Glad Surprise

Be baptized, repent, and believe!

A few years ago, the team at

Crackers & Grape Juice

wrote a series of Advent devotionals. The theme was “Advent Begins in the Dark,” in homage to Rev. Fleming Rutledge. This coming Sunday, the Revised Common Lectionary looks to John the Baptizer. Below is a reflection on John's call to repent as we prepare to receive Christ.

Be baptized, repent, and believe!

You might hear these words preached or even be the one preaching them this coming Sunday. You might even read this while writing your sermon, making the final preparations for worship on the second Sunday of Advent.

“Repent because the Lord is coming” does not sound like the order of things I would take, knowing Christ’s return is imminent. Repenting (metanoia, μετάνοια), to have a change of mind, to reorient one’s life completely, seems out of place in a season where the preparations for Christ’s return birth begin with a trip to Target and Home Depot and end with deliveries from Amazon and visits from relatives you have not seen (or talked to since last Christmas).

Both the prophet Malachi and John the Baptist knew repentance was something many would struggle with.

“I will draw near to you for judgment; I will be swift to bear witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired workers in their wages, the widow and the orphan, against those who thrust aside the alien, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.”

Malachi 3:5, NRSV

“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?Bear fruits worthy of repentance.”

Luke 3:7, NRSV

Both of these verses are outside the assigned lectionary readings for tomorrow. If the preacher opted to stay within the confines of the pericope, you might miss them.

Both prophets warn that if the refiner’s fire does not purify you or you do not repent, the judgment will be harsh. The prophets warned us. We were told before Christ’s arrival that repentance would be required. Yet, we see something different in Christ's ministry.

Reading Fleming’s work, one realizes, “John the Baptizer warns us of vipers to ‘flee from the wrath to come.’ But when God’s wrath arrives, in the flesh, he says – with nary a mention of repentance – ‘come, follow me.”

Howard Thurman was a theologian, pastor, civil rights leader, and the author of Meditations of the Heart. One of my favorite meditations from this book is titled, “The Glad Surprise.” Here is an excerpt:

“There is something compelling and exhilarating about the glad surprise. The emphasis upon glad. There are surprises that are shocking, startling, frightening, and bewildering. But the glad surprise is something different from all of these. It carries with it the element of elation, life, of something over and beyond the surprise itself…There is a deeper meaning in the concept of the glad surprise. This meaning has to do with the very ground and foundation of hope about the nature of life itself… It is as if a man stumbling in the darkness, having lost his way, find that the spot at which he falls is the foot of a stairway that leads from darkness into light. Such is the glad surprise.”

I typically think of the glad surprise as the empty tomb. After seeing what happened on the cross, the disciples fearfully hide. They hear of an empty tomb but still hide. It was not until they received the peace of the Lord, the peace that can only come from the risen Christ, that the glad surprise of Easter began.

The glad surprise of Advent and Christmas is no different. We busy ourselves making the preparations for the season, distracting ourselves from repenting. We shop, we spend, we eat, and we are. In all of this, we ignore the call from the prophets to be baptized and repent. Then Christ is born, and we are surprised. We panic. We are not ready. I have a feeling the same will be true when Christ returns. We won’t be ready. But the glad surprise of Advent is that even when we do not repent, Christ has repented for us. As a mentor of mine puts it, “God repents us even when we choose not to.” Such is the glad surprise of Advent.