Repentance Is an Act of Joy

“And the crowds asked [John the Baptist], ‘What, then, should we do?’ In reply he said to them, ‘Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none, and whoever has food must do likewise.’” — Luke 3:11

In last week’s Gospel reading, we met John the Baptist, the “voice crying in the wilderness”  announcing the imminent arrival of the Messiah, a liberator come to set God’s people free. This week, we see that large crowds have come to meet John and be baptized by him in the River Jordan.

John may have grown up hearing about his cousin Jesus from his mother, Elizabeth, and their cousin, Mary the mother of Jesus, and he has discerned a call from God to prepare the people to welcome Jesus as their long-expected messiah. However, John is not particularly friendly in his approach. John is, in some ways, the last person you would expect to be the herald of the Messiah. He is direct to a fault, unlikable, and abrasive. Which begs the question — why did so many people journey out to meet him?

John doesn’t tell people what they want to hear; he tells them the truth: that the ways of this world are often at odds with God’s way of doing things. Despite his aggressive approach, John’s message is consistent with Jesus’s: He announces that God is coming into the world to fix the things that are broken. He says that God is here, even now, bringing about life and love in the middle of the uninhabitable wilderness. 

When John calls the crowds to repent, he’s not telling them to feel bad about themselves.

Repentance isn’t about wallowing in shame and guilt. The Christian call to repentance is an invitation to turn around. To stop, take stock of our lives, and then realign ourselves to God’s vision for the world.”

Repentance isn’t about wallowing in shame and guilt. The Christian call to repentance is an invitation to turn around. To stop, take stock of our lives, and then realign ourselves to God’s vision for the world. Repentance is an act of joy.

When the crowds ask how they are to do that, John essentially tells them to share what they have. “Be generous, be humble, and care for one another,” he says.

In that sense then, John the Baptist helps us prepare to welcome Jesus into our hearts by reminding us of what God wants for us: a world rooted in deep love that promises safety, peace, and abundance for all people. John points us to Jesus, who in turn points us to a world where sin — the things we do, or don’t do, that are not rooted in love — and death have no more power over us. John and Jesus invite us into the world that God intends for us.

It’s no wonder then that so many people were journeying into the wilderness to meet this wild-eyed prophet. Our ancestors yearned to hear this message as much as we do: that God is here, with us, that God loves us, and that God is already hard at work establishing a new world — the kingdom of God — here and now.

Read all of Sunday’s scriptures

Step Into the Story

Here are some ways to think about how John’s call to repentance points us to Jesus.

Visual Art

In this famous painting on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Renaissance artist Andrea del Sarto depicts an infant John the Baptist passing a globe to baby Jesus. In so doing, he illustrates the way that John’s message leads to Jesus, who comes as the savior of the world.

Poetry

If Charlotte Mason is remembered at all, it is for her work in educational reform; but she was also a poet. In “John the Baptist,” Mason contrasts John with other great heroes. She points out that we do not recall John as a doer of great deeds but as a voice crying out in the wilderness whose “flashing word is quick and powerful now as when first heard.”

Music

The first several chapters of Luke’s Gospel are full of people bursting into song, and that includes Zechariah, upon the birth of his son, John the Baptist (Luke 1:67–80). It’s a wonderful celebration of God’s promise-keeping and a summary of John’s future ministry. Renaissance composer Thomas Tallis wrote a straightforward but beautiful setting of this text that offers the chance to sit with Zechariah’s words and meditate on John’s life.

Father Matt is Priest and Director, Children, Youth, and Family, at Trinity Church.