The Fruit of Repentance

The message given in the Sunday night service in the Gettysburg United Methodist church.  The Bible verses used are John 3:1-18.

            John the Baptist is one of my favorite Bible characters.  He plays a very important part in the story of Jesus, and yet, we know very little about him.

            We’re told John’s birth story in Luke Chapter One, how he was born to Zechariah and Elizabeth.  Zechariah was a priest.  Elizabeth, his wife, was a relative of Mary, Jesus’ mother.  We’re told that the angel Gabriel visited Mary in the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, so we assume John must have been about six months older than Jesus.  We’re told that, shortly after Gabriel’s visit to Mary, Mary went to visit Elizabeth, and that John the Baptist “leaped for joy” in Elizabeth’s womb when Mary greeted her.

            And then we hear nothing more about John until he received a call from God in our reading for tonight.  We’re told that “the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness.”

            I never thought about this before.  We know that, when he was baptizing people and preaching about repentance, John was out in the wilderness.  But John apparently was already in the wilderness before that.  The word of God came to John while he was already in the wilderness.

            I wonder what he was doing there.  Was John one of these guys who just enjoyed living off the land, eating whatever plants he could find and whatever animals he could kill?  Was he out there on some sort of religious experience, fasting and praying?  Did John deliberately go into the wilderness, hoping to receive a word from God?  

            We have no way to know.  We’re not told why John was out there, but he was there.  And he received the word of God there.  

            And it was quite a word.  John was to be the one the prophet Isaiah had talked about.  He was the one who was going to prepare the way for the coming of the Savior, Jesus Christ.

            That’s a big job, you know?  I mean, it would be an honor to be called to do something like that, of course.  But--just exactly how do you do that?  How do you prepare people for the coming of the Savior?  And what if you mess it up?  What if you don’t do it right?  What’s going to happen if people are not, in fact, prepared for the coming of the Savior?

            Did John ask about stuff like that?  When the word of God came, did the word tell John how to do this?  Did the word fill John with confidence that he could?  We don’t know.  What we do know is that he went out and did it.  From his place in the wilderness, John started preparing the way for the coming of the Savior.  And we’re told he did that by “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”

            And we’ll get back to that, but again, I’m just fascinated by the person of John and how all this actually worked.  Did people know who John was?  Did they recognize him as the son of Zechariah the Priest?  Did they remember the remarkable circumstances of his birth, how John’s birth had been foretold by an angel, how Zechariah was unable to speak from the time the angel spoke to him until John was born, how Elizabeth was past her childbearing years and yet still gave birth?  Did all that give John credibility, so that people believed him?

            And how did John get started?  I mean, yes, John was to be a voice crying in the wilderness, as Isaiah had prophesied, but he could not have just stood out there in the wilderness with no one around.  Somehow, John had to go to where some people were, or get them to come to him.  I mean, yes, once he got rolling, people came out to the Jordan to be baptized by him.  But that had to start somehow.  Who were the first people to come out to him?  And how did they learn about him and know to go out there?

            We’re not told any of that.  All we know is that, somehow, John attracted a following.  And again, he did so by “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”

            We know that, as the Apostle Paul said, we are all sinners.  We don’t like to think about that, sometimes, but we know it’s true.  And we know that we need to ask God for forgiveness of our sins.

            But too often, we stop there.  We ask God for forgiveness, we assume that, because God loves us, God will forgive us, and we go on our way.  Asking God for forgiveness is a good first step, but that’s all it is, a first step.  We need to do more than that.

            And that’s what John the Baptist told people.  He told them--and us--that it’s not enough to just ask for forgiveness of our sins.  We need to repent of them.  We need to change.  And our lives need to show that we’ve repented.  Our lives need to show that we’ve changed.  As John puts it, you and I need to “produce fruit in keeping with [our] repentance.”

            And that’s where it gets tricky.  Because the fact is that most of us--including me--don’t really want to change our lives.  Most of us are pretty happy with our lives the way they are.  And even if we’re not all that happy with our lives, well, we’re used to them.  Our life may not be perfect, but it’s comfortable.  We know how to handle it.  We know how to deal with it.  If we really change our lives, if we really decide to produce fruit in keeping with our repentance, well, we don’t know where that will lead.  And it scares us.

            I wonder if it scared John the Baptist.  Again, we don’t know what his life was like before he received the word of God.  But I’m pretty sure that, whatever it was like, receiving the word of God changed it.  Once he heard that word, his life was not easy at all.  He ate locusts and wild honey.  He wore clothing made of camel’s hair.  And he also got into a lot of trouble.  He got on the wrong side of Herod, who had him thrown in prison and eventually had him killed.  John the Baptist lived his faith.  It may have scared him to do that--we don’t know--but he did it anyway.  If he was scared, the Lord was able to help him overcome his fear.  He followed the word of God he received, even to his death.

            It’s okay if changing our lives scares us.  It’s okay if we’re hesitant.  But God wants to help us overcome our fear.  God wants us to receive His word, too.  No matter what the consequences of following might be.  As John said, we need to show fruit in keeping with our repentance.  If our lives don’t show that fruit, can we truly say that we’ve repented?

            This is important.  Because listen to what John says is going to happen when the Savior comes:  “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

            That sounds like there’s no middle ground.  That sounds like our half-way measures are not good enough.  We need to truly repent, and our lives need to show that we’ve truly repented.

            Now, I do want to make one thing clear.  I am not saying that we need to be good so we can earn our way into heaven.  We don’t earn our way into heaven.  We never could.  We could never be good enough to earn our way into heaven.  

            What I am saying, and what I think John was saying, is that we are called to repent of our sins.  And if we truly have repented, our lives should show that we have repented.  If we have, then we’re part of the wheat the Lord will gather into the barn.  But if we’re not, we may be part of the chaff that is burned in the fire.

            Asking for forgiveness is easy.  Anyone can do that.  But truly repenting of our sins, truly changing our lives, truly showing that fruit that’s in keeping with our repentance, that’s hard.  

            But this is advent.  This is the time when we prepare for the coming of the Savior.  We need to prepare for Jesus’ second coming just as much as John the Baptist needed to prepare people for that first coming.  And our preparation needs to include repentance, just as it did for the people preparing for Jesus’ first coming.

            So let’s look at our lives.  Let’s see if our lives, as they are, “produce fruit in keeping with repentance.”  And if they don’t, let’s open our hearts to God.  Let’s ask God to help us produce that fruit.  Let’s do what we can to make sure we’re the wheat, and not the chaff.  Let’s be the people God wants us to be.