Shaped by the Future
Sermon
FROM ANTICIPATION TO TRANSFIGURATION
Sermons For Advent, Christmas, & Epiphany
For our children, Christmas is in the distant future; for adults, Christmas is just over the fence. For youngsters Christmas is a long journey; for grown-ups, it is just around the corner.
When I was a child, I thought December was the longest month of the entire year. I would get a commercial calendar and "X" off the days, hoping that such "X's" would somehow hasten the coming of Christmas. The closer I got to Christmas, the farther away it seemed. Christmas Eve felt like the longest day of the entire year.
When we become adults, Christmas comes too fast. Time rushes by. There is so much to do in so few days. There are gifts to buy, ceremonies to arrange, families to entertain, courtesies to care for, and protocol to move through. Christmas seems all too immediate and all too soon.
For children and adults, the coming of December twenty-fifth shapes our lives between the First Sunday in Advent and Christmas Day. It determines how we will live between "now" and "then".
In 1966, I was the pastor of St. Luke's United Methodist Church in Memphis, Tennessee. On a spring Thursday afternoon the White House called to tell us that the Vice President of the United States would be worshiping at St. Luke's Church the following Sunday morning. From Thursday afternoon until 10:50 a.m. Sunday morning, Mr. Humphrey's expected visit gave shape to our actions as a congregation. His coming determined how we would spend those few brief days. We knew that we must be ready for his arrival.
The earliest Christians earnestly believed that their lives were shaped by the Second Coming of Christ. They were convinced of their need to be ready for Christ's arrival, just as St. Luke's Church knew that it must be ready for the Vice President's visit. This conviction was one of the towering marks of the early church.
If we believe that the Son of man is coming, then that belief will determine how we live in the present. But if we do not believe that the Son of man is coming, we will shape the present like the past. Or, we will shape the present as if nothing is about to happen.
Matthew did not want his church to forget that the Son of man would come again! He used powerful imagery to nail that expectation to the minds of his readers. Matthew said that we should be alert to the arrival of Christ. In fact, he said we should spend our time watching and waiting for the advent of Christ. No one knows when He will come - not the angels, not even those who appear to be closest to God. Not one person will know the day nor the hour. Therefore, Jesus said that His followers should be forever ready because the Son of man would be coming at an hour that was least expected.
Matthew's teaching cannot be ignored. But many contemporary Christians are either too liberal or too modern to believe in Christ's Second Coming. Not many of us believe he will pop out of the sky onto a shopping mall parking lot. Nor do many of us hold the notion of him zipping through the clouds and landing in the center of Disney World - or worse, in the auditorium of the Thomas Road Baptist Church.
After all, we live for more proximate goals. Our lives are governed by goals and objectives which will help us to shape the future. We have graduate schools of business to teach us how to invent the future. Modern people believe that we can shape the future. But the First Sunday of Advent teaches us another lesson. It teaches what Matthew taught: we, as Christians, are shaped by the future which comes to us.
I have a friend whose son is a student in a faraway college. This young freshman had not been home since he left in mid-August, but he was expected to return for Thanksgiving. Prior to his homecoming, the family spent their energy getting ready for his arrival. For days, the family anticipated the coming of their child. Preparations were made. His favorite foods were prepared. His room was spruced up and made ready. Members of the family planned to be home for his visit. The actions of the family had meaning and purpose because their present had been shaped by a future event. Likewise, if we believe in the coming of the Kingdom of God, then the church will try to live every day in anticipation of that event.
But as we all know, to prepare for a future event is difficult if we do not know when the event will occur. If we did not know when Christmas would come, then it would be difficult to shape our lives around that expectation. If we did not know when our daughter would be returning home from a long journey, then it would be hard to prepare for her homecoming.
This was precisely the problem of the early church. First-century Christians believed that the Christ who had come before would come again, but they did not know when. They lived in tension between the past Incarnation of Christ and the future consummation of all things in Christ at the end of time. How to live in the "meantime" remained a persistent issue of the early church.
And how to live in the meantime is our problem today! How are we to live if we do not know when God in his power will come into the world? If we knew the Kingdom would be coming on a certain date, we could be more earnestly shaping our lives in light of that expectation. But since we do not know, how should we live? What should we do?
Some wait for the Second Coming of Christ by trying to guess the precise date of his advent. Anticipating the end of the world in 1975, twenty-four men, women, and children from Grannis, Arkansas, moved into one tiny house and waited there for ten months. The end did not come as they had expected, and they were evicted for not paying their rent.
