Matthew 3:1-12
“Called to Conversion”
I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed that each of the three years in the lectionary cycle is focused on a different Gospel. Last year was Year C so we were reading lots of stories from the Gospel of Luke. And when we started into Year A last Sunday, we switched over to a focus on the Gospel of Matthew.
One of my favourite lectionary commentaries, the SALT Commentary, points out this week that “as we enter Matthew’s masterpiece, it’s worth remembering what sort of thing a ‘gospel’ is. Originally intended to be read aloud, Matthew is a kind of story-sermon meant to declare good news (gospel) in ways that provoke listeners to reflect, repent, believe, and serve the wider world… In short, a ‘gospel’ is a form of strategic storytelling that aims to change your life.”
Have you ever thought about the Gospels in that way before… that when you sit down to read a passage of Scripture that the goal of the author, or perhaps even the goal of the God who inspired their writing, is to change your life?
They’re not just trying to convey some historical information. They’re not just aimed at educating or entertaining those who would read them. But the hope is that when we read these Gospels, when we take them seriously and reflect on them deeply, that we will actually be changed by them.
I know a few Christians who speak about their faith in that way. At some point in their life, they read one of the Gospels or they heard an inspiring sermon, or they had someone share their faith with them personally, and it led to their conversion. The patterns and priorities of their lives were suddenly changed as they added practices of prayer, worship, and Scripture study, and as they made changes in their habits of giving and serving in the church and the wider community.
Of course, many of us have been Christians for a long time, perhaps even throughout our lives, so we may not be able to think back on one key moment of dramatic change. But after reading our Gospel text for today, I would like to suggest that we’re all called to conversion today.
Before getting into the stories about Jesus’ adult life and ministry, the author of Matthew’s Gospel tells us about John the Baptist. He was the one who appeared in the wilderness near Judea, who preached and baptized, calling all the people to repent, for the kingdom of heaven had come near.
The Greek word that we translate to “repent” is “metanoia” which means to turn around and go in another direction. It means not only that we have a “change of heart” but also a “change of life,” a thoroughgoing and ongoing shift and reorientation.
The visible sign for this change that John uses is baptism, an immersive rite that was practised at that time. But baptism was typically reserved for Gentile converts to Judaism. It signified their comprehensive conversion. If you were born Jewish, you wouldn’t be baptized. Baptism was for those converting from other religions.
That’s why it’s a bit odd that among the crowds of people coming to John for baptism, there were many Pharisees and Sadducees – the religious leaders within Judaism. When Luke tells the same story, he specifically mentions that there were tax collectors and soldiers in the crowd as well. These are people that we can all imagine need to repent – people who were known for taking extra taxes from the poor or using their power to threaten and intimidate others.
But Matthew only highlights the fact that there were religious leaders there, and John doesn’t exactly greet them warmly when they try to respond to his invitation to be baptized. “You brood of vipers!” he yells at them, “Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Therefore, bear fruit worthy of repentance, and do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”
I’m not entirely sure why many Pharisees and the Sadducees were coming to John for baptism. They obviously weren’t new converts to the faith, but I wonder if they were just swept up in the frenzy of this new religious energy that was swirling around John the Baptist. They were super-religious people, so perhaps they didn’t want to be left out of what seemed like another way to show their piety and devotion to God.
Well, if the religious leaders weren’t really taking this baptism seriously, or they weren’t really understanding its significance, John was not going to just let them do it for show. Baptism wasn’t just an extra thing they could do to make themselves look more religious – baptism was about repentance, about conversion, about a real change.
Of course, they might not have felt that they actually needed to change. They were, after all, the most faithful religious people in the whole crowd that day. They had adhered to all the laws of God the day before, and they’d keep on adhering to them the day after, while also putting a high priority on making sure that everyone else followed the laws carefully as well.
That’s the problem with super-religious people – whether they are Jews, or Christians, or Muslims, or pretty much any religion… We tend to think that we’re already good enough. We do all the religious stuff, and we start to believe that that’s all we need.
Meanwhile, there may be parts of our lives around which we desperately need a conversion. Maybe it’s the way we use our money – if we tend to spend it on frivolity or luxury that we do not need, while neglecting the needs of others around us, we should consider a change.
