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December 4, 2011 -   Advent 2

Mark 1:1-8; Luke 3:1-14

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Reclaiming Repentance

(Read Mark 1:1-8; Luke 3:7-14)

One day a man on horseback came riding, at a fast pace, into a frontier town of the old west.  As he rode through town, he yelled out, "Big Jake is coming! Big Jake is coming! Big Jake is coming!"   The townspeople were terrified. They scattered and ran into their homes; slammed and bolted their doors; closed up their windows; children were sent to hide under their beds.

In the saloon the bartender was boarding up his windows when all of a sudden his heart almost stopped. The biggest man he had ever seen was walking in the direction of his saloon. The man was gargantuan.  He had fierce eyes, a black beard, strips of bullets draped across his chest, and strapped to his legs were two huge holsters holding two sawed-off shotguns.   He was dressed in black, from head to toe, and he looked mean and intimidating.

Finally, the huge man walked through the swinging doors of the saloon and stepped up to the bar,  He slammed his fist on the bar and growled, "Give me drink of whiskey, and make it quick!"   Trembling, the bartender obeyed, and with hands shaking he handed him the glass of whiskey. The man gulped it down in one huge swallow.  The bartender stuttered, "W-w-would you like another drink?"   The man said, "No way!  I’m out of here!  Haven’t you heard, Big Jake is coming!"

Every year about this time, the second Sunday of Advent,  John the Baptist comes riding into town.  And at least on the surface of things, he is often portrayed as a rather daunting and fearful figure – one that strikes terror into people’s souls.  The gospels tell us he was dressed in camel’s hair clothes, existed on a subsistence diet of honey glazed locusts with a huge leather belt fixed around his waist.  Matthew and Luke especially, in their versions of John the Baptist, tell us that his message was confrontational and rather intense. 

But before we board up our windows, lock our doors and hide under our beds, let’s briefly unpack the role that John plays in the gospels and explore his meaning and message for the early faith community and  perhaps for us. 

There are three things that can increase our understanding:

First, the Jewish faith community expected that the messiah was coming.  Mark begins his gospel with the verse, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ…”  “Christ” is from the Greek word “christos”, which translates the Hebrew word for “messiah.”   Writing some 3 ½ decades after Jesus, the first thing Mark affirms is, that for his faith community, the identification of Jesus as that Messiah. 

Second, there was also a popular belief in Judaism that the former prophet Elijah would return and play an introductory and preparatory role for the coming messiah.  We read in the OT book of 2 Kings that Elijah was a hairy man who wore a huge leather belt around his waist.   The point is that Mark, and the other gospel writers, cast John the Baptist in the role of Elijah who was expected to announce the arriving messiah. 

Third, all four of the gospels quote the prophet Isaiah in connection with John’s preparatory role.  These verses from Isaiah were read as our first reading this morning.  Isaiah wrote those words in the 6^th century BCE to the Israelites exiled in Babylon.  It was part of a larger message that the Israelites would return home from exile, but they would return home in a siciety characterized by social justice.  References to valley’s being lifted up, mountains and hills being made low and uneven ground leveled are metaphors for the divine desire that social justice and fairness characterize life in the land - which was a primary message of many of the prophets. 

So, the stage is set.  John arrives, cast in the role of Elijah announcing the coming messiah who the early faith community was identified as Jesus.  

But who was John really?  The gospels do not say he was Elijah literally, but cast him in that role to assert the messiah-ship of Jesus.  John was certainly out there, outside of orthodox and institutionalized religion.  He was a Jewish mystic and social prophet, who lived off the land and traveled the countryside preaching a impassioned message that challenged people to change.  He preached a message of repentance.   But what is repentance?  We need to pause right here because I think we might have some misplaced notions about repentance. Repentance is one of the most misunderstood words in our faith, and I want to reclaim the word and place it in a positive context.  I think we often see John as a daunting figure because of our misconceptions about repentance. 

It has been my experience, growing up in a Lutheran context, that repentance has been understood and practiced in primarily two ways:  For some, it is a kind of self-disparagement confessing lack of worth and moral depravity, and in many Lutheran circles it has been elevated to an art form. The other functional definition of repentance I have experienced is that repentance is seen as a kind of ritualized and rehearsed "I'm sorry."  

It's analogous to something that happened to me at a big box store in Denver. I was walking around the end of an aisle when two young children came racing and screaming around the corner and crashed into me.  No harm done. But their mother, who was pushing a cart not far behind, became upset with her children.  She stopped them in their tracks and said, "What do you say to the man?"  The children got a rather perplexed look on their faces as if they were thinking,  ("What are you talking about Mom? Whatever did we do?")  Mother firmly held her ground and sternly repeated, "What do you say to the man?"  It was then their facial expressions changed, as if a light bulb went on, and they were thinking, ("Oh yes, we get it! We know this routine. We screwed up and we are supposed to say,") and then out came the audible words "We're sorry mister." And then, in the blink of an eye, off the children went racing and screaming down the aisle!   I wonder how many more times that scenario repeated itself that day.

