Earth Movers

When was the last time you read the apocryphal book of Baruch? Have you ever? Do you know who Baruch was? One of my many Jewish friends in high school was named Baruch. At the time I didn’t know that he was named for the prophet Jeremiah’s secretary, who had to write Jeremiah’s words down more than once because an angry king burned the scrolls.

I’ve always been a bit leery of the Apocrypha – if the Jews didn’t want that stuff in their Bible, why should we? So I was surprised to find echoes of Isaiah in Baruch, making hills low and filling up valleys so that the people of Israel could walk on level ground. And what beautiful imagery! “The woods and every fragrant tree have shaded Israel at God’s command…For God will lead Israel with joy, in the light of his glory.” It’s not nearly as familiar as Isaiah 40, which shows up in Year B’s Advent (and Handel’s Messiah), but still nice.

And it’s a good parallel to Luke’s description of earth moving in the Gospel for Advent 2. I finally had time to translate the Sunday Gospel from Greek, frustrating but well worth it (although it does make the parish administrator wonder about the exasperated muttering coming from my office). Luke is so careful to set his story in real time. No “once upon a time” for him! He also introduces us gradually to John the Baptist, who simply bursts on the scene in Mark.

The big word for John (or JBap, as we call him at home) is metanoia, usually translated as repentance. Curiously, it’s a word that hardly ever shows up in the Old Testament, and for the Greeks it had the rather mild connotation of changing one’s mind. For John, however, and for Jesus after him, it’s a life-changing conversion, a total turning toward God and away from sin, something that affects all of life and conduct. As we will see next week, with JBap that inner change must find outward expression in acts of love.

Metanoia with John is pretty stern stuff. It doesn’t seem to be tempered with mercy. Jesus, being fully divine as well as fully human, knew how to being God’s mercy into the picture. Even though they both had the same message of repentance, John’s is based on Law and Jesus’ is on the Gospel. And that makes all the difference. Ultimately, the message of Jesus is one of joy.

Recently I preached at an ecumenical Thanksgiving service at an Assembly of God church. Before I spoke, a young man witnessed to everyone how he had turned to Jesus from a life of alcohol and drugs. My message was not nearly as powerful as that. He had leveled mountains and filled valleys. I had moved a bit of dirt. Yet God was at work in both of us. Both of us had experienced an inward change; both were finding outward expressions of God’s grace. God was leading us both with joy, in the light of his glory. I think I’ll take repentance from Jesus any day.

Advent 2: Baruch 5:1-9; Song of Zechariah (BCP Canticle 16); Philippians 1:3-11; Luke 3:1-6. Most of what I learned about metanoia came from Geoffrey Bromiley’s one-volume abridgement of the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament.