The prophet Zephaniah tells us: God will rejoice over us with gladness, God will renew us in God’s love.
The prophet John (as in Baptist) tells us that we are a brood of vipers who must bear fruits worthy of repentance.
So which is it—-vipers in God’s sight or objects of God’s Love? Are we worthless or worthy? Have we messed up big time or are we ok? Which is it?
Well it’s both or maybe, better put, it is whatever it is and no matter, at the end of the day, God rejoices when we turn toward God and live in God’s love and light.
So are we a brood of vipers? Sure we are. Do we mean to be? Nope. But that doesn’t stop us from our missteps, our wrong turns, our sinfulness. We mess up. All the time.
God loves us. All the time.
Both things can be—and are—true. We’re vipers who God longs for. We’re disciples, whom God adores.
The tricky thing is, even when we’re vipers, God adores us….and because of that love, God is saddened by our viper-ness. [ok, so that’s not a word, but I hope you get what I mean]—assuming we don’t want to make God sad, we want to be less viper-like and more disciple-like
But, just how do we make the switch? How do we transform from vipers to disciples?
Through the change of direction known as repentance.
The German theologian , Karl Rahner, maintained that all people, in every action of their lives, are either moving more toward God or away from God. That we are either serving the greater good: God; or the lesser (but more immediate) good: us.
So to force an image: Viper-ing is moving away from God discipling/loving God in all that we do, is moving toward God. The turning from one toward the other is repentance.
And it is what John calls us to do.
God’s love doesn’t waver, our turning toward it and embracing it? That does.
John’s asked, what do we do? How do we stop being a a brood of vipers? John answers by proceeding to outline the basics of our Christian faith:
Give to others. Care for others. Think of others.
Intellectually we all know this, and we proudly tell ourselves that we do it. But when we get down to it, in the daily living of our lives, do we do all that we can to move ourselves closer to God? Probably not; as.one commentator noted, to repent is to tell the truth to ourselves. It means taking a daily inventory of our actions and asking, did I do unto others as I would have done unto me? Did I today, treat my neighbor well? Did I share? Did I step aside in order to let someone else shine? Did I think about how the decisions I made that day, the actions I took affected the world around me.
Repentance, turning toward God, is what all the prophets—the matriarchs and patriarchs of our faith—call us to do.
As we head into the final two weeks of Advent we’re asked to repent—to turn away from our viper-ness and turn toward our God-ness—we do that by taking a daily, rigorous inventory of ourselves: what did I do today that brought me closer to God, and what did I do today that took me farther from God? For the next two weeks I encourage you to ask yourself that question every evening—I guarantee that by engaging in that honesty you’ll find yourself choosing more and more to move toward God. To turn away from viper-ness and turn toward discipleship. Rejoice, my friends, I say rejoice, repent and return to the Lord, for the Lord is waiting,the Lord is nigh…all we need to do is keep turning toward him.
Amen .
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