In 1986 a man named Richard Kieninger of Garland, Texas, organized a group of people to survive the calamities of the end of time. On May 5, 2000, Kieninger's followers plan to witness the last day from a dirt pile.
Similarly in 1525, a German preacher named Stoeffler predicted the end of the world by flood. All of his parishioners built boats and rafts to survive the end. When the flood did not come, they threw Herr Stoeffler into a deep pond.
Such was the case on October 22, 1844. The followers of William Miller, a farmer turned preacher, donned white ascension robes and waited on a hilltop for the Second Coming of Christ. When Christ did not come, they adjusted their beliefs and formed what is now known as the Seventh Day Adventist Church.
Jesus said that we should not wait by trying to guess the date. Said Jesus, "No one knows, not even the angels of heaven." He wanted his followers to be ready for the day of the coming of the Lord. He said that we must be ready because the Son of man is coming at an hour we least expect.
Jesus' call is clear. He calls his followers to expect the end to come at any moment. Our Lord challenges us to watch as we would if we knew the end was just around the corner.
Imagine two houses in a neighborhood. One is ready, and one is not. One house believes that the end will never come. The other house believes that the end could be today or tomorrow. The first house believes that tomorrow will be just like today; this household lives for itself. The second house believes the future belongs to the Lord; this household lives to make the future God intended. One house watches, and the other does not.
Without a doubt, we should live by watching and being ready. Watching, according to Matthew and Mark, does not mean observing in a detached way. Watching, in this context, means to do something. It means to be engaged in the world. It means to be involved in the pain and the hope of others. It is the difference between watching a "so-so" television program and sitting by the bedside of a child who has a life-threatening illness. While watching a television program, one can remain neutral or impassive. While watching a sick child, one becomes involved in that child's pain.
The congregation that I serve operates a shelter for homeless people every Friday night. Members of our Homeless Committee take turns spending the night in the shelter. Recently one of these volunteers told me, "Pastor, it's not difficult to stay awake, but it is hard to watch with engagement." He was saying that it is not easy to be involved in the pain of homeless people. It is one thing to watch from a distance, but it is another to be involved.
As Christians, we have the opportunity to "watch with engagement" daily. For most of us, this means serving God through loving others as we go about our daily tasks. Watching for the Son of man does not mean putting on a big display. According to Matthew, the Kingdom will come in all of its power and glory to the two men working in the field and to the two women grinding at the mill.
And, that is the good news. While going about our tasks, we do not have to do anything spectacular. We should simply live today expecting the end to be just around the corner. If we believe that God's tomorrow will be the end of war, of racial distinctions, of hunger, of hate, of greed, and of barriers - all of which keep God's children from being equal - then we, as followers of Christ, will live in light of that tomorrow. The future will shape us.
Matthew 3:1-12
Advent 2
Repentance
One of the towering marks of this age is the absence of guilt. Not many people would deny that startling fact. Some are pleased that guilt has been dethroned; others see it as a bad sign.
The absence of guilt is one of the reasons that it is difficult to talk about repentance. If there is no feeling of guilt, the need for repentance is greatly minimized, if not extinct.
A few years ago, I was involved in experimental worship. I tried many innovative ways to enable worship to be more experiential and less stilted. At one such service, I invited those in attendance to write down something they would like to repent. The worshipers were then instructed to seal the slip of paper in a small envelope provided by the church, and to address it back to themselves. The envelopes would be returned to each person just before the New Year. After the service, a man approached me with some distaste for my request. He labeled the exercise "slick" and "manipulative". "And besides that," he said, "I do not need to repent of anything. What does repentance mean anyway?"
For many, repentance is a word that belongs to yesterday. It is equated with sackcloth and ashes, mourner's benches, and nearby church confessionals. At best, repentance is a slippery word. Hearing it or saying it does not form any meaning in the consciousness of people. If a word has lost its meaning, then it does not carry any freight. If it is not understood, then there is nothing to unpack.
For some, repentance is something that is done when one gets caught. It is something one does if one is caught having an affair, cheating on the Internal Revenue Service, having one's hand in the till, or illegally recruiting college athletes. When caught, an individual will often repent by saying a heartfelt "I'm sorry." But repentance is far more than blurting out "I'm sorry" when one gets caught at something deemed wrong by conventional society.
