Advent 2A
Matthew 3:1-12
Unfortunately,
I’m still learning that lesson as far as my computer goes. I avoid pushing the dreaded
“restart” button at all costs. In the morning, my head is full of all the things
that I want to get done at work. I sit down at my computer ready to go. If I
restart the thing, I’ll have to waste time waiting for everything to load back
up. I’m much too impatient for that.
In
the middle of the day, I’m feeling behind. Even worse, I’m angry at the
sluggishness with which the machine is now obeying my commands. The last thing
I want to do is to push a button that will start a long, drawn-out update. There
might be new options from which to choose, new interfaces to deal with. No, no
, no! I don’t have the heart to deal with that right now.
At
the end of the day, I want to go home. I don’t want to sit around and babysit
the shutting down of my pokey machine. I have so many windows pulled up on the
computer by this time that it will take forever to close them all. And I don’t
want to risk losing something that I forgot to save. I don’t have the energy to
take risks. Not now.
Well,
you know how it goes. Day after day, as I keep pushing my machine to keep going,
all the litter of cyberspace crowds into the nooks and crannies of my computer’s
memory. “Cookies,” advertisements, interference from Microsoft, hundreds of
pieces of data that I can’t see or understand … they all fill my hard-drive little
by little. Pretty soon, my computer is paralyzed. It can’t “hear” my requests. I
have no choice. A serious reset is required. I have to shut it down for awhile.
I probably even have to delete things, to clean out the system, before I can begin
again.
At
this point, you might even say that my computer needs some “repentance!” If we
think that repentance is an unpleasant, churchy term for asking forgiveness,
then this doesn’t make sense. But that’s not what Matthew and John the Baptist
mean by repentance.
The
Greek word that Matthew uses in today’s Gospel is best translated as “reset,”
or “re-order.” Repentance is a reorientation
of our whole being, a letting-go of our attempts to direct our own lives.
It requires putting ourselves entirely in God’s hands. In repenting, “we give
up everything that tells us who we are, what is expected of us, what the
rewards and punishments will be of acting and thinking in certain ways … [We] let
ourselves be remade from top to bottom.”[1]
So
you see, my resistance to resetting my computer is undoubtedly reflected in my
spiritual life, as well. Repentance, like pushing that restart button, demands
time, risk, letting go of rigid plans, accepting a new interface with the world.
It requires digging out all of the distorting messages that the world pours
into me day after day: the slippery lies of advertisers, the distracting
sleight of hand of politicians, the twisted reality of social media. Repentance
is deep and difficult work. It’s not something that any of us really want to do,
even when we know deep-down that it’s desperately needed.
That’s
why God sends us prophets, people whose outrageous words or deeds inescapably capture our attention. Prophets don't come to foretell the future. They come to help us to change the future through repentance. In the Hebrew scriptures,
we have Isaiah, who stripped off all his clothes and wandered around naked to
get people’s attention. Jeremiah walked around with a cattle-yoke on his
shoulders. Hosea married a prostitute and named their daughter “Unloved.” In the New Testament, John
the Baptist wore strange clothes, ate locusts, and threatened hellfire and
destruction. In prophetic mode, Jesus threw fits of anger in the Temple and told strange parables that
strip us of our worn perspectives. Even today, we have prophets like sixteen-year-old
Greta Thunberg. She sailed across the Atlantic Ocean and assailed us with her frowning
condemnation-- all to push us into saving action for our planet.
There
is a big push these days for increasing “mindfulness” in our lives. It’s
something that I am trying to work on, myself. I am trying to live each moment
more prayerfully, paying attention to the tiny glimpses of the divine. That’s
really what any prayer requires, isn’t it? Listening, paying attention to what
God is saying and doing in the world? What makes prayer and mindfulness
difficult is our tendency to get distracted, to fail to see. Theologian Craig
Dykstra points out that is because repentance precedes prayer. We have to let
go of our own rigid understandings before we can notice what God is doing and
saying. I can’t see God in my neighbor while I am busy judging him, lining him
up next to my own categories of right and wrong. I can’t see God around me while I
am wrapped tightly in a blanket of fear. Without repentance, we risk missing
the Beloved Kingdom that Jesus is ushering into the world.
I’d
like to do a better job heeding John the Baptist’s call to repentance this
Advent. Each morning, perhaps I can push the reset button on my control needs,
as well as the restart button on my computer. Perhaps I can clean out the world’s false distractions from my mind, as well as the cyber-trash from my recycle bin.
What
do you need to let go of in your soul this Advent in order to see and hear God’s
dream for the world? Of what do you need to “repent?”
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