Matt. 3:1-12
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
If I ask the question, when is the time for repentance, the answer in this sentence is both “in those days,” and “when the kingdom of heaven has drawn near.” In the Gospel of Mark, the parallel to Matthew’s proclamation is, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near, so repent and believe in the good news.
Repentance and time, I will explore both in this sermon beginning with a consideration of time.
Our theme for Advent this year is entitled “An Unexpected Hour” and we have been invited to consider time in new ways.
We know all about time; especially what the Greeks call Chronos – that passage of time that we mark with the movements of the sun and the moon; years, seasons, months, weeks, days, minutes and even seconds or nano-seconds. We mark or keep track of our time on this earth as we move through our lives, and as we move through the day.
We spend time, save time, use time efficiently, invest in time, waste time and wonder “what time” or “how much time”.
During a typical day, we ask questions like,
“What time should I set my alarm?” Given today’s traffic and transit efficiency or lack thereof, we gauge how much time it will take to get from one place to another. What time do we gather? What time will we end? I plan to spend time with my family. Let’s not waste time. I’m not sure I’ll have time, or for some, I have too much time on my hands, and finally “time is money.”
Ah, the commodification of time.
Time as chronos is a human construct that in its most life giving form helps us to order our days, but in its commodification also has the potential to tyrannize.
During Advent we are invited to have a different awareness of time and one way to think about time in a different way is to consider the Greek concept of time known as Kairos. Kairos can be explained in different ways.
It is the fullness of time or an inbreaking of God’s visitation.
It is another dimension of time that opens us up rather than hems us in.
Kairos cannot be saved, spent, invested in or planned for. It cannot be commodified because it is not a human construct or under human control. Kairos is where the gift of God’s presence and our awareness of and response to that presence intersect.
Madeleine L’engle describes it this way:
The saint in contemplation, lost to self in the mind of God is in kairos. The artist at work is in kairos. The child at play, totally thrown outside herself in the game, be it building a sand castle or making a daisy chain, is in kairos.
[Even when adults play, if we ever take time for it, we can be in kairos]
In kairos we become what we are called to be as human beings, co-creators with God and participants in the wonder of creation.
In kairos we are completely unselfconscious, and yet paradoxically far more real than we can ever be when we’re constantly checking our watches for chronological time.
So when is the time for repentance? And what does that look like?
Repentance is another one of those challenging words to discuss in the life of the church, because once again like other words such as sin and salvation it has accrued some unhelpful baggage over the years. I recall a time, a chronological time in the history of the church when the date or time of one’s repentance or conversion and subsequent moment of salvation could be carried like a badge of honour. For example one might be able to say, “The date of my salvation or new birth in Christ was March 15th, 1955 or ‘65 or ‘75, because that is the day I confessed my sins, repented of former negative behaviours and became a new creation in Christ.” And though it is wonderful to remember a moment of conversion, and to mark that in chronological time, not everyone can do so and pressure to do so has the potential to create unhelpful guilt. However, now is a “good time” to reclaim this word and its indispensible value in our lives.
Repentance is choosing to turn towards God. In Biblical Hebrew the word repentance is represented by two words, Shuv, to return, and nicham, to feel sorrow. One often turns towards or returns to God when one experiences sorrow for having turned away from God in some way shape or form. In Greek the word for repentance is metanoia understood primarily as a change of mind and heart. That’s why the word conversion is often used as an alternative or synonym for repentance. Repentance or conversion implies that some part of you is transformed or changed or converted by this turning.
With these understandings of Repentance and time, I now wish to examine our text for today more closely.
John the Baptist, that wild looking man in camel hair and leather, appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” And there must have been something about that time, a time of longing perhaps, because according to this text people came from all over the region so he could baptize them with water in the River Jordan.
But when he saw the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for Baptism he said to them. “You brood of vipers. Who warned you to flee from the wrath that is to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance.”
