Repent in Advent

We’re getting to the time of year when people start to say holiday greetings, Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays or something to share the sweetness of the time. But Advent in church always makes me think we should offer a different greeting: I’d say to you, You brood of vipers! And you’d shout back, Repent! Something makes me think that this won’t catch on, though.

So we’ve come to the gospels about John the Baptist. Advent is a season with two faces. One face is a sweet and lovely one, preparing for the birth of a baby, a vision of peace and joy and all creation singing together. But the other face is a fierce one, with winnowing forks and fire, judgment and wrath. It’s no surprise that the first set of images are what we hear most about at this time, in our carols and cards; what is surprising is that we allow ourselves to be subjected to the other images every Sunday in church. We all like a little quiet time in the midst of the busyness, sure. But couldn’t we just stop there, in peace and candlelight? What does a ferocious prophet in camel’s hair have to commend him, compared with animals gathered around the softly lit stable? The church would be a lot more engaging and attractive, surely, if we could just ignore this other part of Advent.

But here he is, roaring out at us as he does every year in our Advent gospel readings. John the Baptist, in all his crazy glory. He’s such an off-putting character that he demands we take him on his own terms – there’s no holiday specials featuring John the Baptist, no creche scenes have him there at the manger. So instead we have to consider how he came across to folks 2000 years ago. Crowds were going out to see him – after all, entertainment in 1st century Palestine was in short supply, at least compared with our over-saturated culture. So if we lived in Jerusalem and heard there was some wild prophet out in the wilderness, we might well go out to see, particularly one preaching about the kingdom of God coming at last. Ever since the early prophets, the Jews had been waiting for news of the king to come, who would finally bring about God’s reign on earth. The prophets didn’t always agree on what that reign would look like, or who that king would be – but all of them told of real justice being fulfilled, God’s way replacing flawed human ways and righting all the wrongs of the world once and for all. And some painted beautiful pictures like the one we heard from Isaiah today, all of creation made new, the wolf living with the lamb, the lion and the ox eating together, death and destruction no more. So if we heard there was somebody out baptizing in the wilderness, it would be worth going out to hear him.

And there we’d see this John, looking like a typical prophet – living in the wilderness, wearing rough clothes and eating wild food, preaching about repentance. And like any prophet, saying some pretty harsh things to people in power. John was telling off all kinds of people he thought weren’t really repenting properly…which, as it turned out, was pretty much everybody. Instead of just tearing into the kings and leaders and Gentile heathen, those people, this John was warning everyone of their need to repent. And he made it clear that it had better happen now, because the Messiah was coming and he was going to sort things out pretty fast and final. So what happened to comforting Israel, and the promise of glory and freedom? Instead of the message ‘God’s going to make everything the way you want it,’ they were hearing, ‘you’ve all got to make some big changes in yourself, right away.’

But his message hit home. He baptized many people in that river Jordan. Something about his preaching rang true to a people looking for hope.

We often say that Advent is the season of hope. But just what do we mean by that? Often when we talk about being hopeful, we mean we hope for something good. We are hopeful in desiring a certain result – we feel hopeful about something that is to come. I hope I get this job, I hope she likes me, I hope it isn’t cancer. We hope for the lion and the lamb to lie down together, and the sweet mother and child, and the promise of a happy ending to all of the hard stuff we go through here on earth. 

But images of separating wheat from chaff and burning in unquenchable fire don’t sound all that hopeful. John the Baptist cries out, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Prepare the way for the Lord, put your house in order, for the reckoning time is nigh. And suddenly it feels like we’re in Lent, right? – when we hear ‘repent,’ we start thinking of fasting and sackcloth and other things that just don’t fit within our holiday vision of sugarplums.

But repentance isn’t just gloomy ritual. To ‘repent’ means to turn, literally to turn and face in a new direction. We turn away from what separates us from God and turn towards union with God. We turn our gaze, our focus, our orientation towards God, instead of scattering ourselves out to all those false gods in our lives.

And I wonder if this isn’t really the hope Advent is meant to nurture in us. Hope not as just a feeling about what is to come, but as an action right now, a willed state of being – taking ourselves by the shoulders and turning ourselves to face the one who loves us. Hope means dropping the other objects of our fixation, our worries and anxieties, our to-do lists, our frustration with people and anger at the problems of the world. We choose not to despair, choosing to focus on the source of love and life rather than on all the reasons we see not to believe.

That’s what John the Baptist and all the other prophets before and after him were doing: turning to face God themselves, and then bringing others around them to do so as well. Like taking a friend by the shoulders and pointing them to see a constellation in the night sky – you put them in front of you and point past them to what you see and say, there, see it? We point each other to see God, we turn to gaze in the right direction. Even as here in church we all turn and face God together.

To repent, to turn towards God and live in that direction, is what Christian hope really is about.  It doesn’t mean we always feel hopeful, and it certainly isn’t always easy – after all, we still see reasons for despair all around us. Paul talks in Romans about God’s steadfastness and encouragement – about how we need the witness of scripture and of the community of faith to continue to hope, to turn ourselves over and over again towards God. To actively choose to trust that Christ is real, that redemption does happen, that the little baby in the manger and the man on the cross are the real signs of God loving and living in the world among us. 

So this Advent, I say to you: repent. Turn yourself toward God, wherever it is you see God. Make a time for it, make several moments for it, during the day. And if you can’t see God, ask somebody to show you where they see God, to take you by the shoulders and point you in God’s direction, to walk with you there. God is there if we look to see. Loving us, always. And so may the God of hope fill us with all joy and peace in believing, so that we may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.