Mark 1:1-8
At the time of John the Baptist, the way you got your sins forgiven was to go to Jerusalem, purchase an animal, bring it to a priest, who would pray for you, slaughter the animal, and burn some of it. The rest would be the priest’s dinner. This process went on all the time, but especially during the passover season. John the Baptist’s dad did this kind of work. Granted, like anything the process could be abused, and sometimes was. But to the Jews it wasn’t important if the priest was a scoundrel, what was important was that the process be done properly. Priests, of course, didn’t just do this. They participated in other rituals and had a role in determining whether a person was physically clean -- they diagnosed leprosy. The priests also had to be able to tell whether an animal was fit for sacrifice. All of this took training, so priests were among the educated classes.
So here comes John, dressing like Elijah the prophet. Whenever we hear about John’s diet, we westerners shudder a little bit, but apparently when you cook locusts, and many people do, they taste something like shrimp. And wild honey isn’t so bad either. But why so much attention to his diet? It’s because that’s one of the things the Israelites ate when they were wandering in the desert. Not just manna and quails. And the dietary laws of the Jewish people allow for eating locusts, crickets and grasshoppers, but no other insects. So John, the son of a priest and therefore entitled to the priestly office -- we don’t know if he was trained as a priest -- is acting out Israel’s history, coming out of the wilderness, wearing a prophet’s clothing, living on locusts and honey. And he offers a new way to have your sins forgiven. You don’t have to sacrifice an animal. But your commitment to reform your life has to be real, you have to plunge into the waters of the Jordan river, where your ancestors, a group of homeless wanderers, became a nation, crossing the water to occupy the promised land. That’s why undergoing a baptism of repentance was so attractive; it was a new beginning, it was claiming your ancestral heritage, and maybe it was a little bit of rebellion against the priests of the temple.
But John’s message, which we could read in some of the other gospels, was very simple; if you want to be rid of your sins, signify your repentance, certainly, but then change your life, that’s what repentance is about. He told the soldiers, “Be satisfied with your salary.” He told the tax collectors to take no more than what was owed them. And these were changes that meant something to the one who wanted his sins forgiven. If you want forgiveness from God, then change your lives.
Repentance is kind of a religious word, we don’t use it in casual conversation. Someone once broke repentance down into three parts, the three R’s. The first is to recognize our sins. Now sin means missing the mark. God wants us all to be perfect in what we are and what we do. Jesus said, “Be perfect, as my heavenly father is perfect””. But if you are like me, you know that you miss the mark every day. Are you the best husband or wife you could be? the best father or mother? The best kid? If you aren’t then recognition of what you could have done differently is the beginning of repentance. Someone once said that an unexamined life is not worth living. We need to get in the habit of examining our lives.
The second R is receiving forgiveness. Jesus has, after all, won God’s forgiveness for all of us, but we have to accept it. We Catholics do that in the sacrament of reconciliation, of course, but we should be open to God’s forgiveness every day. Once we recognize where we have failed to hit the mark, we accept God’s forgiveness and set out to try again, to become a little more what God wants us to be. And that involves considering how we might avoid falling into the same trap as yesterday. I’m always surprised at how frequently I confess the same old things. I must not be receiving forgiveness the way I should.
The third R is reforming your life. When we take part in the sacrament of reconciliation, we are supposed to leave with a “firm purpose of amendment”. This refers to our whole lives. The people baptized by John went through the process once; it signified a new beginning, a new birth. When we repent, we look over our whole life, not just our named sins. Can we do more good in the world? Are there habits that are reducing our productivity? Am I actively trying to be more loving, especially to the people near me? What am I going to do about my deficiencies? How am I going to be more Christ-like?
Today as we meet John once again on the second sunday of advent, let us pray for the gift of repentance, and remember the three r’s, -recognize our sins; receive forgiveness, reform our lives. We can be saints, after all.
