the sisters approached him after they had done the exercise of 20 minutes of silence, and she said, “Oh Fr. Keating! I’m so bad at this. During the silence my mind went off in a hundred different directions, and I just feel awful!” Fr. Keating, smiling, said, “Oh wonderful! A hundred opportunities to turn back to God!”
The world is fixing to turn, and we are invited every day this Advent season to heed this message of continually turning toward the grace, mercy, and love of God; for in this message is the hope that God is working something new in our lives, something that bespeaks God again breaking into the world. The vision from the prophet Isaiah is one of the most beautiful and powerful in all of Scripture, and it is all about metanoia. A stump shall come up out of the tree of Jesse. A stump, that which symbolizes death where there once was life. But even a stump has roots, and lo and behold a shoot will sprout from those roots. And what’s more, all living creatures will turn themselves around, the prey will lie with the predators, the former having let God quell their fear, and the latter surrendering to God their predatory instincts. In their midst, a little child, the most vulnerable of all, will lead them. As Christians we read Jesus into this vision—he, a descendant of Jesse, is that promised shoot, that little child for whose birth we prepare —but those who first heard this vision would’ve known how it signals the birth of a new innocence in which trust, gentleness, and friendship are possible in an often-cruel world. The whole creation is turning and moving in a new way; we need only ask to be shown where the moments are for us to turn, so that we finally click that blinker off.
I cannot help but think, on a day like this with readings like these, of Rory Cooney’s Canticle of the Turning, an Advent song usually sung to the old Irish tune Star of the County Down. Our congregation sang it on Sunday, and below is a video of a virtual choir rendition they offered during the pandemic: “My heart shall sing of the day you bring, let the fires of your justice burn; wipe away all tears, for the dawn draws near; and the world is about to turn.” Creation itself is turning, repenting. Perhaps if we all can heed the message, practice metanoia from our hamartia in the small, daily ways, then the bigger, systemic ways, will become more manageable, and this world can finally look like the loved, liberated, and life-giving place that God has always envisioned.
The Church of the Advocate's virtual choir singing The Canticle of the Turning.
