Midwinter Metanoia

“Midwinter Metanoia”
Mark 1.1-8
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning, Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
10 December 2023
 
 Every year on the second Sunday of Advent, we get a special guest appearance in the Lectionary from John the Baptizer, he who survived by eating locusts and wild honey and wore rough clothing made of camel hair. We tend to think of John as an offbeat character, and that’s probably about right. One of the things I noticed in studying images of John is that he seems so much more human than most of the other subjects. He has the look of world-weariness about him. Perhaps that happens when you find yourself in the wilderness shouting, “Repent! For the Kingdom of God has come near.” In the Gospel According to Matthew, and he adds insult to injury, calling the Sadducees and Pharisees a “brood of vipers,” a nest of poisonous reptilian offspring. Not generally a good way to win friends and influence people.

Most of us probably don’t think of Advent as a penitential season, when we stop and enumerate our sins and make a plan to change course. But on this second Sunday of Advent, that is what John the Baptizer calls us to do. However, that language takes some serious unpacking, because for many of us the language of sin and repentance sounds more televangelist than we’re used to. And what’s more, it has caused injury to people who are not able to believe that God’s goodness lies within them.

Still, it is important for 21st century liberal Christians not to dismiss traditional language out of hand; if we do that, we lose some of the richness and depth of our faith tradition and the wisdom it holds. Instead, we need to re-examine and redefine some of the language.

Let’s start with sin. You may think of sin as wrongdoing, and sometimes it is. For the great 20th century theologian, Paul Tillich, sin is more about estrangement and separation. Adam and Eve become estranged from God, living east of Eden. We are living as exiles, cut off from our true home. And our true home is God.
Marcus Borg writes, “Our estrangement can become hardened by how we live; we indulge our self-centeredness…. Estrangement, the birth of the separated self, is the natural result of growing up; it cannot be avoided. For the same reason, we develop closed hearts, a shell around the self. There is a sense in which we are blinded by the imprinting of culture on our psyches and perception.”[1] It happens to all of us.

Let’s look at an Advent example of someone who has been “hardened by how he lives” and who “indulges in self-centeredness,” but who has a profound change of heart.

[“How the Grinch Stole Christmas” clip.]

Maybe you never thought about John the Baptizer when you watched “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” but it is as if there, on the crest of Mount Crumpet, the Grinch sees his estrangement from the Whos down in Whoville, and his hardened heart breaks open and grow three times its size.

You never heard the word “repent” in the clip, but what you saw was a beautiful example of what repentance really means. “The biblical meaning of ‘repent’ is not primarily contrition, but resolve. In the Hebrew Bible, to repent means primarily to return to God. Its metaphorical home is the exile. To repent means to return from exile, to reconnect with God, to walk the way in the wilderness that leads from Babylon to God.”[2] As the Grinch returns to find community and love and meaning with the Whos down in Whoville, it is a homecoming that I’d imagine makes God smile.

Repent is a scary word, especially because we usually think of it coming from the mouth of a fiery evangelist like Elmer Gantry, and it sure seems holier-than-thou in our context. But in biblical Greek, it’s actually a lovely, beautiful word that has a surplus of meaning. The word metanoia has two roots that connote going beyond the mind you currently have. And I would add that for me it means going beyond the mind and the HEART you currently have. Go beyond the mind and heart that have been shaped by self-interest. Go beyond the mind and heart that have been molded by American consumerism and greed. Go beyond and embrace the heart and mind of Jesus’ compassion and subversive wisdom.
When John the Baptizer offers a “baptism of metanoia,” he is inviting people into the embodied process of transformed lives, going beyond the things that keep them in exile or in bondage. You know what that looks like…it isn’t easy. It certainly wasn’t for Ebenezer Scrooge!

[Clip from “A Christmas Carol.”]

I didn’t show you the visitations of the three spirits, because metanoia can be scary if you really embrace it. But you can use your memory to imagine the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and yet to come. What would those spirits show you from your past, present, and future? Charles Dickens described Scrooge as a “miserable old sinner,” and that isn’t what you saw in Patrick Stewart’s portrayal of the miser after his moment of metanoia.

Scrooge has been separated not just from his family and the Cratchits, he has cut himself off from the whole human family and from God. But it isn’t too late for him, is it? Metanoia is a real possibility for each of us in our alienation and exile.
Perhaps Advent is more preparing the way and tending to the rebirth of the spirit of Christ within each of us and in our church, rather than waiting for the birth of Jesus 2,000 years ago, or for the second coming. Who knows what new life may spring up afresh within any of us? And maybe the people sitting around you will be the midwives who encourage and help you in that rebirth.
Where in your life are you feeling perhaps a bit estranged, cut off, or bound up? Simply acknowledging those pieces of your current mindset is the first step in rebirth or finding your way back home from exile. God is waiting for each of us to accept the invitation to renewal, rebirth, transformation, and wholeness. In our full humanity and our imperfection, God bids us come toward the light of the world and to midwinter metanoia.

May it be so. Amen.
 
© 2023 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact [email protected] for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.
 
[1] Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity. (SF: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003), p. 168.
[2] Ibid., p. 180.