Advent 2A2022
Matthew 3:1-9
On Friday morning, I curled up on my couch with my laptop in my lap, wrapped in a blanket, shivering. After spending all day Thursday flat on my back with a horribly sore throat and brain fog, I told myself I was well enough to write a sermon. Between 9 am and 2 pm, I read and reread several commentaries and read and reread Isaiah 11 and Matthew 3. I wrote nearly an entire sermon on Isaiah 11, a sermon I was really excited about, one of those sermons I have always wanted to preach! But it wasn’t making sense on the page. I rearranged paragraphs and tried new rhetorical tactics. I refreshed my memory on some Old Testament details. Only to succumb at 2:13 pm to the fact that, whether due to my illness or God’s spirit stopping me, the sermon I wanted to preach wasn’t going to happen. Instead, God said, you’ll be preaching on repentance. To which I laughed. Because that’s exactly what repentance is: not just doing the same thing better but entirely letting go of whatever the thing is. Or put another way: instead of riding on the train going in the wrong direction, repentance is getting on the train going in the right direction.
John the Baptist gathers people from Jerusalem and the entire Judean countryside to baptize them in the River Jordan and proclaim: Repent! For the kingdom of heaven has come near! We know the story of this wild man, John the Baptist, how he eats locusts and wild honey, how he dresses in camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist. We annually renew our acquaintance with this wilderness preacher peddling a radical, even a harsh message of repentance. When John sees the Pharisees and Sadducees queuing up for baptism, he berates them, saying, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8Bear fruit worthy of repentance. 9Do 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. 10Even 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.” Ouch.
I don’t know about you, but I definitely like to improve. I mean, I have goals. Every year. They’re hanging on my refrigerator. I often have post-it notes hanging on my bathroom mirror or on my hall cupboard, notes of messages I hope to live into. I chart my running times and can access my meditation record through my meditation app. I take notes during coaching sessions in order to fully implement what I discuss with my coach, and I love a good list, each item neatly checked off by the end of the day. I’m all about self-improvement for the sake of following Jesus and just being a good human. If I were to meet John the Baptist in the wilderness, however, his words would be meant for me. But I honestly didn’t believe this until a few weeks ago.
It was October 23, the Sunday we read Jesus’ parable about the tax collector and the Pharisee. Remember this one? The tax collector and the Pharisee both go to the temple to pray. The Pharisee thanks God that he is not like other people, especially not like this tax collector and recounts his accomplishments before God. By contrast, the tax collector stands before God with only these words: Be merciful to me, a sinner! And Jesus teaches that only the tax collector went home justified. In preparation for that Sunday, I felt stuck. How does one preach genuinely about humility? I didn’t know. But for Faith in Motion, I decided we would name all the things that get in the way of humility, write them down, and then lay them down, literally and figuratively. So, armed with a permanent marker and lots of one-sided recycled paper, I asked everyone at worship what got in the way of humility. There were lots of things: certainty, knowledge, pride, ego, shame, and about 20 more, each one written on a piece of paper. As people named this cornucopia of things that get in the way of humility, I thought: Phew! I am so glad I’m humble and that I’m able to lay down all these things. And then this woman whose name, I believe, is Howardlina, raised her hand and said: Pastor, what gets in the way of humility is believing we are already humble. Heavens.
All I’ve got this morning is testimony. If you are like me and believe that John the Baptist is not speaking to you, slow down that train and hop onto one going in the opposite direction. It’s time for repentance.
We are good folks here. We are. We are generous and kind and care about one another. We pray for each other and visit each other in the hospital. We offer to help in whatever ways we can. We serve pancakes at Grace and build Habitat houses, walk in the CROPWalk and grow some of our own vegetables in the Garden of Eatin.’ We have taken all of the tags off the Christmas tree for families served by Lutheran Social Services of the Southwest, and there is an enormous and growing pile of gifts in the church office. That’s all good stuff. Let’s keep doing it. But in our Advent journey, John the Baptist reminds us to bear fruit worthy of repentance because even the best of us get stuck in believing we are already humble—or whatever your version of brokenness looks like.
One of the many ironies of a life following Jesus is that those of us who think we should lead instead of follow, who believe we’re well and not sick, who are convinced of our own righteousness are exactly the ones who need Jesus most. And those of us who will name our many sins, who don’t deny our struggles, who, when we don’t know what else to do, just say: “Help”, we are the ones who have discovered the grace of repentance. John the Baptist calls for repentance not because he’s judgmental or harsh or mean. John the Baptist calls for repentance because repentance itself leads to healing. Later when Jesus too will call for repentance, he does so not because God is angry or requires perfection but because repentance helps us let go of whatever we believed made us good. We are good already—because we were created by God, because we are loved by God, because we are chosen by God. When John says: Repent! For the kingdom of heaven has come near!, he means, when we get on the train going in the right direction, we discover the kingdom of God come near. And for that we can say: Thanks be to God! Amen.