Reclaiming Repentance
Isaiah 11:1-10
Matthew 3:1-12
December 8, 2019
Emmanuel Baptist Church, Rev. Kathy Donley
When we think of John the Baptist at Christmas, we might imagine a baby about three months older than his cousin Jesus, the pride and joy of his aged parents, Elizabeth and Zechariah. But if we think of John the Baptist at Advent, it is always the thirty-something, unshaven, street preacher in the wilderness, the one coming to public awareness just a little ahead of Jesus. Luke is the only gospel that mentions the circumstances of his birth. In Matthew, he bursts onto the scene as a fully formed prophet.
He is in the wilderness. In Israel’s history, the wilderness is the place of spiritual formation. It is where their ancestors spent years after the Exodus, learning how to be God’s people. The wilderness is therefore a sacred place, a formative, liminal space. In the first century, travel was dangerous and considered deviant behavior, unless there was a good reason, like holidays, visiting family or business. The wilderness was a deviant destination as well, because it was beyond the structure provided by cities and towns. It was the place where wild animals and demons lived.[1]
John wears rough clothing – a garment of camel’s hair tied with a leather belt – and eats wild food – honey and locusts. That is pretty much the standard picture of John the Baptist in Advent. But before John, that was the standard description of the prophet Elijah. For centuries, people have been expecting God to send a Messiah, someone who will put things right and restore Israel to its former glory. One of the signs that the Messiah’s time is near, is the return of Elijah. So, when John dresses and acts in a way to call Elijah to mind, he conveys a message before he ever opens his mouth.
John the Baptist invokes the memory of Elijah as signal that all that Israel has been living toward, the best of its faith and tradition, their deepest hope is about to come to fruition. The Rev. Tom Long suggests that it “would be as if Abraham Lincoln should suddenly reappear to speak to Congress, or if Dr. King should return to lead a civil rights march. . . . When one who represents the very spirit of the movement appears, the air bristles with the possibility for renewal.”[2]
John’s message is “repent”. We are not surprised. That’s what we expect street preachers to say. If you grew up in certain streams of Christianity, like I did, your first association with that word “repent” might be with judgment. Because of that some of us think that “repent” means “be sorry or else”. And because it’s a Bible word, a church word, it means to be really, really sorry or else the wrath of God is going to come down like a ton of bricks.
But really, to repent means to change. Repentance means to change direction, to turn around, to start over. One theologian says “to repent is not to feel bad, but to think differently and therefore to act differently.”[3] Repentance is the kind of change that happens when we realize that the way we are headed is not going to get us to the vision of wholeness and peace that God intends.
So John is out in the middle of nowhere saying “Look, the kingdom of heaven is arriving! Turn around or you’ll miss it!”
Looking like Elijah, he reminds them of the best of their prophetic traditions and he gets up their hopes about a Messiah and so, they break social norms and flock out into the wilderness to hear him. His popularity suggests that there is a yearning, a deep hunger for a spiritual truth that they haven’t found in the safety of Jerusalem or the towns around the Jordan. It is perhaps a need so intense that they are willing to brave the deviant, dangerous wilderness to find it.
Matthew says that many Pharisees and Sadducees were coming out with all the others. They represent the religious and political elites from Jerusalem. To embrace John’s proclamation would mean an about-turn; it would involve embracing a new world-view. For these pillars of society, it would mean turning their backs on everything in which they have been participating and from which they have been benefitting.[4]
And so, I notice that Matthew says “many” of them are coming out. I wonder if they have the same yearning for something deeper, the same need to find God beyond the institution that they serve.
This gets my attention because the Pharisees and Sadducees are politically involved religious leaders – I guess if I need to find myself in this text, that’s the shoe that fits best. Also, because this scene, as described by Matthew, seems to capture a moment of crisis for institutional religion and for political leaders, a moment being felt by the general population. Perhaps the world experiences a lot of those moments, but certainly I think it describes our own time as well.
As I was beginning sabbatical last spring, the news was breaking of the death of Rachel Held Evans, at age 37. Rachel was a best-selling author and speaker who wrote about faith and doubt in our current moment. On her blog, she described how her understanding of God had changed and how she could no longer be part of the church which had nurtured her for so long. What she wrote resonated. She heard back from her readers. One said she had left her church because she was banned from serving in their feeding ministry after she wrote a letter to the editor supporting marriage equality. Another left after being molested by a minister while the congregation refused to take action. One father of a newborn daughter said, “I don’t want her to ever know that God, the God we grew up with, the one the church at large preaches. I don’t want her to grow up with the crap we did. I want her to know God, but not that God. Never ever that God.” And an anonymous pastor said, “I go to church because I’m paid to be there. I’m scared to tell anyone that, deep down, I’m not sure I believe in God.” [5]
I wonder if those people pouring out into the wilderness were anything like those today who are leaving church or never entering it in the first place.
