Fourth Sunday in Advent
Luke 3:1-17
“Elementary Fruits of Repentance”
By this time during Advent – barely a week away from Christmas, I think everyone will understand something about preparing for the holidays. I know that at our house, we have been getting ready for visitors for well over a month. Children gone away to college are returning, in our case one of them bringing a new son-in-law with her. My brother and his family of six probably arrived at my father’s house in the past hour, and they’ll be joining us for our fellowship time after worship. A lot of work has gone into getting ready to receive them. If your holiday preparations haven’t been exactly like ours, I expect you’ll know what I’m talking about anyway.
And, so it is that you will also have an insight into the ministry of John the Baptist. All of today’s appointed Scripture shows us something about the ministry of John the Baptist. Even the Psalm – while it does not prophesy the coming of John the Baptist – nevertheless it shows us the heart of the people of Israel, not only at the time of that the Psalm was composed, but also at the time of John the Baptist – a time when everyone knew that things were badly off the rails as far as the nation’s relationship to God is concerned.
That is why people were flocking out of the cities and into the wilderness to hear John’s preaching. In one sense, he wasn’t telling them anything they did not already know. The religious hypocrisy, the religious infighting, the religious arrogance and pride, the religious venality – it was all there for anyone to see, including the religious leadership who also were coming out into the wilderness to hear what John would say. These people did not come out into the wilderness to learn how bad things were spiritually for the nation Israel. They already knew that. What they went to the wilderness to hear was John’s message of repentance, his warning that repentance was necessary if they were to escape judgment, and to learn from John some simple, straightforward, and blunt instructions on how to repent. This message was something new, and it was a message foretold by the Prophet Isaiah hundreds of years prior to John the Baptist, in the Old Testament lesson we heard read a short while ago.
Repentance is sometimes a confusing concept, and it doesn’t need to be. I know a lot of people who think that repentance is the same thing as feeling sorry for sinful things they have done. I suppose some of this confusion comes from a sloppy of Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians chapter 7, where he tells the Corinthians this: 9 … your sorrow led to repentance. … 10For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, …” In these words, however, it is clear that sorrow and repentance are not the same thing. Instead sorrow in the Corinthians was one of the things that led to their repentance, but sorrow is not the same thing as repentance.
There have been, from time to time, fashions in preaching that attempt to wring the hearts of the hearers, to make them feel exceptionally sorrowful, as if that state of mind were necessary for repentance. But, while sorrow may lead to repentance, it is not the same thing. It is not even the only thing that can lead to repentance – in the case of John’s preaching, it was probably not so much sorrow that produced repentance, but fear – fear of the coming judgment that John was warning them about.
I have read many sermons dealing with repentance that try to get to the meaning of the word by focusing on its etymology – the historical development of the word as shown by its basic elements, its earliest known uses, and the changes in its form and meaning. This approach to repentance yields the idea that repentance is a turning away, or a turning back, in literal terms a change of mind. And these ideas are accurate as far as they go. But, again, changing one’s mind about one’s own sin is not the whole story about repentance. The missing element is a change of behavior as well as a change of mind. Both are needed for repentances to be genuine and complete.
Consider, for example, the people who came to listen to John. I have already mentioned that they had some minimal agreement with John about the spiritual rottenness in Israel. They were willing to agree with him on that, and to change their minds about their own participation in the climate of sin that enveloped them. But John gave them two warnings:
First of all, he warned them that they needed to bear fruits worthy of repentance. Second, he warned them not to trust in their status as the children of Abraham. Mere physical descent from Abraham was not enough. If God wanted children from Abraham, he could generate them from the very rocks if he needed to.
And, so, the people whose consciences were pricked by John’s preaching, asked him the sixty-four thousand dollar question: “What, then, should we do?”
The first ones to ask this question are “the people.” I suppose these are the common folk, not the religious leaders – the Pharisees and Sadducees. They were present too, keeping an eye on John, just as they were keeping an eye on Jesus. No, the ones asking John what they should do were the ones who were willing to bring forth works worthy of repentance, but were still confused as to what this looked like in practice. And, so, John tells them.
11He answered and said to them, "He who has two tunics, let him give to him who has none; and he who has food, let him do likewise."
The sin John is engaging here is covetousness, greediness, a mean and demeaning sort of selfishness which is given to hoarding and laying up for oneself things one does not actually need. It’s an easy sin to fall into, and the poor can fall into it just as easily – maybe more so – than the rich.
