(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on Dec 13, 2015, Advent III)
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The Gospel? More Like Put-downs and Threats
I almost have to laugh when I read the end of today’s passage: “So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people” (3:18). Good news? Luke, were you listening to what John said? If I didn’t know any better, I might think that Luke was trying his hand at a bit of stand-up comedy. “This guy, John, right? This religious fanatic? He’s in the wilderness, and a bunch of people come to him, expecting to hear the word of God. And he goes berserk, calling them a bunch of snakes, telling them that God is carrying an axe, threatening them with unquenchable fire. And the cherry on top? This is supposed to be ‘good news.’”
If that were Luke’s point—if this were just a sketch to ridicule John and those crazy Christians who dream up fire and call it “good news”—then I’d say he does a pretty good job. John’s talk about the “wrath to come,” an “axe…lying at the root of the trees,” all the rotten harvest being burned with an “unquenchable fire”: is that really good news? To me, it sounds more like a bunch of put-downs and threats, like a bit of holy blackmail. We see enough of it in our own world today. “Step in line with God, or else….”
Where’s the Fire Coming From?
So what happened to the word of God that came to John in last week’s text—the good news of a second chance? What happened to the refreshing waters of forgiveness? Why does John suddenly dress forgiveness up in such unforgiving terms? I won’t pretend to know exactly what John meant when he made his fiery speech. But if you’ll remember, John wasn’t proclaiming only forgiveness; he was proclaiming a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” So I have a hunch that his fire-tinged sermon has something to do with the other side of forgiveness: repentance.
There’s no one biblical formula for the way forgiveness and repentance work. In our world, most people treat forgiveness and repentance like an economic transaction: only after you repent do you receive forgiveness. This makes forgiveness like a mortgage: it’s always on the board, but it’s only ever yours after you make all the payments of repentance—and sometimes there are some pretty steep payments! But for Jesus, I suspect forgiveness is what comes first, unconditionally—whether you’re a friend or an enemy, whether you’re a disciple or a part of the crowd who put him on the cross. Repentance is what you do out of your own heart after you’re forgiven. It’s how you live your life after you’ve been set free. So it’s not “God forgives you if you repent,” but “God forgives you, so repent.”
So as I imagine the scene, John is speaking to a crowd of newly baptized folks, still dripping with water from the Jordan. They’ve heard the refreshing word of forgiveness. And now John’s proclaiming forgiveness’ counterpart. The uncomfortably warm word of repentance.
Divided Hearts
And if you’ll let my imagination run just a bit further: someone from the crowd finally pipes up and asks, “What exactly will be burned by this fire? Or”—and here they look a bit frightened—“who will be burned?” And John looks at the inquisitor, and his lips twist into an almost devilish smile. And he responds, “Ah. If only it were so simple! If only the rotten fruit and the useless chaff were people. If only there were evil people somewhere, and God could separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But surely you know it’s not that simple. The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”[1]
In other words, John’s fiery word of repentance isn’t directed against evil people, but the evil inside our hearts. At the end, repentance isn’t about dividing people up for heaven and hell. It’s about the divide in our hearts. And in fact, this is exactly what the Greek word for “repentance” means. Metanoia. A change of heart.[2] Repentance is simply a new heart. It’s a heart on fire—“fire” because it hurts to change, it’s uncomfortable to give up old ways and walk into the unknown of new life. A heart on fire is not easy; it’s the difficult and messy work of God.
More Kindergarten than Apocalypse
When we begin to think of repentance this way, as less of a repent-or-burn proclamation, and more of a repent-and-burn invitation, John looks less like a fire-and-brimstone preacher and more like a kindergarten teacher.[3] Listen closely to his words, and you’ll hear echoes of the most important lessons you learned in school. To the crowds, he urges, “Share. If you have two, give one away.” To the tax collectors, he says, “Play fair. Don’t take more than the agreed amount.” To the soldiers, he says, “Stop bullying. Don’t make threats, don’t take from others just because you can.”
“Share, play fair, stop bullying.” Jesus would say it even simpler: love your neighbor;[4] be a servant to everyone.[5]
And as colorful as John’s language is, it’s easy to miss the fact that he, like Jesus, proclaims the good news to everyone: to the regular folks with just a couple of coats in their closet, to the vilified tax-collectors, to the reviled soldiers serving the Roman empire. John’s wild-eyed speeches make him look like such a revolutionary, it’s easy to miss the fact that he’s not encouraging these folks to do something completely different with their lives. To the contrary. He’s encouraging them to keep doing what they’re doing, but to do it with a new heart, to do it in a way that welcomes the kingdom of God. John isn’t like a lot of Christians today; he’s not a two-world Christian who believes this world is helpless but heaven will make everything alright. He’s a one-world believer, an “on-earth-as-in-heaven” believer. And he says we can have heaven right here, the kingdom of God right here, as tax collectors and shepherds and soldiers, as accountants and teachers and computer programmers, students and mechanics and store clerks.
The Good News of Fire
And that is good news. It’s true: John’s bark is perhaps a bit bigger than his bite. His words are wild animals, baring sharp teeth and claws, and he makes no effort to keep them on a leash. But they are more than just a bunch of savage put-downs and threats. At the heart of his colorful speech is expectation and promise. He proclaims the gospel of fire, the difficult but good news of burning hearts, of holy flames that tear through our hurtful, harmful ways and make us new.
The gospel of John the baptizer, the dipper, the river-dunker, is the gospel of new hearts. It is an uncomfortable gospel, just like any gospel is—inasmuch as the gospel expects change and change is uncomfortable. But more than that, it is a gospel of joy for our world, a gospel fit for this third Sunday of Advent. It believes with all its heart that we can be changed. And not by some magical recalibration of the soul accomplished by an accountant God, duly keeping record of payments of repentance, nor by some powerful edict and heavenly army that enforces its way on earth. No, our hearts are changed by a child in a manger, a man sharing bread with folks like you and me, a criminal on a cross. Which are all ways of saying that our hearts are changed by love, by a simple and sacred soul whose love for us is contagious and spreads through all our hearts like wildfire.
Prayer
God of water and fire, who baptizes us in the refreshing river of forgiveness and in the difficult flames of change, we rejoice. We rejoice, even with divided hearts, even as parts of us remain stubborn and fearful of the fire of your love. We rejoice because your love is unquenchable, a light that shines ever into the darkness of our broken and confused hearts. May it shine so today, through Christ as we encounter him in our world. And may it burn always in our hearts. Amen.
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[1] Inspired by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago (vol. 1; trans. Thomas P. Whitney; New York: Westview, 1974), 168: “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”
[2] Metanoia literally means meta-, “after,” noia, “mind”—where the Greek conception of “mind” included the way a person thinks and feels, which is to say that it includes the predispositions and inclinations that are inextricably linked with our emotions, our “hearts.”
[3] David Lose, “Commentary on Luke 3:7-18,” accessed December 8, 2015. “This feels more like the stuff of Kindergarten than Apocalypse.”
[4] Cf. Matt 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27.
[5] Cf. Matt 20:26; 23:11; Mark 9:35; Mark 10:43; Luke 9:48; 22:26.
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