For others, repentance is something that a person does when he or she is in a bind. For example, a job loss, a death in a family, or a major disappointment may cause an individual to feel that he or she is in an eternal pinch. Repentance then becomes a way of extricating oneself from a jam which may or may not be of one's making.
Nor is repentance merely turning over a new leaf. Sunday afternoon and evening represent my favorite time of the week. With the pressure of Sunday morning lifted, the afternoon and evening move at a more leisurely pace. A fire is built. The large Sunday paper is carefully read. My Sunday suit is exchanged for old "dog clothes." I enjoy this time of the week because it is like starting all over again. It is like putting a clean page in the typewriter. It is like the feeling one has on December thirty-first every year. But, repentance is more than starting afresh.
I took Matthew's account of John the Baptizer to an adult Sunday school class in our congregation. After giving some background information and interpretation, I asked the class to help me prepare a sermon on the theme of repentance. I asked, "If you were in my place, what would you say to this congregation about repentance?" Blank, sheepish stares lined the faces of the class members. One person responded, "We are like the people in John's day. We are so close to it that we cannot hear the message."
"It is like preaching to the choir," another said. "No one listens because we have been conditioned to hear something else."
Yet another said, "Repentance is something we do in corporate prayer, not something we do in our hearts."
Repentance is more than mumbling the prayer of General Confession on Sunday morning. Repentance goes far deeper than going through some prescribed behavior when one gets caught, is in a bind, or wants to start with a clean slate.
In fact, John the Baptizer gave a strange twist to repentance. In most of Scripture, repentance expresses a variety of ideas: (a) a change of mind, (b) the feeling of regret or remorse, or (c) in the ethico-religious sense, the act of turning away from and back to God. The last of these is the most prominent and most significant in the Bible. In both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, repentance refers to humankind's need to "turn away from" and to "turn back" to God. However, the emphasis may rest on the negative side. One must pay for having turned away from God. John the Baptizer, the way-maker of the Messiah, hit a different note. He said, "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." Dressed in strange garb and eating a trail mix of locusts and wild honey, he came preaching sermons about how to prepare for the coming One. He preached that people should prepare for the coming One by repenting and by bearing fruit worthy of repentance.
In this context, repentance does not mean to change one's mind. Nor does it mean to feel sorry for one's sins. Nor does it mean to make bold resolves never to commit the same transgressions. Instead, in Matthew's Gospel, repentance means to turn toward the One who is yet to come. John the Baptizer wanted his audience to turn their lives toward the Messiah who was just around the corner.
This kind of repentance is not negative, dour, and longfaced. It is not the kind of repentance that causes one to put on sackcloth and ashes. Rather, this understanding of repentance turns one toward a new reality which is about to break into the present reality where death and oppression reign. John the Baptizer invites people who are on the edge of this new reality to get ready and to be prepared for the new age. He does not ride the same old horse with the same old words - "Repent, you bums!" He does not hit his listeners over the head with a saddlebag full of sin and guilt. Instead, John the Baptizer invites men and women to get ready for the new age which will be inaugurated with the coming of Christ. Matthew wants us to understand that to repent means to turn ourselves in the direction of the Christ.
In 1972, my wife and I had the opportunity to worship in Shepherd's Field, which is located just outside the city of Bethlehem. It was a few weeks before Christmas and we were gathered with Christians from all over the world. It was one of those brisk nights when the cold was pushed by a gusty north wind. The blackened sky was dotted with a multitude of sparkling stars. Rocks cracked and moved under our feet. Off in the distance, we could see the lit skyline of Bethlehem where Mary had gone to give birth.
While standing in Shepherd's Field, we sang the songs of Christmas, participated in the liturgy, and heard the proclamation of the Word. It was one of those rare moments when life was filled with awe and mystery. As I worshiped, I did not look up to God and say, "God, look at how virtuous I am." Nor did I utter, "God, pat me on the back for all the good things that I have done." I did not pretend by saying, "God, look at all of my accomplishments. Aren't you proud of me?" Instead, I found myself turning toward Christ. The more I turned toward him, the more I found myself repenting my sins. That is the way it works. The more we turn away from Christ, the more we become enslaved to the power of sin; the more we turn toward Christ, the more we become free from the power and bondage of sin. To be certain, it is turning toward Christ that enables us to repent.
