Last Saturday as my
family was driving home after a few days away in Vermont -- we were driving through the
mountains in Central Vermont when couldn’t find anything on the radio. This is a part of Vermont where you press scan
on your radio and it doesn’t ever stop scanning—it just keeps circling and
circling. As we were waiting to find a station somebody
remembered that we had gotten a free trial for satellite radio. So I set out to find something on our
satellite radio-- as I was scrolling through the satellite radio options we
came across the Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s Thanksgiving Marathon.
Chrishelle said something
like “Oh, let’s listen to her for a few
minutes.”
I immediately had
flashbacks of our long road trips across
Pennsylvania in the late 90’s early 2000’s were listened to a lot of Dr. Laura. As I started to twitch, I said something to
the effect of, “sure honey.”
I thought at the very
least-- I will be entertained for the next few hours as I listen to train wreck after train wreck.
For those of you who
don’t know, Dr. Laura is a radio
personality who essentially provides
relationship advice to folks who call her show.
Let me just say that Dr.
Laura isn’t the most pastoral person —she’s is kind of bristly and often takes
a tough love approach to the people who call her radio show.
If you can weed through
her tough love approach she often gives wise counsel. I just have a hard time digesting the way she
goes about business.
As I listened last
Saturday-- I boiled down her advice to essentially this–stop being stupid—don’t do that—whatever
that is ---and do this instead. Folks
who called in were essentially fed up with the way life was going and wanted a
new direction for their relationships or
their problem.
This week, as I was
thinking about John the Baptist, I realized that he very much fits with Dr.
Laura model of dealing with people. He
is definitely bristly—and ‘You brood of vipers-who warned you to flee from the
wrath to come’ fits the tough love model
.
And his message is
essentially the same—stop being stupid—don’t do that—that way is going to ruin
you, but do this instead.
Of course, John doesn’t
use those exact words, but instead uses a churchy word-- “repentance.”
We so often think that
repentance is saying I’m sorry simply feeling sorry or, for our actions but
that doesn’t take it far enough.
The word repentance in
the New Testament comes from a Greek word called metanoia which means to change
one’s mind. It’s a not
the trivial changing of one’s mind like I think I will have a hot dog instead of a hamburger at a summer picnic—but a radical changing of
one’s mind
.
Repentance refers to a radical , life altering reorientation
of one’s life—turning away from the
things that draw one from God and turning
toward AND trying to live God’s
way.
Richard Rohr, a
Franciscan priest and writer who I’ve been reading a lot this advent says
something that sounds an awful lot like repentance--Rohr writes, “When people
say piously, ‘thy kingdom come’ out of one side of their mouth, they also need
to say ‘my kingdom go’ out of the other side of their mouth.”
Let me say that again, “When people say piously,
‘thy kingdom come’ out of one side of their mouth, they also need to say ‘my
kingdom go’ out of the other side of their mouth.”
Rohr says further, “We
actually can’t keep saying ‘thy kingdom come’ when we are actually trusting in
our nations, [in our] political parties, militaries, banks and institutions to
save us.”[1]
Repentance is about
letting go of our own kingdoms, our own
safety nets, our own priorities-- to embrace
and make God’s priorities our new ways of living.
John the Baptist says
that refusal to embrace God’s ways can be dangerous—trees that do not bear
fruit John says are chopped down and burned in the fire—the chaff-- the unusable part of the grain is burned John with unquenchable fire.
John reminds us that God
has expectations for how we live our lives—to participate in the work of the
kingdom or else.
Advent is time for
getting ourselves right so that the kingdom can be born anew in us. And it
begins with Repentance—reorientation.
At one point in his
devotion Rohr asks this question of his readers- "What kingdoms do you need to
let go of?"
So folks this advent what
are the kingdoms, that we need to let go of—what’s holding us back? what do we
need to turn away from so that we can again embrace the ways of God?
Where are the idols? What’s up on the pedestal—vying for our
attention—demanding we pay homage to it?
What has it’s sunk teeth in us?
Today dear friends we are
invited to turn from those things —to renounce our allegiances to those powers,
to abandon our affiliations those kingdoms and say to God “I want to live for
you again---I want to walk in your ways.”
Buried deep within our
Gospel among all the fire and brimstone
and bristliness of John the Baptist is good news that when we do turn back to
God—Jesus is coming and he’s bringing the
Holy Spirit with him and he is going to immerse our lives in the Spirit of God.
And that my friends is
always, good news.
So—Repent for the kingdom
of heaven has come near and it’s knocking on the door of your life and my life.
AMEN
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