What I have observed is that these two kinds of so-called repentance often make little real difference. They don't lead to any real transformation.   Negative self-disparagement rarely leads to positive transformation, it only makes one feel worse about oneself.  And a polite, ritualized "I'm sorry" is an easy way to appease one's conscience, maintain the status quo and move on with life with nothing substantially changed.  A friend of mine likes to say, "Heck, even Al Capone was in church on Sundays to receive the forgiveness of his sins."

But there is a totally different biblical picture of repentance.  It is not repentance as a negative self-disparaging ritual I perform, but rather a positive affirming life to be lived.  The word “repentance” literally means is "to turn around”; to move a new direction"; or "to adopt a new mind-set."  The apostle Paul challenged the faith community in Philippi this way, and I quote: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”  That is a picture of repentance; to turn and adopt live by the mind-set of Jesus.

Mark says that great crowds came out to see and hear John, from the “whole Judean countryside and from Jerusalem.”  In Luke’s expanded version of the story, John speaks to specific elements in the crowd.  In Luke’s version, voices in the crowd, responding to John’s message, specifically ask,  "What then shall we do?" You see, that's the language of transformation; that's the language of change; that's the language of new direction;  that's the first step towards a new mind-set.

To the crowds Luke tells us that John essentially said, turn your life around even to the point of getting personally involved with another: "If you have two coats, share one with someone who has none."

To the tax collectors who represented a corrupt and unjust system of collaboration between religious and political authority, he essentially said, turn your life around and play fairly and honestly.

To the soldiers who represented Roman authority, he essentially said, turn you life around and, in contrast to the Kingdom of Caesar that misused power as leverage, live by the ways of the kingdom of God that uses power and authority to lift people up.

In the final analysis, the gospels portray John the Baptist as a Master of Ceremonies introducing the one coming after him - Jesus - the one who embodies the Kingdom of God - whose very life reflects the love and grace of God.

I have always been intrigued by Jesus' invitations to “follow” him in the gospels. He pretty much just says, "Follow me." He doesn't say, "believe thus and such doctrine, and then come and follow me." He doesn't say, "Clean up your moral act and then come and follow me."  He doesn't say "join the right political party and then come follow me." He simply says, "Follow me."

To "follow “Jesus, is to "repent" in the most positive sense of its meaning, because following Jesus requires a turning and moving a new direction and adopting his mindset.   And of course the question is, "Where does Jesus lead?"  It has been my personal experience and my conviction that Jesus leads me ever more deeply, everyday, into new expressions and new dimensions and new experiences of God's boundless grace and love. It has also been my experience that the more I follow the more I see how life in Jesus transcends everything political and religious I have ever known.

In the last few years especially, I have lived within an uncomfortable tension; two forces each tugging at me often from different directions. It's the tension created between institutionalized religion, and the direction it pulls me -- and Jesus, and the direction he leads me.  

Like any institution, institutionalized religion's greatest desire is to protect itself, and it usually does what it needs to do to survive, and it eventually turns inward. Jesus' greatest desire with every breath he drew and every step he took was to give himself totally away in love-characterized by the cross that stands before us.

Institutionalized religion, by its very nature, can foster divisions and conflicting camps. It separates the world into true believers and heretics; the clean from the unclean, the acceptable from the unacceptable, in the in-group from the left-behind, the good from the bad. But yet when I follow Jesus, I experience him crossing over and transcending every religious, political, social and economic boundary of his time in order to embrace the humanity living beyond.

Institutionalized religion almost always ends up placing a copyright on grace as it seeks to exert control over grace by making itself its only mediator; and it only distributes grace under conditions of strict control. And then I follow Jesus, and I experience him loving lavishly and spreading grace around excessively,  especially to those people and places that religion has excluded.

Jesus freed himself from the constraints of religion and politics to explore, embody and live his life with grace beyond restraint. It's along that road that Jesus invites us to follow - one step at a time – one day at a time!

I think the first steps of following are the hardest because there are so many things in my heart and in my head and in culture that would hold me back.  And, if I waited for my heart to feel good and my head to be convinced, I would never take the first step. So it's right then and there, at the beginning of the road, that faith takes the shape of my feet.  Even though my head and my heart can be reluctant, I can trust with my feet, and in spite of my unsure head and my fearful heart and a culture that would hold me back, I can “turn around” take the first step and begin to follow Jesus on this road of amazing grace;  just one small step at a time, because small steps, especially at the beginning, are the biggest steps I can possibly take.

But somewhere along the way of following, I will discover to my joy that my heart and my head are catching up with my feet, and that the mind-set of Jesus is becoming a part of my own,  and that the grace of God is being set free in this world again; only this time taking the shape of my life. And if enough of us together move our feet in the direction that Jesus leads, we become his living communal body in the world; his virtual hands and feet on fire with God's love, joining him in God's work of grace.

And that gives me hope that we never need become an institution that imprisons and restricts the grace of God, but a living community that sets God's grace free - with many little steps at a time - and by joining together, maybe eventually even some big leaps!  Amen.