'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.'
--Matthew 3: 1-12
John the Baptizer takes center stage during this second week of Advent
with his cry: "Bear fruit worthy of repentance!" What could this have meant for the Pharisees
and Sadducees who heard it? What about
us and the fruits we bear? Are they
worthy of repentance? What is
worthy? So many questions. Such is Advent.
John the Baptizer enjoying some locusts and honey.
Before we can answer any of those questions we have to
first talk about repentance. That’s a
pretty loaded word, isn’t it? Most of us
hear it with more than a hint of judgement. We’ve seen the street preachers with their
signs calling us to repent, otherwise we will burn in the fires of hell, and
some of us have even heard the fancy-dressed preachers offer similar messages
from the pulpit of a fancy church building. We associate
repentance with an admission of our sinfulness, our wretchedness. What is really being said, however,
both in this context with John and the 14 different times that
Jesus talks about repentance, is the Greek word metanoia. While it gets translated as repentance,
what metanoia literally means is “a changing of one’s whole self”; that
is, a turning around. To repent is not
to drown in self-imposed punishment over the sins that one has committed, but
to reorient one’s entire being—heart, mind, and spirit—toward the goodness, the mercy,
and the love of God. When we are able to turn in this manner, then God takes the chaff of our lives, the useless pieces, and burns them, leaving only the good wheat for God's granary. This is John’s
message—a message that Jesus himself will pick up and run with in his own
ministry, perhaps because, as some scholars have speculated, Jesus himself was originally one of John's disciples.
But when John preached this message he faced
a major hurdle in the form of the religious elites, here personified by the
Pharisees and Sadducees. The modern
version of the Pharisees might be characterized as the strict interpreters of the Scriptures and traditions of the Church,
while the modern Sadducees are the wealthy, prosperity-preaching megachurch
pastors. In these folks John did not see
people who genuinely wanted to change their whole selves and be reoriented
toward God, instead he saw folks giving lip-service to the very idea of repentance. What does it matter, they said, since we are
children of Abraham, and have the promises God made to him. That, they claimed, was enough.
But John cared little for this,
and so he called the people out of their temple, out of their cities, and into
the wilderness, into a rocky, desert wasteland that looked like something out of a Star Wars film; and out there, at the very river where their
ancestors had first crossed over into the Promised Land, John declared that
their common ancestry was not enough. They’d
become so lost that they required a new invitation, which was an invitation to repentance, to turning and changing oneself: change your hearts with regard to your
own sense of value and worth because those of you who flaunt your wealth and privilege
likely don’t look too favorably on yourselves; change your minds about who deserves
respect, dignity, and both God’s love and your own; and change your spirits to
actually live with the kind of faith, hope, and trust in God that your ancestor
Abraham showed. This is kind of turning is what leads to fruits worthy of repentance.
John at the Jordan.
Preachers love John the Baptizer because he
is a straight-shooter. More than a few of
us have gotten in trouble for echoing his sentiment and calling out the brood
of vipers in our midst. We sometimes
focus a little too much on that insult—one which, by the way, Jesus will also
invoke after John’s death—but what is important to note is that John attacks not the individuals themselves, but their presumptuousness. He challenges their privileged positions,
pointing out that God can take anyone and anything and make them children of
Abraham—the stones he references being a metaphor for the Gentiles. The point is living lives that bear fruit,
that reflect that turning around. God
cares about everyone, and as such calls for a sense of accountability on the part
of all people, especially those in positions of power.
This is the core of John’s message of metanoia, of repentance;
calling the people to let their lives bear these kinds of fruit.
The Christian equivalent of ‘We have Abraham
as our ancestor’ would be ‘We have Christ as our savior.’ Like those religious elites in John’s day,
some may wish to just let that pronouncement be enough, that we don't have to do anything except declare Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior. And while that identity is a first requirement
in our relationship with Jesus—just as it was for the Pharisees and Sadducees
in their relationship with God—it is not the only requirement. There is more. We must be willing to turn ourselves around,
change our whole selves to be more in-line with the goodness, mercy, and love
of God.
What better time to do that than Advent?! This is the time of year when we hear again
and again the promise that God is working something new in our lives. Along with John's proclamation, this second week also gives us one of the most beautiful and powerful images in all of Scripture, courtesy of the vision from the prophet Isaiah:
'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
This vision is all about
metanoia. A stump, that which symbolizes death where there once was life, shall come up
out of the tree of Jesse. 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 their predatory instincts.
In the midst of it all, a little child 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 bespeaks the birth of a new innocence in which
trust, gentleness, and friendship are possible in an often cruel world. The whole creation is moving in this
direction, turning itself around, bearing fruits worthy of metanoia.
Isaiah's vision.
Brothers and sisters, I know that we get
hung up on that word: worthy. Am I worthy
of, well, anything? The Church has very
often answered with an emphatic, “NO!” Remember the Prayer of Humble Access? Many of us still say it at our Rite I Eucharist: “We are not worthy so much as to gather up
the crumbs under thy table.” We live in
a perpetual state of unworthiness, and it shows in our relationships with God
and one another. But the Christ child
who has come and is to come into the world has made us worthy, all of us, of
love, of acceptance, of ourselves being called children of God. And so, if we have already been made worthy,
then surely we can hear the Baptizer’s message, not as a condemnation,
but as an invitation, avoiding presumptuousness and embracing our role in the repentance of all of God's creation. If we are
worthy of God’s love, then may the fruits of our lives be worthy of God’s metanoia,
may our actions each day reflect the call that God puts on each of our
hearts, the call to continually turn ourselves around, to reorient ourselves away
from our positions of privilege and toward positions of humility, forgiveness, and
hospitality. After all, isn’t that what
the holiday season is all about?
Canticle of the Turning.
