The Challenge of Repentance
Second Sunday in Advent, 5th December, 2004
The Rev'd Dr Craig D'Alton
Assistant Priest, St Peter's, Eastern Hill
The call from last week's Gospel reading was to be prepared, be watchful, keep awake, or maybe even "wake up!" But for what are we to prepare? Why must we wake up? Is not sleep so much nicer at the end of a long hard year? Can't we leave buying the turkey until next week – I mean, are they REALLY going to run out?
For what must we prepare? The coming of the Christ? Of course, but we all know that that happens at midnight mass as the clock turns to 25 December – (archbishop's coming, choir's singing Charpentier, bambino WILL be placed in crib and blessed: mark it in your diaries now, bring your friends!) We know about all that, and there's work to be done to make sure it all happens, but isn't there something more?
Yes, there is. We need to be prepared first of all for NOW; for this next three weeks of Advent, when the readings present us with challenge after challenge after challenge; when we are pushed, if we care to be, out of complacency and routine and into radical change and constant alertness. And in being prepared for, and responding to, the challenges of the new, we will become prepared for the future, for Christmas, for next year, for 2005, as we look to grow this parish church into an icon of the incarnate Word. No-one else is going to do that work for us. It's our call, and it's going to require us to prepare, and to allow ourselves to be challenged beyond our comfort zones and into that difficult place where God speaks and acts – the place of the vulnerable baby born into a hostile world.
So, over the next three weeks we will confront a series of challenges: the challenge to repent, or in other words, to change; the challenge to prophesy, and finally, with the actions of St Joseph and our blessed lady in response to God's saving act, the challenge to love. Three challenges to prepare for Christmas and beyond: and today's is repentence.
The first thing to be said is that Advent is not Lent. There is no Good Friday at the end of Advent, merely the incarnation of God. Liturgically there is sometimes some confusion about this. There are, however, only two liturgical similiarities between Advent and Lent which have any validity: the first is the colour – violet. Of course, this is the Western Roman scheme. The old English colour system makes the difference between the two seasons even more pronounced by making Advent Blue – the colour of royalty and of our Lady, and Lent Sackcloth or bleached linen – an absence of colour which denotes the nature of that time. Apart from colour, the other similarity is the omission of the Gloria in excelsis, which in Lent we omit because of its festive nature, but in Advent we omit because it is the song of the Angels by which the birth of the Christ will be announced on Christmas morn. Unlike in Lent, alleluias remain in Advent, baptisms take place, the prayers, hymns and, indeed, even carols, are joyful and expectant, not mournful or pitying. The repentance of Advent, then, is different to that of Lent. Our liturgy tells us so – or at least it should. So what, then, is Advent repentance?
John the Baptist cries, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near."
When the Pharisees and the Sadducees try to get in on the act of baptism John turns on them. They are vipers who are merely following the crowd, not in fact repenting. Metanoia – the Greek word which means repentance – does not mean being gloomy or sad, being merely sorry for past wrongs, being contrite or penitent. Metanoia, repentance, means something much more direct: it means to "turn around", to change direction. The Pharisees and Sadducees may well have been contrite upon hearing John's message, but they were not prepared to repent; they were not prepared to CHANGE. And here is the key. The repentance of Advent is a call to examine ourselves – individually and corporately, and to ask what needs to CHANGE. Change is the key, turning around our life, turning around the life even of the Church in places and ways where it has become stagnant or is even going the wrong way. This requires reflection, prayer, discernment, and courage. It requires admitting where in life we have been wrong. It can require that we ask forgiveness. It absolutely requires also, that we resolve not to repeat the mistake, not to going on doing that which is turning us the wrong way, but instead to take the challenge to change ourselves at whatever level is required that we might truly be who we are, and who God would have us be. And this is a positive rather than a negative thing. We are to prepare not for death, but for life; not for crucifixion but for incarnation; for judgement certainly, but the judgement of the baptised, not of the damned.
This much we may do as individuals, and the challenge there is great enough. But the challenge of Advent repentance is also a corporate one: a challenge for the Church. The Pharisees and Sadducees were attacked by John because, as representatives of the established religious system, they refused true repentance on the grounds that tradition was on their side: "We have Abraham as our ancestor". The Church, just like them, is replete with tradition, and is slow to change, slow even to repent of its sins. How we had to be dragged kicking and screaming in the nineteenth century to admit that slavery was wrong, that Scripture was wrongly interpreted when brought in to defend it, and that we must repent, and work to free the slaves. How we have had to be dragged in this past decade kicking and screaming into making the changes necessary to ensure at least the possibility that instances of sexual abuse in the Church are confronted and not covered up! How we are still being dragged kicking and screaming into making the changes necessary to admit that women are fully human, and that gay people are too.
And how it scares us and tears us apart – as Satan feeds on the failure of the Pharisees and Sadducees in the Church of our day to exchange what is wrong for what is right, or to allow the spirit of freedom to replace the law of sin and death. How many more changes do we need to make, of what else do we need to repent, but avoid, because our stable and comfortable existence might be upset? What are our besetting sins that leave us unprepared for the coming of the Messiah? What do we, as a parish, a diocese, a national Church, a communion, need urgently to change in order that we may be fully prepared to welcome the incarnate one?
Challenges, challenges, challenges, and they don't end today! But do not be downcast or afraid, because it is not Lent, it is Advent! Now is the time to rejoice, now is the time to sing praises, because the one who is to come is coming bringing forgiveness, and, ready or not, we are called to turn aside from all that binds us, and to walk together to Bethlehem that we may adore him and follow him on the road to eternal life.
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