I’ve read the rest of Matthew’s gospel. I know that the Sadducees and the Pharisees are going to oppose Jesus. They’re going to get him killed. So, of course, they’re the ones who need to repent. It is so easy to see when others need to change. But since it is the most likely place for me to find myself in this text – might that suggest that maybe I, as a church leader, am one who needs to change? I raised that question at a clergy Bible study this week. The first response of the other pastors was to define the religious elites of our day – predictably the first targets were the pastors of mega churches and the evangelicals who seem to have aligned themselves with political power. Conveniently, no one in the room thought that any of us were among today’s religious elites, so we were off the hook. But I’m still wondering about that.
Something else about the Pharisees and Sadducees – they’re usually on opposite sides of political issues and religious questions. “They represent different classes, different institutional loyalties, different intellectual traditions, different theological heritages.”[6] Think fundamentalists and mainline Christians, Republicans and Democrats, Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. So why would they be coming together for baptism?
It turns out that the phrase “coming for baptism” can also mean “coming against baptism”.[7] The same preposition can mean both “for” and “against” especially “if the feelings are of a hostile nature”. John’s reaction to the presence of these religious leaders certainly indicates hostility. It seems likely that they have come to oppose John’s baptism and to persuade others not to participate. These intense rivals, these most unlikely partners, are united by one thing – their shared resistance to the coming kingdom of heaven.
One scholar writes “This is a lesson worth remembering in a church and world divided into different parties. We are so busy vilifying our enemies that we seldom see the ways in which we have become comrades in hostility to God’s kingdom. We imagine that our enemies are also God’s, never recognizing that both we and those we oppose may be equally distant from God’s kingdom (and equally close.) . . . Perhaps the church is in such a state because each is committed to its own party’s victory rather than the reign of God.”[8]
You and I are all too familiar with churches and denominations divided into factions, vilifying each other, winning or losing our skirmishes, while the world looks on and shrugs or walks away, seeing no evidence of God’s reign among us. “Comrades in hostility to God’s kingdom” is a powerful, apt description.
This sermon is not sounding very joyful or loving, is it? You may also be thinking that it isn’t even truthful. You might be thinking that Emmanuel is not like those churches abandoned by Rachel Held Evans’ readers. We are actually not like the leaders John condemned – those who upheld and oppressive social structures to their own benefit. I know that you are a generous and compassionate congregation, that you support each other in joy and in suffering, that you reach out with gifts of money and time and energy to express the love of Christ to strangers in tangible ways. I know that you do justice and love kindness and seek to walk humbly with God. I really do know that.
But I keep picturing that crowd moving further away from the big church in downtown Jerusalem, going out to the margins, to stand on the bank of the river and listen to an unknown, uncredentialed, unconventional preacher. I imagine them embodying a mass yearning for meaning, an eagerness to receive the Spirit of God who is on the move again. I see them and I blink and the image comes into new focus and I’m aware of so many today with a similar yearning, the same deep need to connect with the Divine.
And I have to admit that the institution of church, as it exists now, seems divided and broken. Maybe in some places, it is actively hostile to God’s purposes. Maybe in others, it is just increasingly indifferent and irrelevant to them. For years, there have been voices, in the wilderness and the not-so-wild places, calling out for repentance, for change, Rachel Held Evans among them. And to your credit, Emmanuel, you have been listening. You have sought ways to bring the best of our faith and tradition to bear, to share the gospel meaningfully in this current moment. Next month, a new Vision Committee is forming, to explore what God is calling us to, how to turn to realign our communal life with Christ’s life. I am excited about this, but also, I’m a bit apprehensive. I’m hoping that we will be open to real repentance, but if we are, that means that I might have to change. I’ve been ordained for 24 years this month. I feel like I’m just starting to get the hang of this pastor thing and the thought that something new might be required, well that’s a little scary.
But friends, this is where love and joy finally come in. Love because it is the most powerful force there is. Love is the energy that motivates change and sustains us when it is harder than anticipated. Love is the power that allows for failure and forgiveness and second chances and trying again. Stock up on love, because if we engage in real repentance, together, we are going to need it.
And then alongside it, comes joy. It is the joy of vocation, of being used for a purpose. I always think of Frederick Buechner’s saying that “the place God calls you to is the place where your deepest gladness and the world’s deepest hunger meet.” That intersection is called joy.
Love and joy. “Beloved ones, look, the kingdom of heaven is arriving! Turn around or you’ll miss it!”
[1] Bruce Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, 2nd edition, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), p. 31
[2] Tom Long, Matthew: Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997 ) p. 26
[3] John Howard Yoder, The Original Revolution (Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 1971), p. 31
[4] Raj Nadella in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year A, Volume 1 Joel Green, Thomas Long, Luke Powery, Cynthia Rigby, Carolyn Sharp, Editors, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2019), p. 29.
[5]Rachel Held Evans, Searching For Sunday: Loving, Leaving and Finding the Church, (Nashville: Nelson Books, 2015) p. 82-83
[6] Timothy A. Beach-Verhey in Feasting on the Gospels, Matthew, Volume 1, Cynthia Jarvis and E. Elizabeth Johnson, editors, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2013) p. 40.
[7] Warren Carter, Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading, (Maryknoll, NY: Obis Books, 2000), p. 96
[8] Timothy A, Beach-Verhey, in Feasting on the Gospels, Matthew, p. 42