When I was a teenager, I met a woman – a friend of my parents – who was an example of this. She had married, had a child, and her husband had run off and abandoned her. Life for her was very, very difficult for several years, and she and her child were often hungry or subsisted on very meager rations. When I met her she was remarried to the owner of a trucking company who had met her when he was on the road, training and supervising the truck drivers in the company he had built. He met Peggy in a truck stop where she was eking out a living as a waitress. A romance blossomed, and he married her.
Several years later, her husband was looking for something he had misplaced around the house, and while in searching for it, he happened to look under the bed. There he found boxes and boxes of canned food. He kept looking around the house, and eventually discovered scores of boxes of food stored in the attic. He went to his wife and asked her what was the meaning of all this. She replied, “the last husband I had left me with nothing. This time, I’m going to be prepared.”
In one sense, this is pitiful. In another sense, her hoarding showed her lack of faith in her second husband. He was, understandably, both grieved and angered. As she related to the story to me one time, she reports that her husband told her that if anyone was going to leave, it was her, not him. And, that she had better get rid of all that food immediately.
I remember Peggy every time I read what John the Baptist was telling these people. Their hoarding was just as much a distrust of God as Peggy’s hoarding was a distrust of her husband. And, Peggy’s husband, it turns out, demanded that she demonstrate her repentance – that she bring forth fruits worthy of repentance of her distrust of her husband – exactly as John the Baptist prescribed. It wasn’t enough that Peggy stop hoarding, he wanted her to get rid of the hoard. And John the Baptist made the same demand of the people, who were attempting to provide for themselves by their own devices.
The tax collectors asked the same question. And, John had instructions for them as well: "Collect no more than what is appointed for you." The Roman IRS worked this way: they outsourced the collection of taxes to local people, telling them what they were supposed to collect, and allowing them to collect additional amounts for their own pay. If the tax collector didn’t get what he wanted from the taxpayer, he simply had to notify the Roman authorities, who would then send Roman soldiers to confiscate everything the taxpayer had – his house, his livestock, his possessions of any sort. In Israel, therefore, tax collectors were the worst kinds of sinners as far as the people were concerned. Tax collectors were not only traitorous, they were extortionists. Again, John was pointing to the greediness, the willingness to exploit a position of power to gather wealth.
I find it striking that the soldiers also asked John what they should do. These would be Roman soldiers, of course, and it is a testimony to the work of God’s Spirit at that time that these gentile pagans, hearing John’s message, were cut to the quick. They, too, asked, “What should we do?”
John’s answer was similar to his answer to the tax collectors: "Do not intimidate anyone or accuse falsely, and be content with your wages." That bit about the wages let’s us know why John warned them to cease intimidation and false accusation. It was a racket, you see, something we know today as a protection racket. And, in corrupt police departments you can find the very same sort of sin – demanding payment from people in exchange for NOT running them up on false charges.
You know, I think the Scriptures appointed for today really belong at the first Sunday in Advent rather than the last Sunday. Surely it would be helpful to have a month to ponder our own hearts and to figure out how we could follow John’s admonitions. But, even with only a week left, we do not have to confine our own internal road-grading operations to this week. We can keep that process in mind as we enter fully into the celebration and joy of the Lord’s incarnation.
As you do that, however, please keep these two points in mind:
1. Repentance from whatever sins the Holy Spirit convicts you of needs to involve more than simply agreeing with him that this or that is sinful, and that you need to turn away from it. Look for something positive to do, a fruit worthy of repentance, to use John’s phrase.
2. When you consider that fruit of repentance, please remember that John’s instructions in the gospel lesson point to very elementary things. It is not spiritual rocket science to share what you do not need with those who have a need. It is not the work of a great saint to refrain from cheating or stealing. It is only the most ordinary kind of righteousness that does not lie and extort. And, yet, it is righteousness at this very elementary level that John sets forth as the first fruits of a true turning away from sin.
Jesus taught us that those who are faithful in little will be faithful in much. Far too often we struggle to find a huge thing to be faithful in, forgetting all the little ways we could be faithful. Look first for the simple righteousness, the obvious works worthy for repentance. As you excel in these first, the greater works of righteousness will come along in their own time.
God grant that our eyes may discern the valleys and hills in our own hearts, the crooked and rough places in our own lives, to the end that we may smooth them out, so our hearts may find the joy and blessing for which we were created to receive in the fellowship of God through his Son Jesus Christ.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
