December 13, 2015 – Advent 3C
© 2015 Evan D. Garner
Audio of this sermon can be heard here.
When I was growing up,
this week of the year always felt stressful. There was an urgency in our house
to get ready that left all of us in fear. We weren’t worried about decorations
or shopping or the big family meal, nor were we anxious about the predicted
second-coming of Jesus and the end of the world that we heard about in church
every Sunday during Advent. No, we were worried about an arrival of a different
sort: the advent of my grandparents who might show up at any minute.
Days before their
predicted arrival were busy enough. Rooms had to be cleaned. Floors had to be
swept and mopped. Toys had to be put away. But, on the morning when they were supposed
to show up, my mother’s commands rose to a feverish pitch, and I remember
scurrying around the house, picking up stray items left out of place, while she
screamed, “They’ll be here any minute! They’ll be here any minute!”
You see, my father’s father
liked to wake up early—very early. If they were not in the car and on the road
from Birmingham before 6:00 a.m., he would be sorely disappointed. So around
9:00, things got really hectic at our house. Mom would bark out one order after
another, “Go put your dirty clothes in the laundry room! Quick, wipe down the
kitchen counter!” My dad retreated to the relative tranquility of the lawn
mower, while the kids pretended to look busy in case mom walked into the room
where the television was on. Eventually, of course, the grandparents would pull
into the driveway and one chaos would be replaced by another. We were never
completely ready, but, for that last hour or two, we gave it a pretty good go.
There’s a similar tenor in
John the Baptist’s preaching, which we hear in today’s gospel lesson. “Even
now,” he proclaimed, “the ax is lying at the root of the trees. If you don’t
bear good fruit, you’ll be cut down and thrown into the fire.” That was
two-thousand years ago, and his words have lost some of their urgency, but we
haven’t forgotten them. And, this season of Advent, when we prepare not only
for the season of Christmas but also for the day when Christ will return and
judge the world, I wonder what it might look like if we took John’s words just
as seriously as the crowd who gathered on the banks of the Jordan River. What
would it mean for us to believe as fully as we proclaim that one day soon Jesus
will come back? What might become of us if we took repentance seriously?
Repentance is a curious
thing. Most of the preachers who cry out, “Repent!” are the same ones who are
likely to shake a bible in your face and try to scare the hell right out of
you. I think it’s a good thing that our tradition has, for the most part, left
the scariness of religion to the fundamentalists. But some of us, who preach in
the Episcopal Church, are so worried that we might be compared with a
fire-and-brimstone preacher that we’ve forgotten how important repentance is.
You can’t get to heaven without it. You can’t be a part of what God is doing in
the world unless you repent. We cannot hear the good news of Jesus Christ
unless we embrace the message of John the Baptist, the forerunner. And that
leaves me asking the same question that the crowd asked the great prophet:
“What should I do?”
As someone who has dedicated
his life to the spreading of the gospel of Jesus Christ but who also believes
that the gospel cannot be a message of fear, what should I do? How can I call
upon this congregation to repent without turning them away with a harsh message
that no one wants to hear? How can I get you to listen long enough to hear me
say that repentance is actually good news? How can all of us understand that
the invitation to repentance isn’t threatening or fear-mongering but actually an
invitation to peace and security?
Well, thanks be to God
that Luke takes care of that for me. All four gospel accounts start out with
John the Baptist and his message of repentance. And two of them—Matthew and
Luke—portray this exact moment when the crowds come out to be baptized by John
in the Jordan. But only Luke tells us what the Baptizer said to the crowds when
they asked him what they should do: “Whoever has two coats must share with
anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” To the tax
collectors, he said, "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.”
And to the soldiers, he said, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or
false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.” Share. Don’t steal or
extort. Be satisfied. Do that and you will be ready when the Lord comes. That
doesn’t sound very threatening, does it?
That’s because repentance
isn’t about perfection. It’s about living a life that reflects God’s priorities
for the world. Think about the people to whom John the Baptist was speaking. Among
them were tax collectors and soldiers—the most hated people in society. Their
occupations represented everything that stood in the way of God’s kingdom, but
John didn’t tell them to quit their jobs and become religious zealots. He
merely asked them to do their jobs with dignity and honesty. We don’t have very
many prostitutes, drug dealers, and loan sharks in our parish, but God’s
message to them is the same as it is to the rest of us: you don’t have to be
perfect; just stop living for yourself and start living for God’s kingdom.
Jesus Christ is coming.
And, when he comes, he will judge the earth. And it’s up to us to be ready. But
getting ready doesn’t mean being perfect. If perfection were what God requires,
we’d be lost and without hope, and this message would be one of fear and
desperation. We prepare for the coming of Christ through repentance. And
repentance is as easy—and as challenging—as living a life that belongs in God’s
kingdom. It’s as simple as sharing your coat and your food and conducting
yourself honorably, and it’s as difficult as letting God’s ways become your
ways.
Repent! Hear the good
news! The kingdom of God is near. And, because of God’s mercies, it is within
your reach. You don’t have to become Mother Teresa in order to partake in God’s
kingdom, but you must yearn for a life that belongs to God as thoroughly as
hers did. As John the Baptist declared, we cannot afford to wait. We must live
that kingdom life now. And we do so not because we are afraid that Jesus could show
up at any moment and catch us unprepared. We live that kingdom life because we
know that Jesus will come back and the only way we can get ready to embrace his
coming is to live as if he were already here.
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