Pursuing Shalom
“People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.
But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.’”
Today’s Text: Matthew 3:1-10 (Living Life Daily Devotional)
Does my repentance come with fruit? And what was it that the Pharisees and Sadducees were doing or not doing that caused John the Baptist to speak so harshly to them? To answer that question, we’d have to compose a profile of the Pharisees and Sadducees from all of Jesus’s encounters with them in the Gospel of Matthew.
Generally speaking, it would seem that the Pharisees and Sadducees based their holiness on religious traditions. Those traditions were handed down both in written form and through the cultural practices of the Jews. And the learning and the practice of those traditions became the benchmark of holiness rather than their relationship with God Himself, the source of their holiness.
Even though the intent of those traditions was good, they became the framework for power dynamics in Jewish society, the kind of power dynamics that we find in every society. Such power dynamics are supported by cultural systems that promote and perpetuate a society of “haves” and “have-nots.”
A society of “haves” and “have-nots”—by its very nature—is a society defined by idolatry. The idols are those things that people desperately strive to have and desperately avoid having not.
During house church last week, the word time question was “What would a world of shalom look like?” And one young brother gave a pretty insightful response. He said that there would be no homelessness.
Until Jesus comes back and we receive a new heaven and a new earth, I’m not sure that the problem of homelessness would ever be completely solved. But I think the young brother was more or less right. Homelessness would be radically reduced, and even those few who are homeless would be taken care of somehow.
Many people today might assume that the homeless are either too lazy, stupid, or crazy to work and have a productive life. But the scope of homelessness might suggest that the pursuit of wealth and excessive profiteering contribute the loss of hope, and the loss of hope contributes to homelessness even more.
Companies seem to have lost a sense of civic responsibility. They don’t operate with any vision for improving the quality of life for a community. They operate with a vision for profit and that is all. The whole “trickle down” aspect of what has been called “Reaganomics” is drying up more and more, because the goal is just to make as much profit as possible.
And the solution isn’t socialism or communism, either. The solution truly is for a society at large to pursue shalom, rather than profit at the expense of shalom. But there can be no motivation to pursue shalom without the light of Christ to guide us.
The pursuit of shalom is the fruit that is borne of repentance. And broadly speaking, that pursuit of shalom is motivated by love.
Father, How Your heart must break because of the condition of this world. We chase after stuff thinking that all the good stuff of this world is limited. But every good gift comes from You. You provide everything we need to live and thrive and flourish. Change my heart—change our hearts—to chase after You and Your righteousness and Your kingdom so that we might promote shalom in this world because of Your love.. In Jesus’s name. Amen.
