Sermons

“Bearing Fruit Worthy of Repentance”

Isaiah 11:1-10; Matthew 3:1-12 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – December 4, 2016

Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words, that your peace might overtake our hearts and help us welcome the good news of great joy. We pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Last Sunday, someone told me that I’d missed a perfect opportunity for inserting politics into my sermon. I’m pretty sure he was only half-joking. We had had a lovely conversation a few days earlier about the political implications of my sermon from the week before. So I appreciated the smiling affirmation that the gospel makes it hard to avoid politics. What I forgot to mention is that I usually leave that for the second Sunday of Advent.

Lucky for us and for our tax-exempt status, preaching politics on Peace Sunday is a non-partisan activity. The truth is that both major parties are terrible on peace. If we take the gospel seriously on the question of peace, we cannot help but stand in a singular place, far from any mainstream perspective that would make it into a party platform. But then, we’re the people reading about John the Baptist eating locusts in the wilderness while the society around us that is supposedly celebrating our number two holiday is cooing over reindeer cookies and wreaths made out of recycled materials. We ought to be used to being a little counter-cultural by now.

Someone else this week accused me “fomenting discord.” This was someone else entirely, not a member of the church, but I’m not going to tell you who, because he’s a somewhat public figure, and to his credit, by the end of the conversation, I think he regretted saying it. Even if I had been trying to foment something, I clearly wasn’t trying very hard. It’s not like I called anyone a “brood of vipers”!

Seriously, what is up with John the Baptist? It’s not just the vipers. He’s chopping down trees and raising up stones; he’s got fire and wrath and winnowing forks of judgment in there. It’s a good thing we have this separate season called Advent first, because this is certainly not a Christmas story! And yet, the two are connected, right? Advent is supposed to help us be prepared for Christmas; this season is about getting ready to welcome Jesus when he arrives. So perhaps it’s wise to assume that what John the Baptist is telling us has something to do with the Savior that is coming.

“The kingdom of heaven has come near,” he says. And what are we supposed to do about that? “Repent!” But wait, there’s more. If we can assume that we are just as self-serving and hypocritical as John seems to think the Pharisees and Sadducees were – and I have little doubt that this is a safe assumption – there is another assignment in here as well: “Bear fruit worthy of repentance,” he demands. What does that even mean? And what does it mean when we apply it to the question of peace?

Clearly, there is a lot of confession going on here. If we are to enter into John’s understanding of the faith, we must begin by admitting that things are not right, that much of our behavior is not righteous or loving or just, that our world is broken and our systems continue to allow the wicked to prosper and the poor and meek to suffer. To stand and confess these things is to declare that they are not okay; it is to take a position, one of convicted humility. But it is not just a confession of sins; it is also a confession of faith. To confess what is wrong with the world, and indeed, our own souls, is to cast an alternate vision for how the world should be. And that is the confession, the repentance, the “turning of mind” that John is talking about when he commands us to “bear fruit worthy of repentance.” This one actually is pretty simple: If we’re going to claim the name of Jesus, we have to behave accordingly. Even when it comes to the question of peace.

When we read a passage like the one we just heard from Isaiah 11, where wild animals are doing unnatural things, it can seem both incredibly lovely and ridiculously unrealistic. The portraits of God’s shalom that scripture gives us are so far removed from our present reality that it can seem like they have nothing to do with one another. Admitting that we can’t really believe that a lion is going to eat straw like an ox, though, is only a few steps away from deciding Jesus didn’t really mean it when he commanded us to love our enemies. And while we would pretty easily admit that Isaiah’s vision sounds far-fetched, it’s harder to admit that there are certain things Jesus said that we just don’t take all that seriously.

The truth is that being a Peace Christian is hard work and serious business. It is intensely political in a very lonely way, because it does tend to make you feel like a “lone voice crying out in the wilderness.” If we take our confession of the gospel of peace seriously, our faith becomes starkly counter-cultural. The importance of security is diminished. We have to deal with the truth that all lives of are equal importance, those of our children and children in Aleppo or Nigeria, those of our friends who are ill and HIV/AIDS patients in Tijuana, mine and my enemy’s. And what John is saying is that believing these lives have equal value is not enough. If we are to “bear fruit worthy of repentance”, we must actively work to re-build a world that truly values them equally and persistently resist the structures that deny this truth.

This vision has no room for barrel bombs or drones. There are no lead-tainted water pipes or depleted uranium caches. There is nothing turning people into refugees, and if we’re being completely honest, there aren’t even international boundaries! Yes, this does sound as unrealistic as Isaiah 11, but that is precisely the point. To declare that we are seeking the peace of Christ is to commit ourselves to believing the impossible. If we are to bear fruit worthy of repentance, we cannot cry “Peace, peace!” where there is no peace, to pretend things are better than they seem. Rather, we must cry “Peace, peace!” as a rallying cry to help one another hold onto God’s vision for our world, a world at peace, where justice and righteousness embrace, and all children thrive and grow, and all peoples live in freedom.

As many of you know, I am involved in the leadership team for Disciples Peace Fellowship. For many years, DPF has taken as our mission the task of “keeping alive the passion for peace and justice.” For a long time, I sort of ignored the beginning of that phrase. I just assumed the opening words were there as grammatical support for the important part, that being “peace and justice.” But recently, I have come to understand the importance of the part that says “keeping alive the passion.” Because unless we are passionate about this way of following Jesus, our hearts will grow weary from being told we are unrealistic dreamers. Unless we our passion is alive, we will acquiesce to “conventional wisdom” which tells us that a military draw is the closest we’ll ever get to peace. Unless our passion for God’s vision for our world is alive and kicking, current circumstances will seem all too convincing.

The world tells us to look around and see what a mess things are, just like they’ve always been. The world tells us to listen to the divisive rhetoric and violent posturing, to listen to the news and count how many children have died today, and do the logical thing, and give up on peace. But as Isaiah tells us, the Savior we are waiting for “shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear.” And we don’t have to either. Righteousness and equity shall be our standards, regardless of how badly distorted our current reality has become. We are preparing to welcome a Savior who commanded us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, a Savior who wasn’t willing to fight for peace, but was willing to live for it and to die for it. John wasn’t wrong to get us off to such a dramatic start. Will it be political? Yes. Will it seem like fomenting discord? Probably to some people. Will we feel like lonely voices crying out in the wilderness? Often. Except hopefully we’ll have one another for company. What does it mean to bear fruit worthy of the repentance that turns our hearts towards the Prince of Peace? It means doing things that our neighbors might find unseemly, like pointing out the human cost of drone warfare, or welcoming Syrian refugees into our homes. It means standing up to politicians of all stripes who try to help us unify as Americans by highlighting our differences from the rest of the world. It means resisting authoritarian dictators wherever they arise, no matter their ideology or lack thereof. Bearing fruit worthy of our repentance will mean our faith is going to get political, whether we like it or not. Even now, at Christmas time. Especially now, when the world is enthralled by the beauty of this story, we must take it upon ourselves to ensure the true meaning isn’t lost and that the true gifts of Christmas – justice and righteousness and peace – shall indeed blossom forth from this holy season. Alleluia and Amen.