With that piercing
sound, Frank Meyer announced to his four sleeping children that it was time to
wake up. Perhaps his method was a bit
unorthodox, but I can assure you, it was effective. I wonder if my father looked to John the
Baptist as a role model. John’s methods
were certainly unorthodox, and his message was the same: It’s time to wake up.
In our Gospel passage we
greet John the Baptist – the voice of one crying out in the desert. John calls us to prepare the way of the Lord.
Clearly, “[s]omething is afoot; the hidden energies of history are at
work. A mystery is unfolding.”[1] What is this great mystery? Nothing less than the Kingdom of God! And as our readings tell us, God’s Kingdom is
worth preparing for: Our Psalm tells us
that at the coming of the Kingdom, justice will flourish, and we’ll experience
the fullness of peace forever; and the passage from Isaiah tells us that there
shall be no harm or ruin – that the wolf shall be the guest of the lamb and the
leopard shall lie down with the kid. Eternal
peace and justice: that sounds pretty
good to me. So how do we prepare for it? Well, we repent.
The Greek word that’s
mostly commonly translated as “repent” in the Bible is metanoia. But metanoia has a broader meaning than
simply “repent.” “The term carries the
double connotation of changing your mind and your behavior. It signals a need to go beyond your present
mindset and allow a new mindset to drive new actions.”[2] Another way to think of it is “conversion.” Through John, God calls us to a conversion of
mind and to a conversion of heart. And
this is a big deal. “God became man to turn
creatures into sons [and daughters]: not
simply to produce better people of the old kind but to produce a new kind of
person. It is not like teaching a horse
to jump better and better but like turning a horse into a winged creature.”[3] Repentance, metanoia, opens our hearts to the will of God and enables us to
soar to lofty new heights.
So how do we experience metanoia? Well, metanoia
starts with waking up. It begins with
self-awareness. All of us have something
or some things in our lives that hold us back – things that stop us from living
the fullness of God’s Kingdom here and now.
“John the Baptist knows that the way to the garden of human flourishing is
through the desert of self-confrontation.”[4] We have to identify and confront the things
that are holding us back, the things that keep us from enjoying the fullness of
God’s Kingdom. Is it our egos, grudges,
jealously, resentment? We need to look
deep inside and find them. Only then can
we move onto the next stage of metanoia: self-adjustment.
Once we've identified the
ties that bind us, we need to free ourselves from them. Perhaps that means we need to let go of our jealousy
and be grateful for the many gifts we have.
Maybe we need to forgive someone who has wronged us, even if the other
person doesn’t deserve to be forgiven. Or
maybe we need to accept that we treat people more like objects than as children
of God. We all know that confronting our
shortcomings isn't always easy and it isn't pleasant. But it’s necessary if we really want to change our minds and our behavior – if we really
want metanoia.
Lastly, metanoia involves opening ourselves to
the will of God. By challenging the
Pharisees and Sadducees to produce good fruit as evidence of their repentance, John
the Baptist makes it abundantly clear that our conversion will be complete when
we open our hearts to do God’s will. The
produce of a heart open to God’s will is good
fruit because when we open our hearts to God’s will, justice will flourish, and
we will experience the fullness of peace.
God’s will is simple.
It’s love: love of God and love
of neighbor. There’s no shortage of
opportunities to do God’s will because there’s shortage of opportunities to
love our neighbor, to help people who need help around the world and in our own
community. Right here in our parish you
can help us build a home and a classroom in Haiti, you can provide food and
school supplies for orphans in Colombia, you can adopt a local family from our
giving tree, or you can donate food and clothing to our social concerns pantry,
and that’s just a few of the many charitable services we support. Metanoia
allows us to “know the truth of loving both God and neighbor.”[5]
You know, just two days
ago we were reminded of a wonderful example of metanoia with the death of Nelson Mandela. Mandela lived a life of violence before he
was imprisoned for conspiracy to overthrow the government. But 27 years in prison was quite a wake-up call for Nelson Mandela. Reflecting on
the day he was released from prison, Mandela said, “As I walked out the door
toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my
bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.” By loosing the chains of his ego, Mandela was
free to take up the yoke of justice and peace; he opened himself to the will of
God and ushered in an era of forgiveness, justice and peace in South
Africa. Now that’s conversion, and by
the grace of God, we can all do it.
Click here for the readings for the Second Sunday of Advent, December 8, 2013
[1]
John Shea, The Spiritual Wisdom of the Gospels
for Christian Preachers and Teachers: On
Earth as it is in Heaven, Year A (Collegeville, Liturgical Press, 2004) at
30.
[2] Id.
[3] C.S.
Lewis, Mere Christianity (San Francisco,
Harper Collins, 2001) at 216.
[4] Shea
at 31.
[5] Shea
at 36.
[6] Mitch
Albom, Have a Little Faith (New York,
Hyperion, 2009) at 212-213.
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