Opportunity comes with so many different faces that we often don't recognize it. That's probably why we sometimes miss its call. A previous generation said that opportunity comes dressed in overalls. And they were largely right, for nothing succeeds like hard work. Our generation thinks that opportunity comes with a college diploma. It may, but there's no guarantee.

The divine opportunity comes in what is, to our human eyes, the most unlikely garb of all. It's no wonder we don't recognize it; or that, recognizing it, we resist it. This Advent season is an especially good time to experience the divine opportunity. Any time is God's season; but because you and I find certain settings and circumstances especially hospitable to religious experience, Advent and Lent are particularly attractive.

The first Advent preacher, John the Baptizer, offered opportunity in a compelling, almost ferocious way. When you read his words, you don't think he's offering opportunity; I expect that if we had heard him in person, we would have been even more doubtful. William Barclay said that John's message "was not good news; it was news of terror" (The Gospel of Luke, Westminster John Knox Press, p. 28). I understand what Professor Barclay was saying, but I see it differently. It seems to me that good news must sometimes come dressed in rough clothing.

That was surely the nature of John's approach. When we read the brief gospel summaries of his messages, we wonder why people went to so much trouble to hear him. Were they masochists courting abuse, or did they perhaps hope to hear him thunder against the sins of their neighbors? One way or another, the crowds flocked to him. And largely, I think, because they felt, in the integrity of his message, an opportunity which they had sought for a long time. His was a message of judgment; but in the judgment was opportunity. And opportunity was wrapped up in the word repent.

I. John’s Message of Judgment and Opportunity.

This was John's message, and it was a message of hope. "Repent," he cried, "for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." With the word repent, John was telling the people that they need not remain as they were. We are not held captive to our failures, our past, or our inadequacy. We can repent. We can get rid of the past. We can start over. 

I'd hate to live in a world where there was no chance to repent. In a sense, you could divine hell as a place where there is no possibility of repentance. That's what makes it hell: there's no way out, no chance to get rid of the garbage of life, no chance to start again.

Repent is one of the loveliest words in our language. It pays us human beings a sublime compliment, for it says that we can do something about the course we have taken. If we were nothing more than poor animals, we'd have to go the way our instincts demanded. But you and I, humans as we are, can repent. If we are on the wrong track, we can turn around, or get on another train. We may not be able to change what we've already done, and we may not be able to fully escape the consequences of those past choices. But we need not continue in the same destructive path. We can repent, and start again. 

Every life accumulates a certain amount of rubbish. No matter how earnestly and thoughtfully we live, we make mistakes -- if not outright sins. In time, our sins, stupidities, and poor choices can become like a mountain around us, until we spend endless waking hours in the miserable enterprise of regret.  Thanks be to God, there is something better than haunting regard. Regret, you see, leads nowhere. It is a sea of misery in which we can wallow and fret until it destroys us. But repentance is a gift from God -- a wholesome way to look the past in the eye, confess it for what it is, and leave it behind. On, then, to a new start.  Perhaps that's why people were drawn to John the Baptizer. They felt hope when they heard him preach. He spoke harsh, incisive words, but he led them to a door of hope. "You can repent," he said. "There is a way out of the dilemma you're in."  But the Baptizer made it difficult. When people began flocking his way, he sensed that, for some of them, it was easy religion. Even the most vital religious movements can become "popular" in a way that undercuts their integrity. "You brood of vipers!" he called. "Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" (v. 7). It was a figure of speech appropriate to the setting where John preached. The brushwood and stubble which covered the rugged area would sometimes set afire and the flames would leap quickly through the dry nettles. When this happened, vipers and snakes would scurry wildly from their hiding places to escape the flames. John's figure of speech wasn't very complimentary, but it was true to his sense of urgency. 

John presented his message in a take-it-or-leave-it fashion. I remember an automobile salesman who bargained faithfully for a time, then said, "This is my last offer," and, as he said it, walked away from me. Perhaps it was only a good sales ploy, but I was impressed. That was John's style. "I have something great to offer," he seemed to say, "and you'd better grasp the opportunity now that it has come to you." 

Sometimes our hunger for repentance fails to achieve its goal. We need to do more than simply say, "I'm sorry." Repentance needs some means of action. I still remember an anonymous note which I found on a bulletin cover one Monday morning. "We all want to have a more victorious life," someone had scribbled, following what I had thought was a pretty good sermon. "But, Dr. Kalas, how do we get it?"  John the Baptizer got down to specifics. When the people asked, "What then shall we do," John answered with line-on-line counsel. If you have two coats, he said, give one to someone who has none. The same, he added, with your food. When tax collectors asked what course they should follow, John answered, "Collect no more than is appointed you." The secret of wealth for those first-century tax collectors was in cheating; and John quickly set them right. To the soldiers, John gave a two-pronged answer: "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages" (v. 14b).

Perhaps the most notable thing about John's advice is that it was so practical. He didn't indulge in cliches, like "Pray about it," or "Seek the will of God," or "Work for a just social order." He spoke directly to the world in which his people lived, in terms they could put to work that very day. 