The very first time I preached on this text – at Danforth Mennonite Church a few years ago, I decided to learn the text by heart, like I did with Isaiah passage a few weeks ago, and it is really quite a different experience to embody the text, “You brood of vipers,” than it is to simply read it.
In fact I was so nervous about embodying such a judgmental text that I asked everyone to imagine they were saying it with me, rather than hearing it as something I was directing at them. I asked them to imagine an unjust situation – something that made them really angry – maybe something like the scrapping of the Transit city plan or systemic violence against the poor, or environmental degradation of any kind. When they were in touch with their anger I asked them to say it with me. “You brood of vipers.” I thought we might have to practice to really get there with it, but the anger they managed to tap into flattened me on the first run through, so I let it go at that.
You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath that is to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance.
This week as I lived with this text, I found I wasn’t able to direct this anger outward, to some brood of vipers out there. This week for some reason, I was included in this brood.
This week as I contemplated “time and repentance,” I realized that there is no one time of turning towards God that takes care of all time. There is no one date, March whatever of such and so year. Time and repentance have no real fixed point chronologically. John the Baptist tells the Pharisees and Sadducees that they cannot presume t
o say to themselves that they have Abraham as their ancestor for example and suppose that that takes care of all such need for real turning towards God – the kind of turning towards God that bears fruit, that gives evidence of transformation.
Real transformation takes place over time, with many turnings toward God and experiences of the Kingdom.
I’m reminded of the refrain of the Shaker Tune, “Tis the gift to be simple”
When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed.
To turn, turn will be our delight,
’Til by turning, turning we come round right.
By turning and turning we remain open to the possibility of Kairos.
When the kingdom of heaven draws near we are in the presence of Kairos, God’s time, a time that opens us up and does not hem us in, and is pure gift. But the real presence of God encountered in Kairos can be both a shock of joy or delight and a fearful thing. God’s presence tends to shine a light on things the way they really are. If we are open to seeing by that light, if we are truly open to that gift when it draws near, it can’t help but evoke a response of repentance understood as a turning towards God and sorrow for anything that stands in the way of that turning.
Each year at this time, in Advent, we are invited to let our awareness attune itself more clearly to the possibility of Kairos. We are invited to take some chronological time to be still in a stance of waiting and anticipation as we celebrate the inbreaking of God’s visitation in a real child, born in a dangerous time, to a young woman in a dusty little village called Bethlehem precisely in the middle of nowhere. Who knew?
This child’s name was Jesus, the promised shoot of Jesse, and the one whom John the Baptist proclaimed would one day baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
The inbreaking of God’s visitation, the Kairos of that moment, shone a light on the way things were and are in a way that can never be undone. That light reveals everything: the stunning beauty of all we were created to be and our limitations. It’s hard to live in a constant orientation towards that light,
but there are ways to practice that orientation.
The apostle Paul advises unceasing prayer. In the Eastern Orthodox church, one form of unceasing prayer is known as the Jesus Prayer. “Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, Have Mercy on Me, a sinner.” (My Mennonite discomfort with the way this prayer seems to emphasize or point to the doctrine of original sin, means that sometimes when it springs to my mind I stop at Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy, but there are also times when the full prayer is most appropriate.) This prayer has found a home in different places throughout history; in the 14th century, Cloud of Unknowing, the 19th century Russian writing, the Way of the Pilgrim and 20th century novel Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger.
I point to brief prayer like this, or it’s Latin equivalent kyrie eleison, as one simple and effective way to help orient one towards God frequently.
I’m sure you have other ways to practice orientation towards God, – any practice that sustains you, reading of scripture, regular prayer of any kind, walks along the lake shore so that the beauty of the low winter sun on a half frozen harbour can be that Kairos moment for you.
We practice this kind of orientation so that when we don’t feel God’s presence, or when we are acutely aware of our human limitations when sick or struggling that the pattern of turning is ingrained and we will be ready when a Kairos moment occurs.
As I’ve said it’s hard to live in constant orientation to the light,
but by turning and turning, we’ll come round right.
The Kingdom of God draws near. The time of repentance is now and always.