—a wild man in the
desert telling you to repent
—telling you the
truth… that you are a sinner
—you wouldn’t think that would be a good message.
--You wouldn’t think
it would be popular and attractive.
Can’t you hear the ad men now, “Oh,
soften your image, John. Replace camel hair with Prada and pastel. Maybe tone
down the sin talk
Or only talk about
sins that other people commit
—Tell the coatless
that people need to be generous,
the occupied about the
danger of Roman taxation,
and the extorted that
soldiers are sinners.
Or even, you know, cut out this whole sin talk in
total.”
To which John replies by doubling down.
He turns to the newly baptized, who he—I want to be clear here, he was the
one who warned them… warned to flee the wrath of God, He question “Who warned
you to flee from the wrath to come?” is rhetorical,
and he says,
“You brood of vipers!”
“Your ancestry,
your pedigree,
your nation of origin,
your race,
your ethnicity,
isn’t your value
—isn’t your fruitfulness.
God created humans
from the humus—earthlings from the earth.
God can shake every
grave until the stones fly away and the dead rise
—God can produce women
and men much more faithful than you.
Be fruitful or be cut
down.
This baptism thing
wasn’t a one and done.
Look alive or you
might as well be dead.”
“It’s like,” he continues, “you heard
the phrase ‘Bear fruits worthy of repentance’ and turned it on its head… as thought
that meant: sin a whole lot so when you repent you have a whole catalogue of stuff
to repent of…
but you’ve already repented!
You’ve somehow grabbed at the root of
the phrase and assumed the root was the branches
—you’ve dug yourself
into the root system, the term, repentance,
instead of looking up at its fruits dangling there so sweet.
You’ve somehow managed
to dig yourself into a grave, even though I called on you to climb out of it!
You’ve
repented, that’s the seed that you’ve planted…
I want to know what
kind of bush you’ve produced,
what kind of plant
you’ve got?
Is it an actual repentance-plant or some sort of sickly
self-sanctified scrubland shrub?
If that’s all you got, its taking up
space
—it’s a waste of space
—it ought to be burnt
so actual repentance will have space to flourish!
“What does fruitfulness, a turned
around life preparing for God’s coming, look like?” the crowd asks.
“You
that have, share with those who do not have.”
Someone in the crowd hurrumphs and responds, “That’s all well
and good—but we’re living in a complex multi-faceted world where diverse
cultures and dominant empires collide to make all sharing hard.”
“For example,” another man in the crowd
continues, “This is an occupied country, but I collaborate with Rome to make
ends meat, I collect taxes for the enemy.”
“That way of doing things is rigged, unrig it,” John replies.
A roman soldier studies him and says,
“What about us occupiers ourselves?”
“Did
I stutter?” John replies, “The way you are occupying is rigged… unrig it.”
Share
and don’t rig the system—it’s so simple it’s in brilliant.
Simple, but how often do you let your
life get in the way of it?
How often do you make excuses for not
showing forth the fruits of repentance?
How often do you say, “They probably
don’t really need a coat”... or maybe you give them the worst coat you own and
then complain that they are ungrateful!
How often do you say, “I’m part of a
very unjust and rigged system, but such a little part, that it doesn’t matter… blame
the game not the player.”
How often do you say, “This world can
be brutal, but that’s just the world,” and shrug your shoulders and move on?
Share
and don’t rig the system… that’s what a repentant life looks like.
There with John, despite, or maybe
because of, his rough calls to repentance and fruitfulness, baptism after
baptism occurred, and you began to babble asking, “who is this John fellow?”
“Is he the one? Will he bring about
salvation? Is he King of the Jews? Is he Lord of the World?”
“No,”
John replies to us
—“I can tell you about
a fruitful life,
but he’ll burn you and
turn you into mulch so you can be fruitful
—purifying you with
fire and spirit.”
