2nd Sunday of Advent Year A

Advent 2 Year A December 8, 2013 "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, `We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” John the Baptist is preaching to the church folk. John the Baptist is preaching to us. I don’t know anyone who can be faced with another person’s judgment without being made uncomfortable. Many Episcopalians find an oasis here from other traditions who preach judgment on a regular basis, so when the topic comes up for us, we are slightly allergic to it; we don’t want to sound like those hell-fire and brimstone Christians, and yet….the concept of judgment is a very real part of the Christian tradition that we have inherited. So let me tell you what’s different about this judgment upon us by John the Baptist, let me tell you what’s different with God’s judgment of us than most likely any other we have encountered in this life. I recently received a rather nasty email from someone who is a member of another parish here on the Coast, and she was judging me, judging my priesthood and my living into my ordination vows based on the little she knew of our recent process of conversations in this parish. At first, I was very angry, and then I was intrigued as to where this was coming from (since I have spoken to this individual only once before). And I realized that her judgment of me, had absolutely nothing to do with me; she doesn’t know anything about me, or my priesthood, or really this parish or any of you. Her judgment was about her own issues, and most especially, her own agenda. If any of you have been the beneficiary of a judgment-based sermon or other experience, then you have experienced this also. (It is the temptation that we preachers face and have to test constantly—am I preaching my agenda or God’s agenda? And we don’t always get it right…) John the Baptist offers us a different kind of judgment. He is the one who is called to “prepare the way of the Lord,” get everybody ready for Jesus. He calls us to repent, to turn from following one’s own agenda, to change our hearts, and amend our lives. The modern day equivalent of John’s admonition to his hearer’s to not rely on their heritage for their righteousness (saying, “We have Abraham as our father”) is the akin to our modern day concept of “We have Christ as our Savior.” While trust in God’s salvation through Jesus is a first requirement, it is not the last. We cannot substitute grace for human responsibility. They go hand in hand. But there’s another layer to this call for repentance from the John the Baptist. Marcus Borg suggests that repenting is about returning home from exile. A self-imposed exile. Many of the stories about Jesus and the stories that he tells are about this—how we live in our own self-imposed exiles, and he calls us to come home. This is also the call of John the Baptist. But we need to be mindful that this call is not only to us as individuals. The call to return home from our self-imposed exile is a call to all of us together as God’s people. The children of Israel are never once returned to the promised land after they had been in exile as individuals. It was always a home-coming of an entire people. Such is the call for us to repentance; it is a call to us as a whole people. We are all in this together. So here’s the good news (and the slightly uncomfortable news) about judgment. God cares about what we do (both as individuals and as a people). “…if God does not care about what I do, I will begin to suspect that God does not actually care about me. If God loves me enough to welcome me into Christ’s family, then God loves me enough to expect something of me.”i Here’s a little story that gets to the heart of all this: “One December afternoon…a group of parents stood in the lobby of a nursery school waiting to claim their children after the last pre-Christmas class session. As the youngsters ran from their lockers, each one carried in his hands the ‘surprise,’ the brightly wrapped package on which he had been working diligently for weeks. One small boy, trying to run, put on his coat, and wave to his parents, all at the same time, slipped and fell. The ‘surprise’ flew from his grasp, landed on the floor, and broke with an obvious ceramic crash. The child…began to cry inconsolably. His father, trying to minimize the incident and comfort the boy, patted his head and murmured, ‘Now, that’s all right, son. It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter at all.’ But the child’s mother…swept the boy into her arms and said, ‘Oh, but it does matter. It matters a great deal.’ And she wept with her son.”ii That is the judgment of the God who dwells with us and in us. We matter to God, so what we do matters. And that’s where we find the strange flip-side of judgment and the call to repentance in our readings for today. Who would have thought the flip-side of repentance (and judgment) would be…hope? “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope. May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Paul knows something of judgment and repentance. He had judged and persecuted the followers of Jesus, until he had an encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus and was transformed. He knows that hope is not just wishing that things will turn out ok for me and mine. For Paul, hope is cosmic, not just concerned with the self. For Paul, hope is that the promises of God are going to be fulfilled and seeing that rooted and grounded in the person of Jesus Christ. Hope is a gift of the Holy Spirit, that is given to all of us as we repent and God works to realign us within God’s priorities and Christ’s life. Hope is that we matter to God, and so what we do matters to God and makes a difference in God’s Kingdom. I recently read a poem that gets to the heart of this hope that is the flip-side of the repentance we are called to this Sunday. It is called “Hope and Love” by Jane Hirshfield: All winter the blue heron slept among the horses. I do not know the custom of herons, do not know if the solitary habit is their way, or if he listened for some missing one- not knowing even that was what he did- in the blowing sounds in the dark. I know that hope is the hardest love we carry. He slept with his long neck folded, like a letter put away. “I know hope is the hardest love we carry.” “Bear fruit worthy of repentance.” “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Amen. i.Feasting on the Word Pastoral perspective by David Bartelett p 46. ii.William Muehl as quoted in the above reference