To understand repentance as orienting our lives toward Christ is to understand that repentance is not something done only during the "Shepherd's Field" experiences of life. Repenting in this fashion is a daily affair. Turning toward Christ daily helps us to revise our past. This season, like no other, provides for us the opportunity to turn our lives toward the One who came and is yet to come. This "hope" is worth pondering.
Every morning, a congregation in my neighborhood holds an Order for Morning Prayer. The pastor of the church often speaks about how important it is to give people the opportunity to practice repentance and confession every day. We need to turn our lives toward Christ daily by using the Prayer Book, kneeling at a prie-dieu, making the Sign of the Cross, and dipping our fingers in a bowl of water. Daily repentance has the strength to break the power of sin.
But what are the signs of repentance? How do we know that it is real? According to Matthew, it is not lineage or credentials. Instead, it is fruit-bearing that is the sign of true repentance. The evidence of repentance is to be found in the fruit that is brought forth in our lives. Repentance is a positive act - something which does some good.
A woman comes to the prayer chapel of our church every day. About the same time every morning, she can be seen kneeling with her hands folded and her head bowed. After turning toward Christ in prayer, she goes to a nearby food distribution center where she loads her car with trays of food to deliver to people in need. Her daily routine is no big deal to her. She never calls attention to it. Her life bears fruit as naturally as a new shoot emerges from the root of a freshly hewn tree. Repentance, as turning toward the One who is yet to come, does not lead to self-centeredness. We are free to serve and to love.
The following letter from an unknown source tells a similar story:
Dear _________,
I appreciated very much your gentle letter about the Central Shelter. For me, it was the location for an occasion of grace which I wish to share with you.
In December 1981 I became a Catholic. Prior to that, I had been a theistic liberal. But my progress to this point is too long to tell. In my general confession, which I had to make prior to my entrance into the church, I left out one serious sin involving a relationship I was in at the time. Although I had tried very hard to justify this relationship, I wasn't ready to let it go yet. But a month or so later, it still hung heavy on my conscience, and I knew that I had to give it up and make full peace with God. I started going to daily Mass at Immaculate Conception. After Communion every day for a week, I prayed that I would meet an unfamiliar priest to whom I could make a full confession. I didn't want to expose myself in this way to my parish, although I told him later.
Do you remember that monster snowstorm we had that January? I was one of those stuck that night in downtown Atlanta after the buses had stopped running. I didn't know where to go at first, but I finally thought of the shelter at Central which I had read about in the Georgia Bulletin. I had always intended to volunteer there, but I had never called. So I went there seeking shelter, but I was accepted immediately as a volunteer. Because of the bad weather, only two volunteers had been able to make it that night - and one of them was a priest from Sacred Heart. I asked him to hear my confession that night, and he did. But since it had been a busy night, it was 2:00 a.m. before he had time for me.
The next morning, I waited only five minutes for my bus to come. I was the only passenger. After I got home, I started to make breakfast, and as I cooked, I talked to God. I thanked him for his peace and for getting me home safely. I had gone over to the pantry to get something, when, all at once, I was overcome by a deep awareness of God's love for me. His love was like a taste of the joy of heaven, and I knew throughout every part of me what love really was. I haven't begun to describe this experience to you. I don't know how. But I realized then that I had to move toward God's love any way that I could. No human love would ever be sufficient. From that day forward, I began to pray for a vocation to religious life, even though at the time this seemed impossible because of my background.
To make a long story short, on February 12, 1984, I am entering the Carmelite Monastery at Danvers, Massachusetts. They are a cloistered, contemplative community whose apostolate is prayer.
I know that you are not Catholic, but I felt that you would like to hear of yet another example of the Lord's gracious, merciful presence among us.
Please know that the Central Presbyterian Shelter has its own prayer-friend from now on. You all will be constantly remembered by myself and by my community. I hope you will pray for us.
In Christ's love,
This letter makes one want to get the decorations out. Like its unidentified writer, when we try to move toward the love of Christ, things begin to happen. Life takes new directions. Life takes on new joy and vitality.
A key layperson in my church recently said, "If we are not careful, John the Baptizer will take all of the fun out of Christmas." I think my friend is dead wrong. Heeding the preaching of John the Baptizer will restore joy to Christmas. What better way to prepare than to turn one's life toward Christ and to bear fruit as a sign of repentance? That is the way to prepare for a real Christmas. And that is what most of us want because we are bone tired of Christmas the way it is. John the Baptizer's preaching calls us not to the way Christmas is, but to the way it is meant to be.
