Day of the Church Year: 3rd Sunday of Advent
Scripture Passage: Luke 3:7-18
John the Baptist tells the crowd, the tax collectors, the soldiers not to rest on their laurels, not to trust only in their heritage, not to assume they are entitled to God’s favor. Bear fruits worthy of repentance, he warns, for trees that do not bear fruit will be cut down. John’s declaration in metaphor is fiery enough without explicitly stating his warning. The crowd, the tax collectors, the soldiers get it, so they ask him: What then should we do?
Repentance is one of those words we bandy about in Christian circles. When I hear the word “repentance,” what comes to mind for me is Sunday morning worship, the quiet as we consider our sins during confession, the time when I remember how I have fallen short, the space where I feel sad or ashamed or guilty. While feeling sorry may be part of the process of repentance, it is not the whole of it. In Greek, the word metanoia, that we translate as “repentance,” means literally turning around. We have done this here at Grace before. We have stood and faced the front of the worship space and then repented, turned and faced the back of the worship space. If we were to walk, we would walk in the opposite direction. That is repentance, turning around, heading the opposite direction. And the crowds, the tax collectors, the soldiers appear to understand so intuitively John’s use of the word metanoia that they ask: What then should we do? Because they know that repentance is not just about remembering their sin and feeling sorry. They know that repentance includes action.
I want to be clear: feeling guilt or shame is not repentance. You may be familiar with the work of social work researcher Brene Brown who, in part, studies shame; her work is all over the internet. She distinguishes between guilt and shame this way. Guilt is: I did something bad. Shame is: I am something bad. Guilt is focus on action. Shame is focus on self. Guilt is usually adaptive; that is, it helps us see what we’ve done and what we want to do differently. Shame, on the other hand, can destroy us because we believe that, at our core, we are defective. If shame has gotten a hold of you, hear the good news: you are a good tree. At our root, we are all good trees. (Haha) Jesus will tell us so in the Sermon on the Plain a few chapters later. Regardless, neither guilt nor shame are repentance. Feeling badly either about ourselves or about our actions is not repentance. Repentance is an action that seeks the answer to the very question the crowds, the tax collectors, the soldiers ask: What then should we do?
By the grace of God, I can now identity when I am in the middle of a shame-storm and can offer myself compassion, which is the antidote to shame, by the way. That’s a handy tip. Compassion is the antidote to shame. But guilt, guilt and I are old friends. The most mundane example may also be the most vivid and the most common. I speak of our email inbox, friends. Perhaps, for you, it’s your voicemail or your to-do list on your refrigerator. For me, it’s my email inbox. I have a strict rule about my inbox, no more than 30 emails in my inbox. I have an elaborate and effective filing system, but in my inbox, there’s usually at least one email, maybe two, that I just / can’t / fully / answer. It sits there, day after day, sometimes week after week. To be perfectly honest, the oldest email in my inbox currently is from January 2020. That was before the pandemic started. That was a long time ago. I read and responded to the email initially, of course, but I kept it in my inbox because it requires further action. And I haven’t taken the action yet. Obviously, it’s not urgent, but every time I open my email, there it is. Oh, the guilt, the nagging-at-the-edge-of-my-mind-guilt. I would like to be a person who doesn’t wait nearly two years to fully answer an email.
I suspect that, for many of us, there are aspects of our lives a bit like that two year old email just sitting in my inbox. We don’t want it there anymore. We bury it under whatever we can so that we don’t have to face it. Whatever the thing is, an unhealthy habit, a grudge, a secret or a lie, we feel guilty about it. The thing, the unanswered email, is just sitting there. We feel badly. We don’t quite know what to do about it. Because we have felt stuck, ashamed, tangled up in it for so long.
Later in the gospel of Luke, we’ll hear the story of Zacchaeus. Perhaps you remember the song about this wee little man, and please join me if you do:
Zacchaeus was a wee, little man,
And a wee, little man was he.
He climbed up in a sycamore tree,
For the Lord he wanted to see.
And as the Savior passed that way,
He looked up in the tree,
(Spoken) And he said, "Zaccheus, you come down,"
For I'm going to your house today.
For I'm going to your house today.
As chief tax collector, Zacchaeus charges those from whom he gathers taxes more than the state requires and pockets the rest. When Jesus tells him to come down from the tree, when Jesus tells him that he will go to Zacchaeus’ home, Zacchaeus reveals a weight of shame and guilt in his life: his financial exploitation of the people. To Jesus, he declares he will give half of his possessions to the poor and give back four-fold to anyone he has defrauded. Repentance frees Zacchaeus.
Repentance frees us. When we actually take the action that resolves the problem, when we do the thing that needs to be done, when we repent, we are freed. The email answered, the unhealthy habit discussed with our doctor, the grudge forgiven, the secret shared, the lie confessed, relationships repaired across the board. Repentance, taking the action that heads us in the opposite direction, is at once both what God requires and the good news God declares. Bear fruits worthy of repentance, John the Baptist cries. Not as a threat but as a promise.
What then should we do? John the Baptist points the crowd in the direction of generosity, points the tax collectors in the direction of honesty, points the soldiers in the direction of integrity. And John points everyone in the direction of Jesus, the One who is to come. Fundamentally, Jesus comes to free us, and so, John paves the way for the One who will douse all our shame with compassion and rouse us to a life of love and service that wakes us from the slumber of inaction...or unanswered emails. Thanks be to God! Amen.