Last week we heard from Matthew that Jesus warned his disciples to be ready because only God knows when he will return. The commonly implied interpretation of this passage is that on the day of judgement the ones who believe will be saved and the rest will be left behind; this is affectionately known as The Rapture. Today we are told of John the Baptist’s call for repentance, a word that has changed meaning over the millennia. Today it means the act of having sincere regret, which is similar to what the word meant when Matthew used it, but only if you read between the lines. For Matthew, for John the Baptist, repentance was the action of changing your mind or thinking differently. The call is not to get on our knees and beg for forgiveness so that we can go to heaven, the call is to prepare ourselves for the second coming by thinking differently about creation and our place in it, so that when Jesus returns, we are not confused and caught off guard; it is not a threat of damnation as that would be wholly inconsistent with our understanding of God as revealed through the teachings of Christ Jesus.
There are many things that we collectively need to repent for. There is the sin of racism, sexism, capitalism, genocide, the sin of war, greed, indifference and so many, many more. There is of course no way that we can all repent for every sin humanity has brought into existence, nor are we expected to. What we are called to do is make the conscious choice to live counterculturally, or at least strive to do so.
I would like to say that I have been astonished by the level of indifference many people seem to have towards our neighbor’s ability to access basic necessities such as food, health care, and housing; but I can’t say that because it doesn’t surprise me, though it does sadden me.
I understand that we are selfish creatures, with an innate urge to live, it is the same survival instinct that all living things have; animals avoid danger, plants lean towards the sun, mosquitos avoid our attempts to squish them and we revert to our primal instincts when we perceive a threat to ourselves or people we love. What separates us from other living creatures is our ability to overrule our instincts, we can choose to share what we have, to not fight back, to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of others and doing so is not only counter to our instincts but counter cultural; which is the whole point. God wants us to consciously choose to treat everyone as if they are a part of our inner circle, in God’s kingdom there is no us and them, there is simply us.
I dream of a world where everyone has a home, food, and the physical, mental, and emotional care they need and I have hope that someday the world will be a place where love rules over the hearts and minds of all of us, because it will be on that day that my hopes will come true.
Dreams are nothing more than a wish, but hope is more than that. Hope, especially Christian hope, is fixed in our belief that something will happen and that is a powerful difference. I dream of winning the lottery so that I can bankroll ministries that provide the necessities I want everyone to have, but I don’t have much hope that it will happen and not because I am unlikely to win, but because that dream is based on what I want for the world and has little to do with God’s promise for it.
In God’s kingdom, which is coming, possibly even today, there will be no hunger, or death, or illness, or poverty, or war, not because only the “good” people will be there but because those that are there will have done the work necessary to change how they perceive their neighbors, to recognized that the kingdom is right here, it is right in front of us, but it is hidden by the multitude of sins that we collectively commit every single day and to be clear I am in fact saying that we are all responsible for all of the sins and we all have a duty to repent for them; but repentance requires more than getting on our knees and begging God for their mercy, it requires us to actively love our neighbor enough to do everything we can to stop ourselves and others from perpetuating the sense of entitlement and selfishness that is so pervasive in the world.
Every time a finger is pointed with the pretext that someone is not worthy, and every time we see that finger and remain silent the fog between this world and God’s kingdom thickens. Our readiness for the return of Jesus is not about being pious, it isn’t just about being faithful to God, it isn’t about being free from sin; it is about recognizing that if our hope for the future is going to be fulfilled then we have to accept our part in the story. We have to see and understand how we participate in the sins of the world, not so that God can forgive us but so that can we recognize that when the last day arrives, when Jesus returns to the earth it will not be a moment when we will be swooped off to heaven, but a moment when all of the of the sins and all of the joys will be revealed at once and if we haven’t prepped ourselves we won’t even realize its happening; which is why we need heed the call of John the Baptist, we need do the hard work of repentance. Which means that we must examine how we see and interact with the world and reject the thought that we are blameless because we aren’t. Following the path trodden by Jesus requires that we strive to approach everything with love which requires us to examine our lives, most especially the systems we use to organize them because the systems are the sins and unless we accept that repentance isn’t possible. My hope is that love will rule over the hearts and minds of all of us and I know it will happen. The road ahead is long and it is filled with potholes, detours, off ramps and perhaps even collapsed bridges, but all of these are just distractions because with Emmanuel, God with us, all things are possible. Amen.
Learning by Fire! 