When I was a child, I thought December was the longest month of the entire year. I would get a commercial calendar and "X" off the days, hoping that such "X's" would somehow hasten the coming of Christmas. The closer I got to Christmas, the farther away it seemed. Christmas Eve felt like the longest day of the entire year.
When we become adults, Christmas comes too fast. Time rushes by. There is so much to do in so few days. There are gifts to buy, ceremonies to arrange, families to entertain, courtesies to care for, and protocol to move through. Christmas seems all too immediate and all too soon.
For children and adults, the coming of December twenty-fifth shapes our lives between the First Sunday in Advent and Christmas Day. It determines how we will live between "now" and "then".
In 1966, I was the pastor of St. Luke's United Methodist Church in Memphis, Tennessee. On a spring Thursday afternoon the White House called to tell us that the Vice President of the United States would be worshiping at St. Luke's Church the following Sunday morning. From Thursday afternoon until 10:50 a.m. Sunday morning, Mr. Humphrey's expected visit gave shape to our actions as a congregation. His coming determined how we would spend those few brief days. We knew that we must be ready for his arrival.
The earliest Christians earnestly believed that their lives were shaped by the Second Coming of Christ. They were convinced of their need to be ready for Christ's arrival, just as St. Luke's Church knew that it must be ready for the Vice President's visit. This conviction was one of the towering marks of the early church.
If we believe that the Son of man is coming, then that belief will determine how we live in the present. But if we do not believe that the Son of man is coming, we will shape the present like the past. Or, we will shape the present as if nothing is about to happen.
Matthew did not want his church to forget that the Son of man would come again! He used powerful imagery to nail that expectation to the minds of his readers. Matthew said that we should be alert to the arrival of Christ. In fact, he said we should spend our time watching and waiting for the advent of Christ. No one knows when He will come - not the angels, not even those who appear to be closest to God. Not one person will know the day nor the hour. Therefore, Jesus said that His followers should be forever ready because the Son of man would be coming at an hour that was least expected.
Matthew's teaching cannot be ignored. But many contemporary Christians are either too liberal or too modern to believe in Christ's Second Coming. Not many of us believe he will pop out of the sky onto a shopping mall parking lot. Nor do many of us hold the notion of him zipping through the clouds and landing in the center of Disney World - or worse, in the auditorium of the Thomas Road Baptist Church.
After all, we live for more proximate goals. Our lives are governed by goals and objectives which will help us to shape the future. We have graduate schools of business to teach us how to invent the future. Modern people believe that we can shape the future. But the First Sunday of Advent teaches us another lesson. It teaches what Matthew taught: we, as Christians, are shaped by the future which comes to us.
I have a friend whose son is a student in a faraway college. This young freshman had not been home since he left in mid-August, but he was expected to return for Thanksgiving. Prior to his homecoming, the family spent their energy getting ready for his arrival. For days, the family anticipated the coming of their child. Preparations were made. His favorite foods were prepared. His room was spruced up and made ready. Members of the family planned to be home for his visit. The actions of the family had meaning and purpose because their present had been shaped by a future event. Likewise, if we believe in the coming of the Kingdom of God, then the church will try to live every day in anticipation of that event.
But as we all know, to prepare for a future event is difficult if we do not know when the event will occur. If we did not know when Christmas would come, then it would be difficult to shape our lives around that expectation. If we did not know when our daughter would be returning home from a long journey, then it would be hard to prepare for her homecoming.
This was precisely the problem of the early church. First-century Christians believed that the Christ who had come before would come again, but they did not know when. They lived in tension between the past Incarnation of Christ and the future consummation of all things in Christ at the end of time. How to live in the "meantime" remained a persistent issue of the early church.
And how to live in the meantime is our problem today! How are we to live if we do not know when God in his power will come into the world? If we knew the Kingdom would be coming on a certain date, we could be more earnestly shaping our lives in light of that expectation. But since we do not know, how should we live? What should we do?
Some wait for the Second Coming of Christ by trying to guess the precise date of his advent. Anticipating the end of the world in 1975, twenty-four men, women, and children from Grannis, Arkansas, moved into one tiny house and waited there for ten months. The end did not come as they had expected, and they were evicted for not paying their rent.
