Bible Reading: Luke 3:7-18
Dear Friends,
There comes a time when we realize change is needed. Things
don’t work out. Something happens. Someone says something.
The tried and true ways become tired and trite. It may happen
suddenly or slowly over time. Either way, we realize we can’t go
on like we have. We must not only do things differently we must
be different.
That’s what happened to the people who heard John’s peaching.
Something about his message of change, preparation, and
repentance has taken root in them. It is the Church’s Advent
message that in the coming of Christ we, our lives, and our
world cannot continue on in the same old ways. That message
was enough to draw the crowds out to John and it is John’s
message to us today.
The crowds have heard a word in the wilderness of their life. It is
a prophetic word, a word of deep insight, by which they
recognize that all is not well in their life and world. It is also a
word of hope and rejoicing, a word of God, that says all can be
well. It is a word that joins the wilderness and paradise and
makes them two sides of the same reality.
St. John seems to know that real change, transformation, does
not begin with the world around us but the world within us. One
of the things that often makes change difficult is our propensity
for self-justification. This happens in lots of different ways. We
blame others. We list how hard we’ve worked and what we
deserve. We claim place and position by virtue of our length of
membership or our giving of time and money. We deny our
need for others. We refuse to accept responsibility for ourselves We play the victim. We choose to live as blind persons. John
understands this about us.
John is saying that if we are going to be in we need to be in all the
way. He has no patience for self-justification. He will not settle for
only good intentions or only nice behavior. There must be
congruence between who we are and what we do. Repentance,
changing the direction of our lives, means that inner change, a
change in our way of being, must be manifested by corresponding
behaviors. Likewise, our words and actions must point to and arise
from a different way of being.
“What then should we do?” The crowds, the tax collectors, the
soldiers all ask the same question. I suspect many of us have asked
that question. John’s answer is simple and practical. Go do the
right thing. Share with those in need. Do not take advantage of or
defraud others. Don’t manipulate, use, or coerce others.
His answers sound reasonable. They make sense. Underneath
them, however, lie the deeper issue and the real change that must
take place. The reason we can deny or be indifferent to the needs
of others, the reason we can lie to or take advantage of another,
the reason we can use, manipulate, harm, and even kill another is
because we see them as something other and something less than
our selves. We see them as objects to be used or overcome and
not as persons.
John is demanding behavior that arises from and is grounded in a
new way of being, one that sees the other as a person with needs,
hopes, fears, dreams, and a life as real and as valid as our own.
That is the ultimate act of repentance; to see others as persons, as
holy, as created and loved by the same God who created and loves
us. It means we must turn away from doing or being anything that
dehumanizes another or our selves. That changes everything about
how we see the world and relate to others. It is what Jesus is
talking about when he says, “You shall love your neighbor as
yourself.” It is “a gospel of shared life” (Richard Rohr), one life
shared with other persons and shared with God.
Repentance opens our minds, softens our hearts, and turns our life
in a Godward direction. It’s how we participate in and cooperate
with God’s bringing us home and restoring our fortunes. Through
repentance we recover our original and ancient beauty. It fills us
with expectation and hope. At the deepest level repentance makes
us more human and becoming more human is how we prepare the
way of the Lord. That is our Advent work and it is important work.
Solomzi