Sermon: Repentance and Fruit for Christmas

Luke 3:7-18

Repentance and Fruit for Christmas

James Sledge                                                                                       December 16, 2018

John the Baptist shows up two weeks in a row in the Advent gospel readings, and so at the end of a recent staff meeting, I checked with Diane about her sermon on John’s first appearance. I did not want my sermon to duplicate hers. Could I preach on the “brood of vipers” or might she have already touched on that?

Diane said I could have the vipers, though she might touch a bit on John’s ministry during the children’s time. Then the conversation lapsed into silliness. I joked that she could greet children at the chancel steps with, “You brood of vipers! Who told you to come up here?” Then we imagined parents yanking their children out of the worship service, And come to think of it, maybe I shouldn’t share what goes on in staff meetings.

But that bit of silliness got me thinking about why those who came out to see John didn’t head for home the moment he started yelling. All they do is show up, and he calls them a family of snakes, a colorful way of implying that they are children of the devil. Yet these people do not run off. They ask for instructions. "What then should we do?" Clearly they think that something is about to happen, and they want to be ready.

As I thought about the crowds that gather around John despite how unpalatable he is, I found myself thinking about the gathering in the missional mandate the Session has discerned as our call from God. “Gathering those who fear they are not enough so we may experience grace, wholeness, and renewal as God’s beloved.” I thought about the strategies of Gather, Deepen, and Share that we think critical to this missional mandate, and I took a look at this story of John the Baptist using the lens of Gather, Deepen, and Share.

John is certainly urges the crowds to go deeper with his call to repentance. Simply growing up in church or believing won’t cut it. Their lives must change and bear fruit, must align with what God is up to if they want to be a part of it. We sometimes think repentance means stop being bad, but really it is about a change of mind, of heart, that opens us to new possibilities. Newness always involves repentance and new actions based on it.

There is also a lot of sharing going on in our gospel reading. John is sharing what God is doing and inviting people to become a part of it. He is also calling the crowds to engage in radical sharing. "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise."

This is the season of sharing, but I saw a newspaper article the other day that talked about how this practice of sharing rarely continues beyond the holidays. And some of our sharing isn’t truly sharing.

With every large scale disaster, relief agencies are inundated with mountains of unneeded, worn-out clothing. But John doesn’t say the poor and needy might be able to use stuff we would otherwise throw away. He says, if you have even a little more than enough, share.

John calls the crowds to deepen their faith and to share what is dear to them in order to participate in God’s new day. It’s easy to see  how the Deepen and Share of our Gather, Deepen, Share apply to John’s ministry, but I had more trouble figuring out what to do with the Gather part.

Large crowds do gather around John, yet he does not seem to do the sort of things I associate with gathering people into religious community. He’s not welcoming or hospitable. There’s no catchy ad campaign or helpful signage. So what’s going on?

One thing may be the tenor of the times. Feelings of anxiety and expectancy, worry and hope, were prominent in first century Palestine. There was a longing for a Messiah, and quite a few people claiming to be the Messiah did appear. We’ve never heard of most of them because they usually got executed by the Romans and were quickly forgotten.

Another thing about John that may have attracted people. He has some very specific answers. To people who are looking for something, John says, “You need to change; you need to do these things, in order to get ready.” The crowds get baptized to symbolize a fresh start, but that’s not enough. There must be results. “Bear fruits worthy of repentance,” says John. And he gives very specific examples of what that means for different people.

I think there are parallels between John’s time and our day. We live in a time when many are looking for answers, are looking for hope, although people seem more inclined to seek political saviors rather than religious ones. For a lot of people, church is not a place for earthly hope. Church may be a nice place with nice people. It may be a good place to soak up some seasonal warmth and nostalgia on Christmas Eve, but it doesn’t seem to have much in the way of specifics to offer like John does.

Most Presbyterian churches are the product of a different time, a time when everyone was presumed to be Christian. People more or less had to go to church. We just had to do reasonably good worship with decent preaching and a strong music program, and we could count on filling up the pews. But that world is pretty much gone.

Now, in times of uncertainty, anxiety, and longing for hope, people are more likely to look elsewhere. Churches may not draw folks like they used to, but Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, and Beto O’Rourke can all draw a crowd. They claim to have answers. They claim to know something about making things better. You may or may not agree with them, but they have answers.

In truth, so do we in the church, but we often don’t seem willing or able to share them. Sometimes that’s because they’ve gotten buried under layers of institutional religion, religion that hid its answers in order to better coexist with the world. But then, just as we’re all ready for a nice Christmas celebration, up pops John, shouting answers to any who will listen.

His answers are a lot like the ones Jesus gives. Preparing for a new day, for a better world, isn’t about doing more. It isn’t about acquiring more things or power or influence. It’s not about accomplishing more. It’s about letting go. It’s about sharing what you have; not giving away leftovers, but truly sharing. It’s about refusing to take advantage of the power and privilege you have. It’s about worrying about yourself less and others more.

This may not fit well into some of our Christmas preparations, into the frenzy, anxiety and exhaustion that often accompanies the season. But what a gift it might be to repent, to have a change of heart and direction, to be freed from the grip of a world built on conspicuous, excessive consumption, to discover life as God intends, the life Jesus seeks to show us.

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Our world is not so different from John’s. Wealth concentrated in the hands of a few while many struggle to get by. People with power or privilege who use it to make life better for themselves and those around them. Some religious folks lament the state of things and wish it would change, but what can they do? What can we do?  And so we make our peace with the world’s brokenness, participating willingly in its systems of privilege and power, its belief that life is all about getting more, and its notions of faith as private spirituality.

But John won’t leave us be. He demands that we repent, have a change of heart about our easy accommodations with the world, and begin to live differently. He’s not asking us to solve the world’s problems. He’s not suggesting that our actions alone can fix income inequality or end racism. He knows that these require God’s help, require God to act. But he does demand that we change, that we Gather, Deepen and Share, coming together in community to be formed by the ways of God, to live by the ways of Jesus, rather than by the ways of the world. And if Christmas really is a time when we celebrate and honor the coming of a Savior, I cannot imagine anything that Jesus would appreciate more.