Bearing fruits worthy of repentance

 

Sermon at Parish Mass, Advent 3 2021

Pieter Breughel the Younger  (1564–1638), St John the Baptist Preaching, 1601

 

Zephaniah 3:14-18

Philippians 4:4-7

Luke 3:7-18                                   

 

Three years ago, on the third Sunday of Advent, I preached my first sermon here as your interim Priest in Charge. On Friday, that interim appointment came to an end, and today I am preaching my first sermon here as permanent Priest in Charge.

When a community celebrates a new beginning, a preacher wants to find something uplifting and encouraging in the readings. So, let’s see what we have, in the Lectionary from three years ago, and again today:

“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”

John the Baptist is an uncompromising character. The way he’s described, living out in the desert, wearing camel skins and eating locusts, is wild and alarming. And his preaching is not exactly understated. He tells the truth, to power, with power, and doesn’t care whom he offends.

And, yet, there is something about him that is hugely attractive. The people go out to him in crowds to be baptized. They recognize that John has a message that that they need to hear and to do. He preaches integrity and righteousness, a demanding message. But they recognize that he is a person who practices integrity and righteousness, and that give authority to his message.

The people ask him, “what then should we do?” John has announced the coming of the Lord to redeem Israel, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight”. And this means repentance, changing the way we live. The Lord is a God of justice, and the people must reflect and enact that justice.

This is not just about our interior personal lives, but is to do with how we live together. Social justice is at the heart of John’s message.

Notice who John is proclaiming the message to. People who have two coats - that is to say, people who have more than they really need. Tax collectors, who raised money for the Romans but were in the habit of charging higher than the official rates to line their own pockets. Soldiers, who clearly at this time extorted money by threats.

John is not saying to those who are already poor, “be content with what you have”, rather, he is speaking to those who have been causing poverty by their own greed. He is calling them to renounce their greed. His call to repentance is very much about how people’s actions impact on the community. And this is very much in harmony with the rest of Luke’s Gospel, where sin is never an individual private thing, but always bound up with how we live in the world, how our choices affect and shape the society around us.

This message of repentance, although it is challenging, is attractive. It is indeed good news, and the people recognize this, even though it means giving up greed and excessive riches. There is something much better on offer. Forgiveness of sins, a new beginning, a fresh start. A way of living together in world that is life-affirming for all, rather than life-denying for many. And this is to prepare the way of the Lord, to open the way for God’s kingdom to come in. In our lives, and in our society.

How we live together in the world matters. There is a great focus in the news at the moment on integrity and standards in public life. Much of what has been done by those who have authority has been laid open to question. As it was indeed it was with those in authority at the time of John the Baptist.

But the call to repentance has to begin with us, in our own lives. Are our choices, our actions, helping to build a just society in which all can take part? For example, if I buy some coffee or a shirt which are really cheap because they have been made with exploited labour in some other part of the world, do I not need to repent? Do I not need to see what I am doing, and turn around? The sobering edge of the Advent message is that we need to hear God’s judgement in our lives if we are also to receive his salvation.

We want to see integrity and uprightness in public life. We want to see those in high office holding to truth and high standards of personal conduct. But we will not make that attractive by pointing the finger of blame at others. We need to model it ourselves. We need to be the change we seek. Can people see, in our lives, an integrity that might be challenging but is also attractive, a little glimpse of the way the world could be better. And if there are many little glimpses, in the lives of people of faith and all those of good will, then they will all build together until we start to see that better world.

Christ comes to us with the command to model God’s righteousness in a world which tends deeply to resist that righteousness. With his truth, in a world that often turns away from truth. The Gospel calls us to conversion, to repentance for the forgiveness of sins, not only for our own sakes, but so that God’s kingdom can grow in the world. And that is the true way to prepare for the coming of Christ, and the feast of Christmas. As someone is said once to have prayed, “O Lord, convert the world - and begin with me.” That’s a good prayer for Advent. Amen.