Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

SERMON--Giving as Repentance: Luke 3:7-18

Today we hear a gospel with John the Baptist exhorting the people of God to repent.  When asked “what shall we do?” John the Baptist says, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.”  This reads to me as a confusing answer.  And why, exactly, are we talking about this for the third week of Advent? 

First, if we’re going to talk about repentance, let us first think together about sin.  The book that I tend to go to when I need to think about sin and what it means in my personal life, and in the communal life of the church, is called Speaking of Sin by Barbara Brown-Taylor.  She goes through the three Hebrew words that get translated into “sin” in the Bible, and finally notes that “what links all three of these Hebrew words together is their common theme of going against God’s will.  Whether people are missing the mark, acting wrongly, or engaging in outright rebellion, they are out of sync with God.”  Being out of sync with God would suggest a separation between God and humans, and if sin is separation between us and God, then repentance must bring us unity. 

Barbara Brown-Taylor mentions that when the Hebrew words were translated into Greek, the definition of sin being “missing the mark” wins out, such that in the New Testament that is commonly what the word means.  She says that sin is a “state of power of darkness that separates human beings from God.”  When she speaks about her own issues with the language of sin, she recognizes one of the biggest problems being that “no one ever taught me to name sin for myself.  Instead, they spent their time naming it for me, as it related to their lives, not mine.”  It is for that reason that I won’t name sin for you, but that I will offer you a suggestion—silence. 

To truly repent I believe we need silence.  Our society is loud.  We need the silence so that we can listen to the innermost words of our souls and hear, from God, who we are and what it is that we have become, and are becoming.  In this silence, if we listen, we will be able to name sin for ourselves.  If we can name sins for ourselves, we can repent, because we will know what our sins are. When we know our sins we can ask God to help us order our lives such that we move closer to God, and achieve the unity that is the opposite of the sin that separates.

This past semester, I studied a book called The Illumined Heart by Frederica Mathewes-Green with my college students, and she says that, “Repentance is the doorway to the spiritual life, the only way to begin. It is also the path itself, the only way to continue. Anything else is foolishness and self- delusion. Only repentance is brute-honest enough, and joyous enough, to bring us all the way home."  Friends, repentance is the beginning that gives us sustenance.  It doesn't just help us begin-- it helps us continue-- and it gives us our end, because our end is in God, and our repentance leads us to that unity. 

Green clearly speaks about repentance with the passion and import that John the Baptist shows.  John the Baptist believes that the kingdom of God has entered the world in the form of Jesus, to the point that he has dedicated his life and ministry to preparing the way for that kingdom to be made manifest through Christ.  Again, let us remember—he calls the people of God to repent, and when they ask what they shall do, he says what?  “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.”  He links the importance of repentance with giving.  Because of that, after all this talk of sin and repentance that I have laid out, I come to my real point:  I want to challenge you to try to see—with me—giving as an act of repentance… and an act necessary for us as we prepare for the birth of the Lord.

When I talk about repentance, I’m talking about the Greek term metanoia, which is translated as “a change of mind.”  And what is more of a changing and transforming of the minds in our culture than GIVING?  We live in a culture that has brought us things like television shows called Hoarders.  We live in a culture that couldn’t settle for the day after Thanksgiving anymore, and had to overcome Thanksgiving too with gluttonous shopping.  I saw on Facebook someone posted a picture on Black Friday that read, “Let’s get our minds off America’s debt crisis by maxing out our credit cards on a reckless shopping binge.”  We are not a culture that holds giving as a priority or a virtue.  We are a culture that keeps, while John the Baptist calls us to repent, and give.
In our corporate confession, we pray not only for what we have done, but for what we have left undone.  I know that when we have the pause between “Let us confess our sins against God and our neighbor” and “Most merciful God,” I often see faces.  Faces of the people that I pass as I drive to work, who have obvious needs that I ignore, as I turn the music up a little louder to try to drown out the convicting silence with popular noise.  I sometimes see the logos of organizations that I keep promising myself I’ll volunteer at, yet keep putting off with empty justifications.  If you ask me, these areas of my life in which I neglect to give to others are areas of sin in my life.  They are sinful, because these justifications keep me from unifying with the people in the world who are the face of Christ in my daily life.  And if I’m not unifying with those people, then I’m separate from them.  And that’s separation from God.  And separation from God is the presence of sin.  It’s not only what I’ve done—it is what I have left undone.  That’s repentance in my every day life.

But what about faith, repentance, giving, and God in times of tragedy?  Friday a man opened fire on an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.  18 children were killed, along with many teachers.  This is truly devastating, and I spent all day Friday thinking about the children that I love, the parents I know, St. Paul’s Day School, and my own innocent memories of being in elementary school.  Friday, I heard innocence shatter in the face of sin.  The kind of sin that leaves 18 children dead in its wake.  Sin that steals our hope.

Times like these, times of immense evil occurring in the world, are calls to repentance for us as a people.  And giving can be that act of repentance.

Giving our time to teachers who wonder about their own safety, and the safety of the children they teach, in their daily life and work.

Giving time to cherishing our children and teaching them about the perfect love of Christ that casts out all fear, and changes the world.

Giving time to God in prayer, faithfully asking God our real, true, and honest questions about the evil in the world, and the sins of our own lives.

Giving our time to the study of Holy Scripture, that tells us that God is love… that hope does not disappoint… and that the God of flesh that we worship has given us abundant life.

This is the beginning of the third week of Advent.  We are in a time of preparation.  We are cleaning our houses, to have guests. We are taking down boxes from the attic, to make our home more welcoming.  I do not intend to guilt you for sending cards to people that say “Merry Christmas” on them.  I do, however, encourage you to spend time in silence.  There is a lot to do to prepare for the birth of the Lord—and repentance is one of those things.  What better way to prepare ourselves than repentance for the coming of the Christ-child?  Can you think of a finer coat to wear than that of absolution?  Can you imagine a finer adornment than the blessing of God's forgiveness?  Because there is none. 

Yes, prepare your home for the birth of Christ.  The best way to prepare—is to ask God to break in. To ask God to be born in our lives.  To ask God to heal our pain.  Do so with repentance and a giving heart.  The fruits of repentance, ripe in our lives, will draw the presence of Christ into our homes and sacred spaces.  Christ will show up and fill the void left by evil and tragedy, and offer us a new world.

Amen.