#Worthy

'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? 

Whenever I hear John’s proclamation to repent I cannot help but think of Rory Cooney’s Canticle of the Turning, an Advent song usually sung to the old Irish tune Star of the County Down.  “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.”  The world is turning, repenting.  Let your lives be conduits for that turning.  When we turn, when we change our whole selves, we move this world closer to the loved, liberated, and life-giving world that God always envisioned.  You have been made worthy to be called children of God, so now let your lives bear fruits worthy of God’s metanoia.

Canticle of the Turning.

#Unexpected

'The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.

In days to come

the mountain of the Lord’s house

shall be established as the highest of the mountains,

and shall be raised above the hills;

all the nations shall stream to it.

Many peoples shall come and say,

‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,

to the house of the God of Jacob;

that he may teach us his ways

and that we may walk in his paths.’

For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,

and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

He shall judge between the nations,

and shall arbitrate for many peoples;

they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,

and their spears into pruning-hooks;

nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

neither shall they learn war any more.

O house of Jacob,

come, let us walk

in the light of the Lord!'

--Isaiah 2: 1-5

Unexpected.  Is there anything that causes us greater stress, greater worry and fear that that which is unexpected and uncertain?  A great many of us live in a constant state of concern for the future, not knowing what will happen and unable to make reasonable expectations.  Many of us live with the concerns raised by unexpected curveballs thrown at us by life: the loss of a job, the death of a loved one, a sudden illness.  It is difficult to be a hopeful, expectant people when there are so many pieces of our lives that unexpectedly throw us off course, leaving us with a feeling of uneasiness about what the future will hold.  

If ever there were a time in the life of the Church for us to sit with those unexpected, uncertain aspects of our own lives it is Advent, a season of expectation, hopeful waiting and, watching.  For most of my life I thought of Advent as merely the season before Christmas, a time when we read more from the prophets of the Old Testament foretelling Jesus’ birth, and a time when we prepared our hearts and minds for Jesus to be born anew in us.  Truthfully, though, Advent is more than this.  For centuries Christians did not see Advent as a season to prepare for Christ’s birth; after all, that had already happened.  Instead, what they were preparing for was his return, his Second Advent, if you will, and it is that Advent for which we ourselves wait in hopeful expectation even now, even as we wrestle with burdens of the present and fears for the future.  We cling to an old, old hope. 

Not long before the Israelite people were taken into exile, the prophet Isaiah had a vision.  In that vision he saw the kind of world that God had always dreamed of for God’s people.  In this world the people walk in the way of the Lord, the way of love.  In this world the people take their weapons of violence—swords and 
spears—and beat them into life-giving tools—plowshares and pruning hooks.  In this world the people never again lift up a weapon against one another, and just like in the old spiritual Down By the Riverside, "ain’t gonna study war no more."  The vision is concluded with a rallying cry, “Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!”  But this is not just a vision, it is a promise, the promise for which God’s people have always hoped. 

It is a sure promise, as sure as the intent of God, though Isaiah does not know exactly when it will occur.  It’s unexpected, you see.  The opening phrase, “In days to come” refers neither to the end of time nor to a period beyond time, but rather a moment within time..  Yet this day is not something that we can mark on our calendars.  It’s not a day we can predict, but rather it is a promise, and it is in the nature of a faithful promise to trust the one who promises, and therefore not to need a timetable.  God has made the promise, and like the people of ancient Israel who heard of Isaiah’s vision, we need only to walk in the light of the Lord in our own time, to know that while this world is uncertain and the promised day is unexpected, it shall indeed come to pass.  We know this most of all because of Jesus.

'Jesus said to the disciples, “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”'

--Matthew 24: 36-44

What Isaiah first gives voice to, Jesus embodies, which is probably why Isaiah is the piece of the Hebrew Scriptures that is most quoted by Jesus and the writers of the Christian New Testament.  In a moment taken from Holy Week, we find Jesus speaking of that same promised day.  Like Isaiah, Jesus admits that he does not know when such a day will come, so with all due respect to our brothers and sisters who have tried to accurately predict that day’s arrival, that ain’t the point!  Jesus reminds us that we are not to live as spectators guessing about the future, but as those to whom a promise has been given, the same promise as Isaiah, the promise of a reality where the injustice and pains of this world are transformed into something life-giving.  This promise frees us to live in the here and now, and trusting in it allows us to let go of our fears, both of the present moment and of the future.

Jesus uses the example of Noah to get the point across.  While others were going about the days as normal, believing their business as usual would continue forever, Noah was building a boat and remembering God’s promise, not out of fear but out of trust in the One making the promise. Sure enough, God broke through, washing away the "business as usual,"and in the same way, those hallmarks of our lives that we have come to expect as business as usual, that we begin to believe will continue forever—debt, war, hunger, injustice, disaster—these and all others will be cast aside by that promised, yet unexpected hour when God breaks through once again.  Our season of Advent is about hoping for that day’s arrival, expecting the unexpected.  As the German theologian Karl Barth once put it, we live between the times.  We live between Creation and Re-Creation, looking backward at what God has done, assured of God’s presence with us in the current moment, and looking ahead at what God is about to do in the culminating of the Kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven.

Nevertheless, it’s scary to hope for something that we cannot see, something that we cannot fully comprehend, something that we are told has already come once in Jesus ministry here on earth and at the same time has not yet been fully realized.  Especially when we are dealing with the mountain of problems that each of us faces, the future can be extremely fearful.  I wonder, then, as we stand on the precipice of this Advent season, what is it that you most fear right now?  What is it about an unexpected, uncertain future that fills you with concern, anxiety, and worry?  As we begin this journey of Advent, I want to remind you of the promise that whether or not those immediate fears are realized, we have all been created for far more than fear.  And Jesus, the Son of Man and Incarnate God, whose coming birth we celebrate in just under four weeks’ time, has promised to come always to be both with us and for us.  The future is fearful, but the only thing that is set about it is the promise of God once again breaking through!  And even when the future looks dark, we Christians still light candles.  It’s what we do because while we know not the details of the future, nor do we know exactly how dark it may get, we do know that the light of a single candle can cast the darkness of fear aside and remind us of the hope that Jesus gave us once still gives us today. 

No matter how unexpected the darkness, we still light candles.

Like Paul said in his letter to the Church in Rome, you know what time it is.  It is time to put on the Lord Jesus, to wear him like a garment around us, putting on his love and hope, even in the face of fear and uncertainty.  The day promised by Isaiah and Jesus may come at an unexpected hour, but it IS coming, and so long as we hold on to the love Christ has put in our hearts, so long as we light candles in the midst of the darkness, so long as we hold to a hope that is greater than anything in this world, then we can be assured, in the words of Julian of Norwich, that all manner of things shall be well.  My sisters and brothers, welcome to Advent!