Repent for the Forgiveness of Your Sins!

¹In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler^£ of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler^£ of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler^£ of Abilene, ²during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. ³He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, ⁴as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,

There once was a guy who hung out in the boonies, out the middle of nowhere. He wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist. Out there in the wilderness, his food was locusts and wild honey. He was not quite a hermit or recluse, however, as he did come out of seclusion from time to time and came into contact with people with dramatic results.

There exists another guy, who also dresses funny and appears for only handful a days out of each year. He too comes into dramatic contact with people. This guy wears a big red suit with white furry piping. He hangs out at malls where he sits in big velvet-looking chairs with a snows cape or a toymaker’s workshop set up around him and little kids and their parents line up for hours to take pictures with him.

Santa Claus and John the Baptist. What do these two have in common? Well, very little actually, except in timing, in when they show up nowadays.

Santa we know, shows up every year at the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade, he’s the guy sitting on the last float that flows down Broadway, just before we turn off the television and sit down for our Thanksgiving turkey. He sticks around until all the Christmas craziness is past and maybe even lingers a bit until he passes the baton to Baby New Year at the Rose Parade in Pasadena California. In between, he’s a party animal, bringing gifts, riding sleighs pulled by wild forest creatures, eating cookies and drinking mild in every house where pre-teens live and doing market research for chimney sweeps everywhere.

John the Baptist on the other hand was executed in prison almost 2000 years ago. You see he provoked some Roman provincial bureaucrat by telling him that sleeping with his brother’s wife was wrong and illegal. He no longer makes appearances. However, some of his story is recorded in the New Testament of the Bible and we pull it about this time each year, in preparation for Christmas

So Christmas, that’s what these two guys have in common. But there, the similarities end.

Santa is the harbinger of the annual Christmas festival. John the Baptist was the herald for Christ and the sentinel of the kingdom Christ promises to establish. He was one of the few people who recognized who Jesus was before Jesus himself was executed at the hands of the Romans and then resurrected.

The Gospel of Matthew has recorded something about John the Baptist. There we find that he went around saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”[1]

The words from Luke that we just read say, “He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”

In Matthew it says he was fearless. Not only did he challenge the sexual transgressions of the governor of the land, which eventually got him killed, but he challenged the priests of his time as well.

“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” he howls at them. He challenges their comfortable authority, their unimpeachable power and their exploitation of innocents.

He was fearless. He was obnoxious. He had no regard for his personal safety and at what might happen to him if he spoke up. He spoke for righteousness and he spoke for Christ and he announced that the Kingdom of God was at hand.

Between the years of 1999 and 2000, a newly married, 28 year old church youth minister, YMCA volunteer and Boy Scout leader used, abused and raped 29 young boys from the communities surrounding Middletown and Danvers Massachusetts. “His victims described [this man] as a trusted adult friend who then betrayed them, sexually assaulting them in places where they – and their parents - thought they would be safe” in his office in the church where he served, in his home and various other places including the YMCA, where he worked as a swimming instructor. [2]

This predator would let the boys play racquetball, swim and watch movies during off hours. But eventually, he'd pull out a blue L.L. Bean duffel bag. In that bag he had pornographic videos and photos, a camera and so called toys, with which he would molest the young boys. One such attack took place on a Sunday, around Christmas in 1999.[3]

Santa was probably on the mind of that boy…what video games or toys he’d find under the tree in a few weeks, how much fun he’d have with his family, his friends.

Was John the Baptist on anybody’s mind in those moments? The guy that yelled to the social predators of his age, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”

Our culture, our society, our neighborhoods, our families, our communities have lots of fun with Santa, and there’s not so much wrong with that. But we need more of John the Baptist!

The closest the case of Christopher Reardon came to having a John the Baptist to call out the injustice of what happened were in the persons of Middleton and State Police officers who responded to the case, Essex County District Attorney Kevin Burke and his staff who prosecuted the case and Judge Isaac Borenstein who sent Christopher J. Reardon to prison for no less than 40 years.

As he made his final judgment, announcing to the court that Reardon would be in prison until he was almost seventy years old, Borenstein said, " I do not do this Mr. Reardon with one ounce of happiness or glee. I do it with a very firm and certain conviction that unless I do so, I will take the risk of having other children as victims and in good conscience, I cannot and will not, take that risk. "

Where were the John the Baptists who should have been overseeing and challenging what this pedophile was doing before it came to police, prosecutors and judges? Some have charged that Reardon’s supervisor, a priest in the parish where Reardon served should have caught or suspected him, but didn’t because he himself was engaged in similar activities, not with children but with other men. What would John the Baptist have said to Christopher Reardon or his supervisor priest about what happened in Middleton, Massachusetts in the winter of 1999 and spring of 2000? Would he have called these predators to repentance? Would he have challenged them and brought them out into the open?

Yes, the track record of John the Baptist says that’s exactly what he would have done. That’s exactly what he did - attack the comfort and complacency of those who took advantage of others, who lied and abused their authority at the expense of others.