I'm impressed, too, that he wanted them to live out their new faith in their present occupations and circumstances. Sometimes religion has encouraged people to show their faith by isolating themselves from the world they are part of. As a matter of fact, some of us might have counseled the tax collectors and soldiers to resign their positions and find some other kind of work. Both occupations had so many questionable factors that such advice would have made rather good sense. I can hear someone saying, "Tax collecting and army life aren't where godly people should make their living." John offered no such counsel. Perhaps he knew that these people couldn't possibly leave the work they were doing. At any rate, he told them to live out their faith where they were, by being honorable and godly in their current occupations. He didn't tell them it was going to be easy, but just that it was the right thing to do. 

I'm interested, too, that John concentrated on the daily work of his hearers. "We are more than our jobs," we often protest. Some people don't like to be introduced by references to their employment. But our daily work plays a large part in defining who we are, whether we like it or not. Indeed, when we Protestants insist that every person's employment is his or her vocation -- a call from God in which we live out our priesthood -- our daily work has such significance that to minimize it is to minimize who we are. 

How would we translate John's message in our day? What do we say to a world where people work with computers; sell insurance, securities, real estate; or teach, nurse, raise families, or practice law or medicine? What is the gospel for a truck driver or a farmer? There had better be a gospel for us in our workplace, or our gospel is too small. It is a good thing to write a letter to our senator; but it is a better thing to honor Christ in the day-by-day marketplace of our jobs. Here, especially, we are called to live out the gospel. Such was John's message to his generation; and would be his message to ours.  But John was able to offer more than one repentance. The people sensed that there must be more than what John was preaching. Was he, they asked, the Messiah? Was he the Christ of whom the prophets had spoken? 

II. The Opportunity of Repentance.

John's answer was in the best Advent tradition: Christ is coming, he said, and he brings with him glory and power such as my ministry cannot even suggest. "I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire" (v. 16).

 John was a man of powerful ego or he would never have cared to challenge the established power brokers of the day, and to speak with such directness. Yet, when he spoke of his relationship to Jesus, he was quick to bow in the most dramatic humility. "I can't even qualify to take care of his shoes." Perhaps it was the very strength of his ego which made it possible for him to submit so thoroughly to his supporting role with Jesus. He knew who he was and what he was called to do; and he was at peace with his role. Indeed, he gloried in it.  John gladly announced that his baptism could not even be compared with the baptism which Jesus would bring. His was a baptism with water, to symbolize a washing of life. But Jesus, he said, would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire. Fire is itself a symbol of cleansing, but an interior cleansing quite beyond the reach of water; thus metals are put in fire to burn away their inner impurities. John seems to suggest that his baptismal cleansing is almost superficial compared with what Jesus would do. 

Jesus was going to immerse us in the Holy Spirit. Water is a natural substance symbolizing a spiritual reality; Jesus deals not in symbols but in the realities themselves. He brings to the world, for all persons, a presence of God which formerly was experienced only by a select few on special occasions.  But again, John made clear, it is with a price. Our Lord is coming with a winnowing fan, to separate the wheat from the chaff; and he will burn the chaff "with unquenchable fire." We may be inclined to discount John's vigorous language on the grounds that he was a dramatically emphatic man, so that he would speak of even Jesus in terrifying terms. 

Perhaps we should remind ourselves that Jesus often spoke of himself in the language of judgment. We are so taken with the image of Jesus' compassion (which is a major element in his person and ministry) that we forget the anger he showed to hypocrites and to unworthy religious leaders, and the fearful language he used in describing the day of judgment. 

We shouldn't hide from this quality in Jesus. Instead, we should seek to understand it and respond to him. If this One who has come as the ultimate expression of God's love is also an agent of judgment, then the judgment itself must be an act of mercy. Luke surely saw it as such, for he says that it was with such exhortations that John preached "good news to the people" (v. 18b). 

This brings us back to our theme of the day. Repentance is the grandest expression of opportunity, because it is the door by which our Lord comes into our lives; and with him, all the favors of mercy and grace. As we repent, we sweep out the accumulated, burdensome rubbish of our lives and clear the way for God's love to fill us.  Sometimes I feel -- as I look at neglected places in my own heart, and at the people of the church -- that we Christians have forgotten how to repent. We act as if repentance were something only the ungodly should do; in truth, as the apostle said, repentance should begin at the house of God. Repentance is a particular gift to us believers; we know by experience what benefits it brings. We ought, therefore, to be all the more ready to put this good gift to use. 

Right now we are in the best season for repenting. How better can we prepare for the celebration of Jesus' coming than by clearing away the trivia and troubles of past days, to make clear a highway for our God? 

This is our season of opportunity. We can repent at any and every hour, but here we are at the best of all hours. Now is the time, here is the place, and opportunity knocks. Repent, the voice invites us, and begin afresh and anew. Thanks be to God for such an opportunity.