• "Make Ready for the Lord :: Repent"
• Sermon for the Third Sunday in Advent
• December 12, 2004
• The Reverend Stephen C. Scarlett

The focus of the third Sunday in Advent is John the Baptist. In the gospel (Matthew 11:2) Jesus said that John was the messenger sent to prepare the way for Christ as foretold by the prophet Malachi (3:1). His ministry, as the collect (BCP 93) and Luke (1:17) tell us, was to "turn the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just to make ready for the Lord a people prepared."

John the Baptist prepared Israel for the coming of Jesus by telling the people, "Repent!" To repent is to change. When John stood on the banks of the Jordan and cried out, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" he was saying, "The kingdom of heaven is near and you are not ready for it in your current state."

In the routines of life, with the passage of time, we tend to make accommodations to the world. It begins with a small compromise; a small duty neglected, a small act of disobedience, a seemingly inconsequential failure to make a stand for Christ. However, the small, one time compromise becomes habitual. And the habitual compromise grows like a cancer. We become distant from Christ and unprepared for his coming.

This happens to religious people. Our zeal for the faith wanes. We begin to go through the form of our religion while being oblivious to its truth and power. We dutifully recite the Nicene Creed but do not take to heart the words, "He shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead." We say the words, "we are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table" but we actually come to believe that we have personal merits to commend ourselves before God. We confess sins, receive the promise of forgiveness and feed on the very savior of the world, but our lives remain unchanged by the encounter with God.

To repent is to be roused from this spiritual slumber. As Romans says, "Now it is high time to wake out of sleep." To repent is to have our eyes opened so that we see and respond to the truth about God. Jesus died on the cross to save us from sin and death. Jesus rose from the dead and is now seated at the right hand of the Father. Jesus now rules over the whole creation and he is coming again to judge every single human soul that has ever lived. To repent is to change so that we begin to live in the light of these truths.

Repentance is a gift from God. Jesus confronted St. Paul on the road to Damascus. St. Paul was led to repent, to see and respond to the truth about Jesus. We come to repentance when the Holy Spirit confronts us with the truth about who we are in the light of God's presence and we begin to change.

The Christian tradition talks about "the gift of tears" when the Holy Spirit moves our souls to weep for our sin. It is a gift because it takes place through the Holy Spirit. It is not something we can cause to happen. It is a gift because the tears of genuine repentance carry with them the first taste and hope of forgiveness. We should pray for the gift of tears. We should ask God to reveal to us what we need to see about ourselves and give us genuine sorrow. For the more we see ourselves as we are and the more we experience genuine sorrow for sin, the greater is our experience of grace and forgiveness.

Repentance is a process. There is, to be sure, a time in lives when we first come to make a good confession and believe in Jesus Christ. But a funny thing happens to us as we begin to follow Jesus. We come to realize that the first confession merely scratched the surface of our spiritual disease. We confessed behaviors, but Jesus begins to get us to look at our thoughts and motives. We start by dealing with surface sins, but there are deeper maladies to be gotten at over time.

One way of looking at this in the tradition is to see our lives as houses with many rooms. When the Holy Spirit first comes in the door he corrects the obvious disorder in our living room, family room and kitchen. But as we continue in the life of prayer, the Holy Spirit begins to enter other rooms-closets, attics and spare bedrooms where we store the things we don't really want to reveal.

This is why it is still possible for one who has been a Christian for several decades to repent. It may take a long time before we are ready to deal with some of the things in our lives. Most of us, if we are honest, have the doors to certain rooms locked. We will open our lives to the Holy Spirit thus far and no farther. But Jesus is patient. He will knock and knock on those doors until we are ready for repentance, forgiveness and change.

Growth in repentance is a sign of a Christian who is led by the Holy Spirit. This is why the message of John the Baptist is enshrined in our liturgy. We are reminded, week by week, that communion is open only to those who do truly and earnestly repent. To repent each week is not to rehash all of the old stuff again and again. It is to be open to what the Holy Spirit is saying to each of us in the present moment. As Psalm 95 says, "Today, if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts."

John the Baptist, the prophet of Advent, says, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matthew 3:2). As we listen to him and begin the process of change, we prepare to receive Christ-both now in the sacrament and in glory at the end of time.