Second Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 11:1–10

Romans 15:4–9

Matthew 3:1–12

What is repentance? Our gospel reading this week tells us to repent, but what does that mean? And why should we do it? Repentance doesn’t sound like “good news” but rather some unpleasant duty.

This is one reason I prefer David Bentley Hart’s translation of the New Testament. He translates verse 2 as “Change your hearts; for the Kingdom of the heavens has drawn near.” Changing our heart is something we can all relate to because we see it happening to us and around us all the time. Sometimes it happens suddenly, and sometimes over a period of time. For example, I have had a gradual change of heart over my responsibility for global warming and the health of the environment. So now I compost leaves and kitchen waste, have installed solar panels, and ride my bike whenever I can rather than driving my car. Pope Francis has spoken of the necessity for an “ecological conversion.”

We discover that repenting is not an unpleasant duty at all but a sign of growth, of living in the Spirit, once we understand the meaning of the Greek word we translate as “repent,” metanoeĩte. It is actually a compound of two words, noéō—to think, to have insight, to understand—and meta—afterwards, or later. To repent, then, is to have an insight when we consider our past. To change our minds  about our past behavior is a sign of growth, even liberation from being stuck in destructive habits. In fact, I would say that not altering our understanding regularly about our behavior is a sign of being dead. This reminds me of what Soren Kierkegaard once wrote, paraphrased here: “Life is lived forward . . . but understood backward.”

Changing our minds and hearts about our past behavior is the first step toward genuine repentance, but it is not enough, as the Baptist tells us in verse 8 of this passage in Matthew: “Bear fruit worthy of a change of heart.” New insight about past actions is worthless if it does not lead to different behavior now.

The joy of repenting is that it shows we have faith that with God’s help, we can change to live richer, more rewarding lives. It is the religious version of the secular New Year’s resolution. And of course in the Church we have just started a new year. I’ve always hated NYRs because of the assumption that we can and should fulfill these promises through sheer willpower; this never worked for me, and I ended up feeling worse than before. Based on what I hear about the many unused gym memberships starting in early January, I am not alone.

Repentance, on the other hand, is relational. It means we are allowing ourselves to be guided by the Holy Spirit of Jesus. If we learn how to listen, the Spirit will show us how we need to change our thinking and give us the strength to alter our behavior. We end up closer to God so that it is easier to listen, repent, and change in the future.

I’ve made the case for the joy of repentance. Still, it’s not as much “fun” as walking in the park or having a drink with friends. Why would we feel called, or even compelled, to repent?

Because we are suffering. I am not referring to just any kind of suffering. I wouldn’t see the need to repent if I were suffering from a serious illness, or from injustice. No! Jesus came in part to dispel the idea that God uses illness or misfortune to punish us (John 9:1–4).

The danger now lies elsewhere. We have reversed the dynamic; rather than believing God is punishing us, now we blame and punish God when we suffer. This raises the question: where is God in our suffering? God can seem totally absent, indifferent, doing nothing to ease our pain. Therefore, either God does not exist, or if God does exist, God is not loving but cruel. And life itself is a cruel, meaningless joke.

Joyful Guilt?

I mentioned Soren Kierkegaard above, and he wrote an excellent essay on this subject: “The Joy in the Thought that in Relation to God a Man Always Suffers as Being Guilty.”[i] I am convinced guilt has gotten a bad rap. So long as we know we will be forgiven, guilt is the engine of change in our lives and a sign of hope, not despair. Kierkegaard’s essay reveals this.

If we are suffering spiritually, if we are in despair about the meaning of our lives or the value of life in general—and if we are honest, we all will feel this from time to time—we have two choices. We can conclude our hopelessness is appropriate: the universe is cold and indifferent to our predicament, and there is no such thing as a loving God who has counted the hairs on our heads (Mt 10:30). Or we can conclude that we are wrong to be in such despair. We, not God, are the reason we are suffering spiritually—not physically. We are in the wrong to doubt that God is love. This guilt is joyful because now we realize there is an answer to our suffering! As Kierkegaard comments in his essay:

“If, according to the assumption of the discourse, it is true that a man in relation to God always suffers as guilty, then this constitutes the joy: that the fault consequently lies in the man; that, as result of this, there must constantly be something to do, there must be tasks and yet also human task and along with the tasks the hope that everything can and will become better, when he becomes better, more industrious, more prayerful, more obedient, more humble, more devoted, more sincere in his love,”

I do not see how this shift from suffering despair to hope can happen without faith and repentance, and this is why Jesus so often talks about how important it is. Objectively, there are plenty of reasons to conclude there is no purpose to life as we know it. Especially this time of year. Check out the brilliant song by the rock band the Godfathers, “Birth, School, Work, Death.” Everyone we have loved, everything we have done, will soon be dead and forgotten. What’s the point of trying? If we go along with the dominant secular assumptions, we may feel trapped in the iron cage of this (immanent) world.

The only answer I know to the built-in futility of our natural life is one that transcends it. The Christian tradition holds that we would not have the longing for something that transcends this world unless God, who is transcendent, placed it there. As St. Augustine famously wrote, “Our hearts were made for you, O Lord, and they are ever restless until they rest in You.”

