Repent! | A Sermon on John the Baptist, Ted Lasso, and Repentance
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin on the Second Sunday of Advent (B), December 5, 2021.
Baruch 5:1-9; Philippians 1:3-11; Luke 3:1-6
He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins (Luke 3:3).
For the next two weeks, all roads converge where John the Baptizer makes his stand. There is no escaping it. Every single Gospel begins the story of Jesus the Christ by talking about John the Baptist.
And there is, perhaps, no word more synonymous with John the Baptist then this one: Repent.
Do we have any Ted Lasso fans in the house? For those who haven’t yet caught the Ted Lasso bug, it’s a very popular comedy series boasting quirky characters and an upbeat plot, perfect for a time such as this.
The series follows Ted Lasso, an American football coach who is hired as the head coach of a European Premiere League football team. Except that Ted knows diddly-squat about soccer, much to the chagrin of his new team and the patronizing amusement of everyone else.
The team itself, well, it’s not in great shape. It’s disjointed –lacking unity, morale, vision. And, at this point, few expect much of it, and it seems the team doesn’t expect very much of itself –especially once Ted comes into the picture.
And yet, one of his first acts as coach is to tape a sign over the locker room door –bright yellow, it reads, “Believe.” This word becomes synonymous with Ted Lasso, and, perhaps strangely, makes me think of John the Baptist.
I mean, imagine John rolling up on the scene and slapping a bright yellow “Repent” sign over the locker room door while a befuddled and downtrodden team looks on. Just like Ted, John sends a message. If you’re going to play on his team, you’re going to be constantly reminded that things can, and should, be seen differently. There’s a new game in town. Repent.
Repent is one of those church words that, in more progressive circles, is quickly falling out of fashion. And this is distressing. It is such a key concept in our Christian call. And yet, it is often traded or diluted in favor of something warmer, more comforting, less aggressive. It is often dismissed as harsh, antiquated, too conservative. A word not spoken in polite company, a word that belongs, perhaps, to other denominations in our messy Christian family, to street preachers maybe, to that guy who stands in front of the White House always going on about something. Not to us.
Repent. It has some baggage.
If you hear the word repent and think of a “turn or burn” sort of situation, well, you’re not alone. The verb repent often walks hand in hand with the idea of God’s eternal judgment raining down upon us all, a hellfire and brimstone posture preached in all kinds of pulpits and witnessed to in a variety of troubling ways.
In my home state of Alabama, a relatively short drive down I-65 will turn up the following messages: Repent or burn; Warning: Prepare to Meet God; and, my personal favorite, Stop Drop and Roll Doesn’t Work in Hell, Repent!
I laugh, but it’s not actually all that funny. This was the religious tradition and culture into which I was born. And we can discount this sort of view as below us, misguided, ignorant. Or we can with compassion remain curious as to its origin and the role this religious posture plays in people’s lives.
Unfortunately, I think what we’re tempted to do instead is cast it off as something far from us, along with those people who know not what they do.
Who could blame us for wanting to disassociate from something so distasteful?
Now, if you’re thinking, “Gosh, I never thought of the word repent in that “wrath of God” sort of way,” then maybe instead the verb repent calls to mind the need to apologize to God and to promise not to repeat the offense. Or perhaps you know that promise won’t last, because you’re a realist, someone who knows that human beings have a propensity to mess things up –again and again. Maybe for you, the very concept of repentance seems a little worthless, because what’s the point really?
In our tradition, we confess our sins corporately every week, as is meet and right. We try to be honest about where we have messed things up, and that is a good thing. And yet, this sort of honesty, realism, confession –these are but one side of repentance. We must go deeper.
The Jewish experience of exile deeply shaped the biblical meaning of the verb repent. Repent didn’t stand alone but held hands with the prophetic call to “prepare the way of the Lord,” which originated in Isaiah and is repeated in today’s Gospel. To see these in partnership is to see repentance as a way out of the wilderness, out of exile, and into God’s presence. It’s no coincidence then that the strange figure of John is cast on location, in this wilderness.
Considered in this way, to repent is to return to the path set before you by God, the one meant for us since the creating of the heavens and the earth–a path out of estrangement and into intimate fellowship with the One who made us and knows us and loves us beyond all human comprehension.
Repent. It’s an invitation, not a threat.
“Repent, the prophet cries, come home. Repent, God calls, turn to me. Repent, we hear, walk into your freedom.” [1]
Building on this, Greek scholars would remind us that the verb repent in the New Testament means to go beyond, or to go above, the mind that we have. It is less about seeing and naming our individual wrongdoings so that we might not be punished for them or so that we might perfect our own nature, and more about seeing with a different perspective –a perspective that begins to turn on its head the world as we know it and reveals instead the world as God knows it.
And, yes, this necessarily implicates our sinfulness. There is no escaping it. Sin is a powerful force, the root of those wrongdoings we often name as things done and left undone. What is sin, really, other than the experience of being in exile, being cut off from God, the only and ultimate true source of life and joy.
Sin keeps us from going beyond, or above, the mind we have. Sin clouds our perspective and keeps our focus on what is false, empty, hopeless. Sin convinces us that this, this is all there is.
Like Ted Lasso’s team, who found themselves stuck in a pattern and practice that was getting them nowhere and yet which convinced them their worth was only as good as their own ability to meet the expectations of the very patterns and practices that were failing them. Valuing the individual game over the collective, the façade over vulnerability, the win as defined by society over everything else.
And here comes Ted and his message: Believe. And it seemed so stupid and trite until his every action pointed to it, until others begin to believe too, until before you know it, things begin to look much different. Believe, made tangible.
Like Ted’s team, we are in an exile of our own making. And we must look again and again until we might see with the heart the glory of God.
John knew this, appearing, in the wilderness, preaching repentance. He is singing a new song to a tried-and-true tune:
Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, O Jerusalem,
And put on forever the beauty of the glory from God (Baruch 5:1).
Repent, because the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.
The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.
And we are invited to seek a different perspective, so that we might recognize it as a reality and live as if it were so.
This is what it means to repent, to go deeper –to seek the very roots of our sorrows and afflictions and to upturn them, to take them off, so that we might see with new eyes the wonders of His love. So that we might know that we are not separate individuals running the rat race of life, playing our own individual games, but that we are one with all, connected to the true vine, Jesus Christ. And so that we might abide, in our deepest and most vulnerable places, in this truth: we are seen, loved, and forgiven.
Repent, the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.
*Image source: https://twitter.com/OnePerfectLasso/
[1] The Reverend Shannon Kershner, “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven Is Near!”, a sermon preached at Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, Illinois, December 4, 2016, https://www.fourthchurch.org/sermons/2016/120416.html.
