Brief synopsis of the readings: Once again we take our first reading from the series of books that Catholics accept and Protestants don’t (I promise it’s not personal). Baruch writes from exile (perhaps in Egypt, perhaps in Babylon) to those who were left in Israel during the darkest time in their history. He proclaims a message of hope, that the readers’ suffering is soon to be at an end. They are instructed to ” take off [their] robe of mourning and misery [and] put on the splendor of glory from God forever: wrapped in the cloak of justice from God.” Furthermore ” Israel may advance secure in the glory of God.” Luke’s Gospel speaks of John the Baptist. He proclaimed “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” Drawing a line from Isaiah (Chapter 40) to John the Baptist, Luke writes this: “A voice of one crying out in the desert: Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths. Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low. The winding roads shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

The Season of Advent gives us our best understanding of John the Baptist. We know precious little of John. Scripture is not entirely clear, but we believe that Jesus’ mother (Mary) is a “kinswoman” to the mother of John the Baptist (Elizabeth). The terms “cousin” is both close enough and vague enough to fit Jesus and John.

OK, I do genealogy as a hobby and I know way too much about this, but we are cousins to more people than we think. First cousins share grandparents, second cousins share great grandparents, etc. Most of us know our first cousins and most of our second cousins. Our third cousins (sharing great great grandparents) are mostly strangers to us. But this really misses the point.

We see from the beginning of Luke’s Gospel that Mary and Elizabeth had a close enough relationship to be involved in each other’s lives. We also know that John and Jesus are close enough in age that both of their mothers were pregnant at the same time.

We know nothing of the relationship between Jesus and John when they were growing up, but I hope they were friends. When I was growing up I had limited encounters with my cousins, but I valued them and enjoyed our time together. My older cousins gave me information on relatives they remembered that I didn’t. My younger cousins were much fewer but they appreciated the information I gave them about relatives I knew that they didn’t. We had common relationships and gave each other common memories.

And now, as adults, at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, John takes on a crucial role. He is the trumpet that announces the arrival of the king, the town crier with the latest news. He calls for repentance through an interesting two step process: repentance summons the person to baptism and baptism forgives sins. This seed begins the (mercifully now abandoned) belief that baptism erases “original sin” and provides the only opportunity for salvation. That false belief led many to conclude that babies who die before baptism will not go to Heaven but will instead go to Limbo. It was a terrible misinterpretation of this reading.

But the fear new parents felt as they rushed their newborns to church for baptism speaks to us today. As I spoke about last week, fear is a powerful motivator. And unfortunately the word “repent” too often calls fear to the head of our thoughts. Instead of seeing John’s words inviting us to walk a path of forgiveness we focus on the reason we need to repent. Let’s not do that.

Let us look, instead, to the first reading from Baruch. The most hopeful passages from Scripture inevitably come from our darkest chapters. Baruch writes from the Babylonian exile, the darkest chapters of the Old Testament. Baruch himself is in exile. When the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem they didn’t exile everyone, just the leaders. Many were allowed to stay in Jerusalem but it was a painful existence: their Temple had been destroyed and their rulers were strangers with different values and beliefs. For someone like Baruch, writing from exile, a message of hope must have astounded his audience. He didn’t predict the future (that the Babylonians would themselves be conquered) but instead he told them that God will “[lead] Israel in joy by the light of his glory, with his mercy and justice for company.”

So which is it? Rejoice or repent? Well, as my seminary professor Fr. Jerry Austin would say, it’s not either/or, it’s both/and.

I think most of us fear repentance because we fear it won’t work, or at least it won’t be enough. I remember from my childhood listening to two people on the radio joking about something they observed. One person hurts or offends a second person who yells: “You can at least say you’re sorry.” But when the first person apologizes, the second person yells: “That’s not enough!” Perhaps we undervalue our ability to repent, or (more to the point) God’s patience in accepting our repentance. I think we all remember from our childhood someone, whether a parent, teacher, or coach, who told us to stop apologizing and finally get it right. For all its good intent, we took from those encounters the belief that patience was a bank and every time we repented we withdrew from a finite amount. At some point we will repent and find ourselves overdrawn and forgiveness will not be granted.

OK, let’s admit this is true in human to human relationships. There are only so many times we can ask our spouse for forgiveness, over whatever transgression, before the relationship begins to unravel. Our boss is going to look for other alternatives after a finite number of times we lose an account. Our children will begin to decrease their respect for us when we become too eager to admit that we were wrong without decreasing those times.

But we sell God short when we believe that God looks on us the same way. God knows us better than we know ourselves, let alone better than those who know us.

But if we believe, truly believe, that repentance leads directly to forgiveness (no matter how many times we repent) and that forgiveness leads directly to salvation, would we be more willing to see repentance not through the lens of shame, but through the lens of joy? I hope so.

In this season of Advent we prepare ourselves for something astounding in human history: God has chosen to crash into our world and become, in human form, part of our story. For poker fans, God is choosing to “go all in.” With all humility, knowing that I cannot know the mind of God, would God really do this for the salvation of only a few? Or would God decide that generosity has no limits that repentance should be a sign of elation?

I like to think God looks to repentance with great joy and hopes we do the same.