In 1986 a man named Richard Kieninger of Garland, Texas, organized a group of people to survive the calamities of the end of time. On May 5, 2000, Kieninger's followers plan to witness the last day from a dirt pile.
Similarly in 1525, a German preacher named Stoeffler predicted the end of the world by flood. All of his parishioners built boats and rafts to survive the end. When the flood did not come, they threw Herr Stoeffler into a deep pond.
Such was the case on October 22, 1844. The followers of William Miller, a farmer turned preacher, donned white ascension robes and waited on a hilltop for the Second Coming of Christ. When Christ did not come, they adjusted their beliefs and formed what is now known as the Seventh Day Adventist Church.
Jesus said that we should not wait by trying to guess the date. Said Jesus, "No one knows, not even the angels of heaven." He wanted his followers to be ready for the day of the coming of the Lord. He said that we must be ready because the Son of man is coming at an hour we least expect.
Jesus' call is clear. He calls his followers to expect the end to come at any moment. Our Lord challenges us to watch as we would if we knew the end was just around the corner.
Imagine two houses in a neighborhood. One is ready, and one is not. One house believes that the end will never come. The other house believes that the end could be today or tomorrow. The first house believes that tomorrow will be just like today; this household lives for itself. The second house believes the future belongs to the Lord; this household lives to make the future God intended. One house watches, and the other does not.
Without a doubt, we should live by watching and being ready. Watching, according to Matthew and Mark, does not mean observing in a detached way. Watching, in this context, means to do something. It means to be engaged in the world. It means to be involved in the pain and the hope of others. It is the difference between watching a "so-so" television program and sitting by the bedside of a child who has a life-threatening illness. While watching a television program, one can remain neutral or impassive. While watching a sick child, one becomes involved in that child's pain.
The congregation that I serve operates a shelter for homeless people every Friday night. Members of our Homeless Committee take turns spending the night in the shelter. Recently one of these volunteers told me, "Pastor, it's not difficult to stay awake, but it is hard to watch with engagement." He was saying that it is not easy to be involved in the pain of homeless people. It is one thing to watch from a distance, but it is another to be involved.
As Christians, we have the opportunity to "watch with engagement" daily. For most of us, this means serving God through loving others as we go about our daily tasks. Watching for the Son of man does not mean putting on a big display. According to Matthew, the Kingdom will come in all of its power and glory to the two men working in the field and to the two women grinding at the mill.
And, that is the good news. While going about our tasks, we do not have to do anything spectacular. We should simply live today expecting the end to be just around the corner. If we believe that God's tomorrow will be the end of war, of racial distinctions, of hunger, of hate, of greed, and of barriers - all of which keep God's children from being equal - then we, as followers of Christ, will live in light of that tomorrow. The future will shape us.
Matthew 3:1-12
Advent 2
Repentance
One of the towering marks of this age is the absence of guilt. Not many people would deny that startling fact. Some are pleased that guilt has been dethroned; others see it as a bad sign.
The absence of guilt is one of the reasons that it is difficult to talk about repentance. If there is no feeling of guilt, the need for repentance is greatly minimized, if not extinct.
A few years ago, I was involved in experimental worship. I tried many innovative ways to enable worship to be more experiential and less stilted. At one such service, I invited those in attendance to write down something they would like to repent. The worshipers were then instructed to seal the slip of paper in a small envelope provided by the church, and to address it back to themselves. The envelopes would be returned to each person just before the New Year. After the service, a man approached me with some distaste for my request. He labeled the exercise "slick" and "manipulative". "And besides that," he said, "I do not need to repent of anything. What does repentance mean anyway?"
For many, repentance is a word that belongs to yesterday. It is equated with sackcloth and ashes, mourner's benches, and nearby church confessionals. At best, repentance is a slippery word. Hearing it or saying it does not form any meaning in the consciousness of people. If a word has lost its meaning, then it does not carry any freight. If it is not understood, then there is nothing to unpack.
For some, repentance is something that is done when one gets caught. It is something one does if one is caught having an affair, cheating on the Internal Revenue Service, having one's hand in the till, or illegally recruiting college athletes. When caught, an individual will often repent by saying a heartfelt "I'm sorry." But repentance is far more than blurting out "I'm sorry" when one gets caught at something deemed wrong by conventional society.