Maybe it’s the way we interact with people in the community. I’ve often heard that church folk who go out for lunch after worship are among the worst tippers, and sometimes we’re not even very polite to our servers. And that probably extends to others we interact with while shopping, or dealing with businesses on the phone, or while travelling, etc.
Maybe it’s how we treat our employees or co-workers or just other volunteers that we work with in community groups or within the church. Sometimes we’re not very patient with each other, and sometimes we’re not very kind. We’re smart, and dedicated, and hard-working, but sometimes our harsh words or our insistence that we are right can hurt people and break relationships.
In the Children’s Time this morning, I read the kids’ a book about “How to Apologize” and I assume that you were listening too. It’s the kind of thing we’re all supposed to learn when we are young, but it’s also the kind of thing that never really gets easier as we get older.
In fact, the issues in our relationships tend to get bigger and more complicated, and if we have avoided dealing with the problems for a long time, it can take a lot of courage to tell someone how their actions or words have impacted us, and even more courage to apologize to someone that we hurt.
I noticed a few basic principles in the storybook that I think apply at any age or stage of life.
First, “Everyone makes mistakes.” That includes tax collectors, soldiers, Pharisees, Sadducees, church folk today, and every one of us.
Second, “Apologizing can be hard.” Owning up to a mistake, or an oversight, or an unintended consequence of our words or actions can feel awful, and most of us will probably want to avoid it if we can.
But it is so important that we do apologize. Without excuses, with sincerity, whether we are apologizing for something recent or something that happened a long time ago, but was never resolved. We can do it in-person, or with a phone call, with a note, in an email, or even in a text message. The best method will depend on the person and the situation.
Now, just like John the Baptist told the religious leaders that coming to get baptized was not going to be enough, our apologies alone will not be sufficient to mend the broken relationships in our lives.
John compared people to trees, and said that we need to start bearing good fruit. In other words, we must avoid becoming religious people who do wrong things, confess our sins, and then go back to doing the same wrong things again.
And if we apologize to a friend for some bad behaviour, it won’t do any good if we keep on treating them in the same way going forward. The storybook suggests, “If possible, try to fix the mistake… And if you can’t, then take steps to avoid making the same mistake again.”
This whole line of thought brings to mind the confessions and apologies that our denomination has made to whole groups of people that have been hurt by the practices and policies of the church over the years.
In 1994, The Presbyterian Church in Canada confessed our participation in the Residential School System and our complicity in the harm done to Indigenous people through it. In more recent years, we also confessed the racism and homophobia that have been embedded in our institution, and we made commitments to change.
But the most difficult part was not the making of the apologies. The hardest part is trying to fix the mistakes, making reparations, and trying to avoid making the same mistakes again.
In 2024, our church made a new apology to Indigenous people, and we used that word “apology.” Thirty years later, we understand a bit more about what we had done wrong, not only in operating Residential Schools, but also in participating in the whole colonial project. And we understand a bit more about the harm that has been done, including harm to the students who attended the schools, but also the massive intergenerational trauma that followed.
Our new apology includes five commitments – things that we are committed to working on as a church to make reparations and stop the harm going forward:
- We will continue to listen and learn from Indigenous people, leaders, Elders and Knowledge Keepers, welcoming and engaging voices from both within and beyond The Presbyterian Church in Canada.
- We will continue the work of reconciliation, responding to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 Calls to Action and the work of reparation that we have begun.
- We will respect traditional Indigenous spiritual practices.
- We will listen to and tell the truth about the past.
- We will work to support Indigenous led healing and wellness initiatives and be in solidarity with Indigenous people and communities.
The repentance to which we are called in this Season of Advent is a change of heart and a change of life that leads to the growth of good fruit. No matter how long we have been Christians, or how deeply immersed we are in the life and ministry of the church, we are called to conversion once again today.
So I invite you to consider in these weeks leading up to Christmas… What are the relationships in your life that need to be mended, the apologies that you are called to speak, the reparations that you are called to make, and the steps you are called to take in order to avoid making the same mistakes again.
May God give us all a spirit of courage, humility, and love as we respond to the call to conversion once again this year.