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Finding Hope In Repentance

  • Tis the season for annual show watching
  • There's more than a few that come on this time of year, or that we decide to find. We won't watch them any other time, but this season seems incomplete without some certain hits
    • Hearing Linus once again tell the Christmas story
    • Another year of saving the neck of the turkey
    • Convincing ourselves that once again we'll shoot our eye out, or:
    • Spoiler alert: watching the wet bandits again be foiled by an eight year old!
  • Yes, no year is complete without a watch of Home Alone, a movie that tests nearly everyone's ability to suspend disbelief
    • An apparently mega rich family (from what?) decide to take a trip to Paris with the extended family, and in the craziness of being late, somehow forget Kevin at home.
    • Steadily getting adjusted, Kevin not only manages himself, but fends off two bumbling thieves with a bunch of varying traps, and then somehow is able to clean it all up impeccably before his mom returns after making a yeoman's effort to return quickly, including spending some quality time with John Candy.
  • When you take away all the ridiculousness of the movie, however, at its core its a movie about changes of heart.
    • Kevin: wishes he'd never see his family again
    • Kevin's mom: certainly finds herself frustrated with Kevin's antics, and punishes him by sending him to the attic, with a statement of (temporary) banishment.
    • Even side characters have changes of heart: Old Man Marley, in one of the pivotal scenes of the movie in the church, has a change of heart about his family and their connection to each other, while Kevin also has a change of heart about having a relationship with Marley, which in the end saves his life.
    • In fact, by the end, it seems only the wet bandits are the ones without a change of heart - Marv's continued insistence of leaving their mark, as the police say at the end, will make it incredibly easy to find the homes they hit.
    • And, in the end, the only ones who lack a happy ending are the ones who haven't gone through these changes of heart - families are all reunited, happy to be with one another.
    • We could see this movie still existing without these moments, but in the midst of its ridiculousness, I think what keeps it evergreen is that we witness how the fruits of this heart change is real - and we love to anticipate and hope for reunions and justice.
  • We have another willful suspension of disbelief moment in our gospel text today.
    • The first time we meet John the Baptist, we see him as this wild character who apparently is, in spite of appearance, influential.
    • And he calls out the people around him - likely those just going through the motions and going onto whatever they need to next, this moment just a simple action, and says "bear fruit worthy of repentance."
    • The phrasing in the Greek is really unique. Another way of saying it is to "demonstrate the promise of change."
    • Whether it's Home Alone or the Advent, there's something to this that we might miss because we sequester repentance to sin, which we're not exactly interested in spending lots of time with.
    • But yet, when we understand things one way, and then give ourselves the opportunity to have a change of heart, there's a built in momentum that keeps us going, moving, growing - perhaps allowing us to go where our hearts desire and crave to be.
  • I wonder if that's why John is so insistent.
    • Because perhaps the P&S of the world might, in their determined consistency, lose out on something better inbreaking.
    • The P&S may have the best reasons they believe - the most secure, well tested: ABRAHAM AS THE ANCESTOR! But if they cannot see the opportunity to show the promise of change, then they'll end up alone like shadow Home Alone: Kevin continuously angered by his family, his family blaming him for their cancelled trip, Old Man Marley alone another year and feared by the neighborhood. But where's the hope for something better? The promise of Advent itself?
  • What is it for you today?