I can suggest one more pathway to feel this joyful guilt: the example of Jesus. Excruciating suffering will come to all of us at one point or another. I have no doubt that it will not be greater than what Jesus endured: betrayal and abandonment by his best friends, public humiliation, torture, a long, agonizing death for a totally innocent, sinless man. Jesus endured this without cursing God. He did not even have the Kierkegaardian joy that comes from knowing that in relation to God, he suffers as one who is guilty. But that is because his suffering was primarily emotional-physical.

Jesus also faced spiritual temptation. He was tempted to renounce his mission and the suffering it entailed in the Garden of Gethsemane, but his faith survived the trial. If we are tempted to doubt God’s love when we suffer less, and with more justification, than Jesus, that is another path toward joyful guilt. Because Jesus could endure so much more than we will ever have to, without losing his faith, he points us to the easier route we can and must follow.

Still, it is not easy to remain faithful when great pain comes. I have seen more than one person lose her faith when this happens. I have been on the brink of it myself, although I probably have so far been spared the over-the-top kind of suffering I have witnessed others endure.

Spiritual temptation is a transcendent experience. The only real answer to it is a transcendent one: faith in a loving God. God did not answer Jesus’s Gethsemane prayer for deliverance (Mt 26:39) in this life. So why should we expect God to do so for us? God’s answer, Jesus’s resurrection, transcended this world. That is the basis for our hope that also transcends this world. We can get there by reconsidering our past, gaining insight, and changing our behavior. In other words, repentance.

Why John the Baptist?

Our passage raises another question that has long puzzled me. Why do we need John the Baptist when we have Jesus? John supposedly prepares us for the advent of Jesus, the Messiah. Matthew quotes Isaiah: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his path.” John says, “The one who is coming after me is mightier than I.”

Why do we need John to prepare us for Jesus? Two thousand years after his birth, we are so used to Jesus that we have lost sight of what a shocking revolution he presented to everyone who knew him: Love your enemies. Forgive everyone for everything. Embrace all “losers,” especially the poor and sinners. Challenge all secular and religious authority, accept their punishment for doing so, but never resort to violence, even to defend yourself. Forget about money and status in this world. Lead by serving. Above all, trust in God.

These commands are now familiar to us, but two thousand years later we still find it hard to follow them. Imagine how hard it was for people hearing this message for the first time! John the Baptist was necessary. But not sufficient.

Why does John say he is “unworthy to carry [Jesus’s] sandals”? Why does Jesus say, as we will read next week in Matthew 11:11, “Truly, I say to you, among those born of woman there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he”?

Matthew’s John preaches repentance, but he differs from the versions in the other gospels because Matthew’s John does not connect repentance with forgiveness. This is one way John’s message is inferior to Jesus’s, but it’s limited to Matthew. Like Jesus, John challenged religious authority, attacked injustice, and his popularity with the people alarmed the leaders. They eventually killed him, just as they did Jesus. John had no “home,” just like Jesus, and when the people flocked to the wilderness to be baptized by John, they voted with their feet and rejected the Jerusalem Temple and all it stood for. Again, just like Jesus.

Another challenge John posed to the status quo was his universalism (Mt 3:9). The prophets always understood God chose the Hebrews to be a light to the Gentiles, to all nations. God did not choose the Jews as a privileged, exclusive sect but rather to serve God’s purposes. The history of salvation is one of ever-expanding growth. The Jewish leaders of Jesus’s time had lost sight of this prophetic universalism; they tended to see the Law and Temple worship as their possession.

We see this prophetic universalism in our first reading at Isaiah 11:10. John reveals the Jewish leaders’ blindness to this in verse 9: “And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children from Abraham.” This is a huge shift: religious faith is no longer tied to ethnicity.

What’s missing in John’s harsh, “Old Testament-ish” justice message, I believe, is Jesus’s emphasis on mercy and love, as well as forgiveness. John can be seen as the last of the Old Testament prophets. His is an angry voice that speaks of judgment with threats of “unquenchable fire” and “the coming wrath.”

I am not convinced the Bible definitively reveals there is a hell of eternal punishment (see appendix A). However, John the Baptist sometimes talks like he is certain many people are doomed to go there. This may be another reason why he is unworthy to carry Jesus’s sandals.

Our passage from Isaiah is so beautiful that I want to close with it. Edward Hicks, a Quaker minister and artist, painted sixty-two pictures based on Isaiah 11:6. They are also beautiful–one of them is at the top of this blog post. You can find more here: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=download+edward+hicks+peaceable+kingdom&t=h_&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fcmoa-collection-images.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fthing%2F184644%2F1017288.jpg

The brutality of nature is another challenge to our faith in a loving, all-powerful God. Yes, nature is also a thrilling revelation of the Author of Beauty. My soul is fed by my daily bicycle rides through Rock Creek Park. I fear it would have dried up long ago without it.

But the peaceful beauty of nature can conceal its predatory violence. Black widow spiders eat their mates! There is something wrong here. Like us, nature is beautiful yet flawed. The prophet gets it. This too is something we believe God will transform when Jesus comes again.

For now, we must be content to relish the poetry of the prophet and to allow it to deepen our sense of the mysterious peace promised us by a helpless baby lying in a manger, the Savior of the world.

[i]Wayne A. Meeks, ed., From the Writings of St. Paul (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1972) 365-374.

[ii] Ibid., 371, emphasis in the original.