Not only was the priest charged with negligence and sued, but so was the church and the Danvers YMCA where some of the attacks took place. Recently the Archdiocese of Boston has announced that they will sell land in Brighton Massachusetts to raise funds for the settlement of the court cases. The land they have proposed selling, holds the traditional homes of the Cardinals of Boston. How very symbolic! This land has on it the very private and hidden home of the powerful men who seemed to have hid injustices such as the one that happened in Danvers and Middleton that happened throughout this area for several decades.

These men should who should have been the prophetic voice, the John the Baptists for their communities who failed to do so and have been chased deeper into the shadows of their shame and transgression. It seems the church will now sell their seat of power to pay the price of the sin and evil over which they presided. Someone in that church is hearing the call of John the Baptist.

It is a powerful and symbolic act perhaps recognizing and trying to make amends that the institutions themselves are responsible for taking steps to protect those who have been entrusted to them to be nurtured and loved. So often those in power, leaders, individuals, and yes, even institutions like churches, youth centers, schools, workplaces and families are called on to take the role of John the Baptist and call for change and demand repentance. Sometimes those institutions themselves are called to changes and reform and must themselves decide to heed the call to repentance.

John the Baptist was a prophet who called sinners to repentance and who paid the price of his life for the honor of exercising his prophetic voice.

Before he died, he called out “Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand!” he cried. “Repent for Christ is coming.”

Evil is all around us. Sin is all around us all the time. John the Baptist knew this, and knew that it must be challenged.

“Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” Then challenges the offensive parties, “Bear fruit worthy of repentance!”

What is repentance anyhow? Doesn’t repentance allow us to escape punishment? If Reardon had repented before the police had caught him, would he not have gone to prison? I don’t know. I hope that he would have, because repentance is more than just saying “I’m sorry.”

“Bear fruit worthy of repentance,” says John the Baptist. Repentance means changing somehow, showing remorse and looking for a different way. It means changing the way you do things and seeking help if necessary. It means standing up to the repercussions of your actions and taking responsibility for what you have done. If Christopher Reardon had sought help, shown fruit of repentance, not lied about what he had but come clean, I don’t know if he would have gone to jail for 40 years. Perhaps he would have been allowed to seek treatment. Perhaps he would have been incarcerated in a place other than a prison. I certainly hope society would have found some way to keep him away from children for the rest of his life. Such things I leave in the hands of our legal system and government.

Before God, if Christopher Reardon sought repentance and dropped to his knees in remorse and allowed that to remorse to guide him to standing up to take responsibility for his actions, he would certainly saved his own soul from hell.

In the book of Romans we read “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”[4]

We reap according to what we sow, if you do what Christopher Reardon did, you get locked away for a long, long time. But God does not turn away even from such people.

And that’s the second half of what John the Baptist had to say. That’s the miracle of Christmas.

Yes, his message was one of repentance, but there is a promise that comes as a result of that repentance as well.

“The king is coming,” these verses tell us. The roads are going to be straightened out, the red carpet laid and throne prepared. And “the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough made smooth and all the flesh, ALL THE FLESH shall see the salvation of God.”

Remember the passage from Revelation 21 I read a few weeks ago? “No abomination or falsehood. Nothing unclean. No night, no crying, no pain, no death.” Its not the prophet who does this, not even the one who repents, accomplishes the task. God does this. God will bring on the new kingdom.

Those who repent will get an advanced experience in the coming of the kingdom. They who repent will be straightened out, they will begin to understand how to live without pain, without death, without abomination, without falsehood, because they have first admitted their participation and susceptibility to each of these things and have asked for help.

Christopher Reardon deserves to spend the rest of his living days in prison, where he will never have the opportunity to touch another boy for the rest of his life. Yet if he repents, he can receive the blessing of God, he can receive the opportunity to be made straight, to live without abomination, without falsehood, without death. So he doesn’t have to feel in his own soul that he is an abomination and a monster.

If God has extended such mercies to such as Christopher Reardon, how much more will God receive us, who hope to not only repent of our own inevitable sin, but be as John the Baptist in our world, standing up to the sin and the evil around us. How much more will he hear our prayer pleading for forgiveness and devoting ourselves to repentance and grant us the blessing and grace of his Kingdom.

This may have nothing to do with Santa, but it has everything to do with Christmas. It has everything to do with John the Baptist, and message that the Christ and his Kingdom were at hand.

As we prepare for Christmas, and enjoy our Christmas festival and prepare for Santa’s coming. I pray that we would have the courage to prepare for Christ’s coming too and repent and receive forgiveness for our own sin. And taking responsibility for our own sin, receive the piece of the Kingdom that comes from sincere repentance. I pray also that we would never shirk our own responsibilities to be as John the Baptist in our own walk in this world, standing and facing injustice and doing what we can to usher in the beauty and promise of God’s kingdom in its place.

[1] Matthew 3:2

[2]“Grand jury transcripts reveal lurid details in molestation case,” By Jay Lindsay, Associated Press, September 7, 2000

http://www.townonline.com/tol/specials/reardon/19888991.htm

[3] “Reardon's alleged victims reveal abuse accounts” By ROB MARINO, September 14, 2000 http://www.townonline.com/tol/specials/reardon/19888994.htm

[4] Romans 6:23

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