For others, repentance is something that a person does when he or she is in a bind. For example, a job loss, a death in a family, or a major disappointment may cause an individual to feel that he or she is in an eternal pinch. Repentance then becomes a way of extricating oneself from a jam which may or may not be of one's making.
Nor is repentance merely turning over a new leaf. Sunday afternoon and evening represent my favorite time of the week. With the pressure of Sunday morning lifted, the afternoon and evening move at a more leisurely pace. A fire is built. The large Sunday paper is carefully read. My Sunday suit is exchanged for old "dog clothes." I enjoy this time of the week because it is like starting all over again. It is like putting a clean page in the typewriter. It is like the feeling one has on December thirty-first every year. But, repentance is more than starting afresh.
I took Matthew's account of John the Baptizer to an adult Sunday school class in our congregation. After giving some background information and interpretation, I asked the class to help me prepare a sermon on the theme of repentance. I asked, "If you were in my place, what would you say to this congregation about repentance?" Blank, sheepish stares lined the faces of the class members. One person responded, "We are like the people in John's day. We are so close to it that we cannot hear the message."
"It is like preaching to the choir," another said. "No one listens because we have been conditioned to hear something else."
Yet another said, "Repentance is something we do in corporate prayer, not something we do in our hearts."
Repentance is more than mumbling the prayer of General Confession on Sunday morning. Repentance goes far deeper than going through some prescribed behavior when one gets caught, is in a bind, or wants to start with a clean slate.
In fact, John the Baptizer gave a strange twist to repentance. In most of Scripture, repentance expresses a variety of ideas: (a) a change of mind, (b) the feeling of regret or remorse, or (c) in the ethico-religious sense, the act of turning away from and back to God. The last of these is the most prominent and most significant in the Bible. In both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, repentance refers to humankind's need to "turn away from" and to "turn back" to God. However, the emphasis may rest on the negative side. One must pay for having turned away from God. John the Baptizer, the way-maker of the Messiah, hit a different note. He said, "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." Dressed in strange garb and eating a trail mix of locusts and wild honey, he came preaching sermons about how to prepare for the coming One. He preached that people should prepare for the coming One by repenting and by bearing fruit worthy of repentance.
In this context, repentance does not mean to change one's mind. Nor does it mean to feel sorry for one's sins. Nor does it mean to make bold resolves never to commit the same transgressions. Instead, in Matthew's Gospel, repentance means to turn toward the One who is yet to come. John the Baptizer wanted his audience to turn their lives toward the Messiah who was just around the corner.
This kind of repentance is not negative, dour, and longfaced. It is not the kind of repentance that causes one to put on sackcloth and ashes. Rather, this understanding of repentance turns one toward a new reality which is about to break into the present reality where death and oppression reign. John the Baptizer invites people who are on the edge of this new reality to get ready and to be prepared for the new age. He does not ride the same old horse with the same old words - "Repent, you bums!" He does not hit his listeners over the head with a saddlebag full of sin and guilt. Instead, John the Baptizer invites men and women to get ready for the new age which will be inaugurated with the coming of Christ. Matthew wants us to understand that to repent means to turn ourselves in the direction of the Christ.
In 1972, my wife and I had the opportunity to worship in Shepherd's Field, which is located just outside the city of Bethlehem. It was a few weeks before Christmas and we were gathered with Christians from all over the world. It was one of those brisk nights when the cold was pushed by a gusty north wind. The blackened sky was dotted with a multitude of sparkling stars. Rocks cracked and moved under our feet. Off in the distance, we could see the lit skyline of Bethlehem where Mary had gone to give birth.
While standing in Shepherd's Field, we sang the songs of Christmas, participated in the liturgy, and heard the proclamation of the Word. It was one of those rare moments when life was filled with awe and mystery. As I worshiped, I did not look up to God and say, "God, look at how virtuous I am." Nor did I utter, "God, pat me on the back for all the good things that I have done." I did not pretend by saying, "God, look at all of my accomplishments. Aren't you proud of me?" Instead, I found myself turning toward Christ. The more I turned toward him, the more I found myself repenting my sins. That is the way it works. The more we turn away from Christ, the more we become enslaved to the power of sin; the more we turn toward Christ, the more we become free from the power and bondage of sin. To be certain, it is turning toward Christ that enables us to repent.
