The Rev. Sara Warfield
Scripture: Luke 3:7-18
At Bible Study, there was a general feeling of lamentation for the world. The people in Palestine still suffering, now joined by those in Lebanon. The uncertainty of the incoming administration in our own country and how that shift in power might impact the most vulnerable, indeed the institution of democracy itself.
The problems feel enormous, and we talked about how small we feel in the face of them. What can one person possibly do to help tens of thousands of people suffering halfway across the world? What can one person do to make sure that so many people in our own country stay safe in the shadow of a government that seeks to take away their freedom?
We were feeling a little helpless. And honestly, John the Baptist didn’t seem to be helping matters. "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” John, we’re not trying to flee, we just don’t know what we can do.
And John responds: “Bear fruit worthy of repentance.”
Bear fruit. Like a tree. Or a vine. Or a bush. What kind of fruit do you suppose a peach tree bears? What about a grape vine? How about a blackberry bush? Now I don’t ask these questions because I don’t think you know the very obvious answers. But what seems so obvious to us about these fruit-bearing plants doesn’t come so obviously when it comes to our fruit-bearing selves.
For example, would I ask Jack to put together our church budget? Would I ask Marci, our Church Treasurer, to play the guitar during worship? Would you ask me to play piano and lead singing during worship? I think there was a time that Kathy was actually sick one Sunday and I did try to lead some songs, and I don’t think anyone would ever ask for that again.
What I’m trying to get at is that we all bear different fruits according to how God made us.
And when John says “bear fruit worthy of repentance,” I think he means, first of all, are you bearing your particular fruit? Or are you trying to make a peach tree grow apples? Or maybe your peach tree is growing peaches, but to what end? To what use are you living into your gifts? To whose benefit are you using them?
John the Baptist then goes on to imply how particular people might be misusing their gifts and are in need of repentance:
"Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise." Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, "Teacher, what should we do?" He said to them, "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you." Soldiers also asked him, "And we, what should we do?" He said to them, "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages."
Bear fruit worth of repentance.
To repent is to change your mind or heart or life to be in alignment with how God created you, with how God is calling you.
And yes, sometimes that means not exploiting your gifts for your own gain at the expense of others. But sometimes bearing fruit worthy of repentance is a little more subtle, a little more nuanced. Like a blueberry bush feeling sad or guilty that it can’t feed people who are starving across an ocean. Or that peach tree that keeps trying to grow apples.
When we think about our fruit, our call, we need to remember Jesus. As life-changing and world-changing as he is now to us, he wasn’t any of that to most people outside his inner circle at the time of his death. Jesus taught, he fed multitudes, he healed. And yet, he was mostly unknown and unremembered in the years after his death. Even though he was ACTUALLY sent to us in flesh and blood to change the entire world.
Changing the world is his documented purpose. It’s what the angel told Mary when he got her consent to conceive Jesus. And Jesus himself said it in different ways over and over.
Changing the world was his mission, but Jesus didn’t teach everyone in the world. He taught some people along a tiny stretch of land at the eastern edge of the Mediterranean. He didn’t heal everyone in the world. He healed the people he encountered on his journeys when they asked for healing.
And when Jesus died, he died a humiliating death as a political scapegoat. Those who were close to him mourned him, but for the most part people in Jerusalem were just happy that the rabble-rouser was finally gone. The disciples took his message to Rome, Greece, Gaul (or France), and even India, but stories say that most of them died cruel deaths because of their beliefs and teaching. Even 200 years after Jesus was gone, his followers were still a tiny minority in their communities, and their neighbors found them sweet if not a little weird at best, or a threat to the public order at worst.
What I’m trying to say is that while Jesus’ call was in fact to change the world, he did that by embodying how God made him, in the time and place where God put him. And he didn’t change the world immediately or even after 500 years. But now, 2,000 years later, an ocean and a continent away from where he lived out his ministry, we sit here anticipating his birth, celebrating his coming, and doing our best to live what he taught us through both his life and his death.
Now I’m sure that Jesus trusted that he would change the world. But I wonder if you asked Peter or James or Mary Magdalene if they believed that Jesus’ life and death would mean anything even 100 years from then, I think they’d really like to say they did, but I wouldn’t blame them for having doubt in their hearts.
And I hope in the shadow of that doubt that they would remember John the Baptist’s teaching: “Bear fruit worthy of repentance.” That they would continue, as Jesus did, to live their lives and their beliefs, to embody their gifts, as if they knew they would change the world. Maybe not in ways they would expect. Maybe not in their lifetime. Probably not in their lifetime. And whenever they lost hope, whenever their lives drifted away from alignment with God’s call for them, to repent and turn back to their fruit, their call.
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Today, the Third Sunday of Advent, is Joy Sunday. And I’m here to tell you that the chaff separated from the wheat burning in the unquenchable fire is the good news, the joyful news. Because let me tell you something about the chaff. And here I quote The Salt Project’s commentary for this gospel reading:
Every grain of wheat has a husk, and farmers (even today) use wind to separate these husks — collectively known as “chaff” — from the grain, the goal being, of course, to save every grain, not to separate the good grain from the bad grain. This is a metaphor of cleansing and preservation, not division. What the wind and fire remove are the “husks,” the chaff.
The commentary describes the husks as the anxieties and self-absorption that cause us to turn away from God’s call in our lives, to diminish the ways God created us, to despair that we are not enough. But Jesus comes with the winnowing fork to separate us from our chaff and calls us to bear fruit worthy of repentance, of turning back to God’s purpose for our lives.
To me, that’s joy. To me, joy is the experience of fully embodying the way God created us and trusting with our whole being that how and when and where God created us is enough. In fact, it is exactly what will change the world. Amen.
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