A Time To Come To Our Senses

Sermon-2 Advent Year A-Dec. 5, 2010
The Cloud of Unknowing, "O God, our great companion, lead us ever more deeply into the mystery of your life and ours, that we may be faithful interpreters of Life to each other, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Every year on the second Sunday of Advent we hear about John the Baptist. He was an immensely popular figure in ancient Israel. All four gospels have him at the beginning of their stories. Non Biblical sources refer to him often. A religion grew up around him and was still active in the middle east until 200 years ago. One source (Wikipedia) has this: “He followed the example of previous Hebrew prophets, living austerely, challenging sinful rulers, calling for repentance, and promising God's justice. John is regarded as a prophet in Christianity, Islam,[7] the Bahá'í Faith,[8] and Mandaeism. “
He rose up at a critical time in Israel’s history, under Roman occupation. And within decades after his death Jerusalem was destroyed and the temple, the symbol for Judaism, was torn down. Many Jews at the time believed that the destruction of Jerusalem was due to the martyrdom of John the Baptizer.
I haven’t ever found him that popular among Christians. He is seen as a harsh, judgemental figure, austere, demanding. He had one message that the people of Israel responded to-but Christians today don’t find particularly appealing-“repent.” I can’t rehab his image for the 21st century, but I can explain a little bit about why he was so attractive.
The people of 1st century Israel were living in a time of great anxiety. There had been 3 major regime changes in their country over the previous 300 years-The Greeks, the Maccabeans, and now the Romans ruled them. There was extreme corruption and injustice. Taxation was high, public officials were competing to see who could steal the most from the people, and religious authorities had power-but little respect.
Several messiahs or “saviors” had come on the scene over the previous few decades, and each time their star had risen for awhile, only for them to be defeated and killed. The people wanted change, their wanted “something”, “someone “ they could trust, they could believe in who they could respect. They wanted desperately to see someone with integrity and honor.
Into this milieu came John. He lived in the wilderness several miles from Jerusalem, and had a dramatic lifestyle. His diet, clothing, and message were powerful and engaging. He appeared not only to be a person of honesty, but he resembled the people’s image of the great prophets of Israel’s history. He seemed to the hurting uneasy people of Israel to be holy-and a symbol of hope in the midst of great anxiety and powerlessness.
He essentially he had 2 messages-not one. He did call the people to repent, but repentance wasn’t guilt. He asked them to turn their lives around-to begin walking in a new direction. The Greek word that is used in scripture is “metanoia” and it is different than the word we usually associate with repent. Theologian Marcus Borg wrote this: “The biblical meaning of "repentance" is quite different from an apology. In the Jewish Bible, the Christian Old Testament, "repentance" means "to return" - that is, to return from exile, to return to life in the presence of God, to a life centered in God. -So apology and repentance, forgiveness and repentance, are quite different. Apology and forgiveness do not in themselves imply change. Repentance does.” John didn’t want people to feel bad, to count their sins, to be guilty-those are the things we associate with repentance. John wanted them to turn their lives around and begin living God centered lives. They weren’t supposed to be ashamed, he was calling them forward-not making them feel worse about themselves. As Frederick Buechner in his book titled "Wishful Thinking" defines repentance this way. "To repent is to come to your senses. It is not so much something you do as something that happens. True repentance spends less time looking at the past and saying, 'I'm sorry,' than to the future and saying 'Wow!.'"
So this Advent, let’s come to our senses. Let’s hear John, this harsh austere figure standing by the river in the wilderness who is calling people to return. We spend an awful lot of our Christian life feeling bad about ourselves, beating ourselves up, dwelling in guilt. Does that seem to help your relationship with God? Has that helped you become more holy?
Rev Tony Lang of St John’s Presbyterian Church once told this tale: Do you remember the story about the goldsmith who was asked by a child how many times he put the gold back into the fire? When did he know that all of the impurities were gone? Remember the goldsmith’s response? "When I can see my own face in the gold." Christ will not come to refine us until he can see his face in our own faces.
Don’t spend time this Advent feeling bad about who you are or what you’ve done. And especially in this holy season, don’t approach Christmas concentrating on your sins and shortcomings. Come to your sentences. Change your direction. As theologian Richard Jensen once wrote: “Often we think of repentance as an "I can", (I can change, I can improve, etc.). Better to think of repentance as an "I can't"...(I can't do it alone, only God can give me new life) . This is the “I can’t” season, the season of “coming to our senses”, the season of turning around. Every year on the second Sunday of Advent we hear this strange man yelling the same word, Repent. This year, let’s really listen to it. Amen.