Do Advent
Lectionary Passages:
Old Testament- Isaiah 11.1-10
Psalm- Psalm 72.1-7,18-19
New Testament- Romans 15.4-13
Gospel- Matthew 3.1-12
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
I think we can all agree that John the Baptist was a strange person. Clothed in camel hair and a leather belt, devouring wild honey and locusts, he was a wild man in wild lands. As radical a sight as he was, he had a message that was more radical still: repent because the kingdom of heaven is close at hand.
The kingdom of heaven, God’s kingdom. John was shouting in the wilderness, proclaiming that this empire of divine, holy reign was on its way to break into this world, to conquer all other empires and world systems, and declare God himself as the rightful king of the cosmos.
This message was so radical because that kingdom of heaven, that kingdom of God, seemed so far away. All the people could see around them was political and religious unrest. There was hypocrisy, corruption, greed, state induced violence, poverty, oppression, distrust… the list goes on. It sounds familiar to us, doesn’t it?
Truth is, John was proclaiming this message of hope and triumph, of repentance and change into a world much like ours. And that is why we revisit his message here, now in the church year, during this time of advent, of anticipation.
See Advent is a two-way street. We look backward to the first coming of Jesus, seeing the hope, the change, the glory he brought. We look forward to his return, this glory filled second coming where all—finally—will be put right, where sadness and wrong will be made untrue, where the earth will be full of knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
While we look backward and forward, though, we wait. We wait for this apocalypse, this completion of time. We wait for things to be right. We wait to see our Lord coming to save us.
But our waiting isn’t passive, and neither was John’s message. There is a call to action, a call to do something, a call to be different.
Repent.
It’s not a word that everyone is comfortable with. It’s not a comforting word. It’s strong, it’s demanding, it’s radical. And the people John was proclaiming this message to, they heard it’s call and came to confess their sins and be baptized. They came to repent.
In the Gospel according to Luke, The people ask John what to do to repent, he tells them if you have two coats, share with those who have none. If you have food and someone is hungry, feed them. Tax collectors and soldiers came and were told to collect only what was necessary and to not extort money.
These are practical things, earthy things, things people can act on. That is how repentance works: we confess our sins and go and do differently, act differently, change our behavior. This is what John was calling people to do as they awaited the coming of the Lord. This is what we are called to do as we await the second coming of our Lord. We are called to live different, to love different. This world system is busted and corrupt with selfishness and greed and the abusing of power. Ever where wer turn we see rampant racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, violence, poverty, climate catastrophe—these are all that seem to color our news casts. There is harm against the weak, oppression against the marginalized, and ever-growing injustice against the victim.
This is the world infected by sin.
But there is another way. There is a better way. There is a way of repentance.
The history of the church is filled with ways the church has failed to be different. The crusades. The Spanish inquisition. The displacement and genocide of native peoples. We have not loved God with our whole heart. We have not loved our neighbor as ourselves.
But we can’t just point at the church institution as corrupt and distance ourselves from it. No, we ARE the church. This history is ours. The church has hurt people—is hurting people—and we are responsible to mend those wounds.
I’m not saying that each of us has to figure out some sort of reparation of every sin done in the name of Christ. What I am saying is that we must acknowledge our part in a broken church, our place in its history, and we must stop the generational sins handed down to us by our forefathers and mothers. I can look back in my own life and see where I have hurt people, where I have failed to do what I ought to have done and did what I ought to not have done. I have sinned by what I have left undone and by what I have done. We all have. Don’t we confess this every week in the liturgy? Every week we humbly ask for forgiveness, and every week we receive absolution. This matters because it keeps us honest. We confess so we can be forgiven, and in that confession is an act of repentance.
Repentance means to turn around, to change your mind, to go the other way. So, are we going the other way? Are we showing a different life than the world system around us tells us we need to live? These are important questions, as highlight by John’s interactions with the political religious leaders of his day.
When he saw they were coming to be baptized, he called them a brood of vipers, knowing they were coming for show, to display their piety and self-justified “holiness.” They weren’t coming to proclaim a change in their lives. They went out to John in the wild lands to be baptized because it was what everyone else was doing, and they had to make a good show lest people think they aren’t righteous.
John sees through their hypocrisy and calls them to true repentance. “Bear fruit keeping with your repentance… the ax is already laid to the root of the tree, and if you don’t produce good fruit, you will be cut down and burned as firewood.” It’s not a showy display of piety that shows salvation in someone’s life, it’s the fruit they bear, the actions they live, the deeds they do, the legacy they leave.
John’s warning stands as a testament that repentance and baptism are not things to be taken lightly. In baptism, whether as an infant or as an adult, we enter the waters of death, dragging with us sin and the failures to live righteously down with us. As we rise, we rise into a new life, a new identity, a new way of living, moving, and being. John’s call to us is to live according to our baptism. Don’t let it fade into the background of your life. Don’t let it become a nostalgic memory. Live into your baptism, into the new life you were brought into, into this new way of being. Live in such a way that you bear fruit keeping with the repentance we express every week. Live according to the way of love we know Jesus is calling us to.
This is how we wait well. This is how we proclaim that Christ has come, Christ is here, and Christ will come again. This is how we anticipate the glorious day when we will see Christ face to face. This is how we practice advent well.
And when we practice advent well, we are joining with John the Baptist, as voices in these wild lands declaring, “Prepare the way for the Lord; make his path straight.” The Lord is coming; it’s our job to take every obstacle, every barrier, every wall down so people can see that he is indeed coming. We are making straight the path of his coming, proclaiming with word and deed the hope we have.
When he comes, all will be right. The wolf and lamb, the cow and the bear, all shall live in harmony. The child shall play over the den of those broods of vipers, and there will be no harm. No physical danger, no spiritual wounds. Then we will see what the church is meant to be, the bride of Christ… but Jesus hasn’t come again yet, so we must wait well. We must do advent well. We must live into our baptism, showing people there is a different way to live, to be, to hope, to love.
Amen