To understand repentance as orienting our lives toward Christ is to understand that repentance is not something done only during the "Shepherd's Field" experiences of life. Repenting in this fashion is a daily affair. Turning toward Christ daily helps us to revise our past. This season, like no other, provides for us the opportunity to turn our lives toward the One who came and is yet to come. This "hope" is worth pondering.
Every morning, a congregation in my neighborhood holds an Order for Morning Prayer. The pastor of the church often speaks about how important it is to give people the opportunity to practice repentance and confession every day. We need to turn our lives toward Christ daily by using the Prayer Book, kneeling at a prie-dieu, making the Sign of the Cross, and dipping our fingers in a bowl of water. Daily repentance has the strength to break the power of sin.
But what are the signs of repentance? How do we know that it is real? According to Matthew, it is not lineage or credentials. Instead, it is fruit-bearing that is the sign of true repentance. The evidence of repentance is to be found in the fruit that is brought forth in our lives. Repentance is a positive act - something which does some good.
A woman comes to the prayer chapel of our church every day. About the same time every morning, she can be seen kneeling with her hands folded and her head bowed. After turning toward Christ in prayer, she goes to a nearby food distribution center where she loads her car with trays of food to deliver to people in need. Her daily routine is no big deal to her. She never calls attention to it. Her life bears fruit as naturally as a new shoot emerges from the root of a freshly hewn tree. Repentance, as turning toward the One who is yet to come, does not lead to self-centeredness. We are free to serve and to love.
The following letter from an unknown source tells a similar story:
Dear _________,
I appreciated very much your gentle letter about the Central Shelter. For me, it was the location for an occasion of grace which I wish to share with you.
In December 1981 I became a Catholic. Prior to that, I had been a theistic liberal. But my progress to this point is too long to tell. In my general confession, which I had to make prior to my entrance into the church, I left out one serious sin involving a relationship I was in at the time. Although I had tried very hard to justify this relationship, I wasn't ready to let it go yet. But a month or so later, it still hung heavy on my conscience, and I knew that I had to give it up and make full peace with God. I started going to daily Mass at Immaculate Conception. After Communion every day for a week, I prayed that I would meet an unfamiliar priest to whom I could make a full confession. I didn't want to expose myself in this way to my parish, although I told him later.
Do you remember that monster snowstorm we had that January? I was one of those stuck that night in downtown Atlanta after the buses had stopped running. I didn't know where to go at first, but I finally thought of the shelter at Central which I had read about in the Georgia Bulletin. I had always intended to volunteer there, but I had never called. So I went there seeking shelter, but I was accepted immediately as a volunteer. Because of the bad weather, only two volunteers had been able to make it that night - and one of them was a priest from Sacred Heart. I asked him to hear my confession that night, and he did. But since it had been a busy night, it was 2:00 a.m. before he had time for me.
The next morning, I waited only five minutes for my bus to come. I was the only passenger. After I got home, I started to make breakfast, and as I cooked, I talked to God. I thanked him for his peace and for getting me home safely. I had gone over to the pantry to get something, when, all at once, I was overcome by a deep awareness of God's love for me. His love was like a taste of the joy of heaven, and I knew throughout every part of me what love really was. I haven't begun to describe this experience to you. I don't know how. But I realized then that I had to move toward God's love any way that I could. No human love would ever be sufficient. From that day forward, I began to pray for a vocation to religious life, even though at the time this seemed impossible because of my background.
To make a long story short, on February 12, 1984, I am entering the Carmelite Monastery at Danvers, Massachusetts. They are a cloistered, contemplative community whose apostolate is prayer.
I know that you are not Catholic, but I felt that you would like to hear of yet another example of the Lord's gracious, merciful presence among us.
Please know that the Central Presbyterian Shelter has its own prayer-friend from now on. You all will be constantly remembered by myself and by my community. I hope you will pray for us.
In Christ's love,
This letter makes one want to get the decorations out. Like its unidentified writer, when we try to move toward the love of Christ, things begin to happen. Life takes new directions. Life takes on new joy and vitality.
A key layperson in my church recently said, "If we are not careful, John the Baptizer will take all of the fun out of Christmas." I think my friend is dead wrong. Heeding the preaching of John the Baptizer will restore joy to Christmas. What better way to prepare than to turn one's life toward Christ and to bear fruit as a sign of repentance? That is the way to prepare for a real Christmas. And that is what most of us want because we are bone tired of Christmas the way it is. John the Baptizer's preaching calls us not to the way Christmas is, but to the way it is meant to be.
