Matthew 3:1-12
1 In
those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, 2 "Repent, for the kingdom of
heaven has come near." 3 This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said,
"The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: "Prepare the way of
the Lord, make his paths straight.’" 4 Now John wore clothing of camel's hair with a leather belt
around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. 5 Then the people of Jerusalem and all
Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, 6 and they were baptized by him in the
river Jordan, confessing their sins. 7
But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to
them, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
8 Bear fruit worthy of
repentance. 9 Do not presume to
say to yourselves, "We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God
is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 10 Even now the ax is lying at the
root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut
down and thrown into the fire. 11
"I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is
more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals.
He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 His winnowing fork is in his hand,
and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the
granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."
It was as close to a ritual as anything I had growing
up. Most weekends I spent with my dad, and since my dad lived right up the hill
from Grandma, and since my cousins David and Brad spent most weekends with
Grandma, I would often spend Friday night at Grandma’s house. When we were
little, Grandma would let us stay up and watch The Golden Girls, and as
we got older, we’d stay up late in Granddaddy’s old shop, drinking Check Colas,
eating Vienna sausages, and listening to “The Charlie Gilmore Show” on 95.5
WTVY. While our Friday night habits changed and evolved, the one thing that
remained almost unchanged was Saturday morning. We’d wake up to Grandma having
fried some bacon, made some biscuits, and having drank a cup of instant coffee
she drank from a saucer, and we’d put on some clothes and go to town.
That’s what Grandma always said: we were going to “go
to town.” Now, that meant all sorts of things for us: going to the grocery
store, the laundromat, the produce stand, Uncle Rays’ garden (even though Uncle
Ray didn’t live anymore in town than he was our actual Uncle). “Going to town”
could mean we were going to the Goodyear store to get the oil changed or make a
payment on the lawn mower Grandma bought there; it could mean going to the
bank, the drug store, the Burger King in front of Winn-Dixie (Grandma always
said she like a good Whooper), or it could mean going to the Barber Shop on the
corner of the Westgate Shopping Center. Regardless of where we were going or what
we were doing, “Going to town” was necessary for life to have any sense of
normalcy; after all, everything was in town. No one living in town got up on
Saturday morning and thought, “I guess I need to get ready and head out passed
the paved roads to get my groceries, my haircut, my bills paid…” No. everything
happens in town, not out in the country, not out in the wilderness.
Which is why it is a bit odd to find ourselves on this
Second Sunday of Advent in the opening verses of Matthew 3, where “In
those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea,
proclaiming, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’" I mean, if you
want to draw a crowd, if you want to be where the action is, you don’t set up
shop in the wilderness; you stand on a soapbox on the corner of Main Street,
right? You stand on the steps of the First Church, in the shadow of its
steeple, within earshot of its bells. If you’re John, you stand before the
columned porticos of the Temple, the smell of burnt offerings in the air, the
grand image of God’s grandness behind you—that’s what you do if you’re going to
talk about the nearness of God, stand and proclaim at the doors of God’s house!
You don’t stand in a muddy creek wearing “clothing of camel's hair with a
leather belt around [your] waist…[eating] locusts and wild honey.”
I mean, if I stood up here in a Chewbacca costume, with my hair uncombed, bits of bugs in my
beard, sucking on a honeysuckle for breakfast, would you believe a thing I
said? Of course not! (you may not even with my hair brushed and my tie
reasonably straight!)
But there’s John, standing out in
the wilderness, in the creek, looking out of his mind, going on and on about
the nearness of the Kingdom of God—and folks are flocking to see him! “[T]he people of Jerusalem
and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and
they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.” But surely the Kingdom of God isn’t out there in
the wilderness, out there where the grass grows wild, where the bugs crawl on
the ground, where snakes slither, where there’s only the shade of the trees to
block the sun…surely it’s not out there where civilization is absent, right? I
mean, if the Kingdom of God is coming, if God is going to show up, it’s going
to be in town, right? Maybe that’s why the Pharisees and Sadducees come out to
John, to bring him in town, to check his papers, see if he has the proper
permits for assembling such a group of folks, to be sure he had the proper
ordination, maybe even offer him somewhere in town to hold his meetings. “But when [John] saw many
Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, ‘You brood of
vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?’”
Now, is
that any way to welcome the ones who’ve “come for baptism?” Who in the world
would want to respond to the invitation for repentance and baptism if they’re
just going to be called a bunch of sons of snakes? But what is interesting here
is that the Greek word used to describe the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism (epi) can also be translated
as “coming against baptism.” Maybe John knew these folks weren’t coming as
supporters, but rather as those who sought to shut him down and shut him up, as
those who would have the correct, traditional, “downtown” religion preserved.
The rest of John’s words in our text this morning are aimed squarely at these
Pharisees and Sadducees: “Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume
to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is
able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is
lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good
fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire…”
They came to John, believing that their heritage, their
ancestry, their very identity was enough, and now John was usurping their
power, their claim to salvation by proclaiming repentance in the wilderness and
baptizing all who would come to the water. You see, that’s just not how it was
done. If you wanted to be “in,” you had to come in town, to the Temple, to a synagogue
at least. You had to be seen by a professional, someone who had been properly
trained, in the inherited line of Levitical priests or by one approved by such
priests. If you were going to be counted among those in the kingdom of God, you
had to qualify, meet the minimum standards, be of a certain lineage, a certain
race, have the right confession, the right theology, the correct way of seeing
the world and the scriptures according to those who were overseeing the whole
thing. But John’s just letting them all come in the water, claiming the Kingdom
is near—in the wilderness, for everybody, and what’s more is that he’s not even
the head man in charge!
No. John’s out there in the wilderness, like the one
mentioned by the prophet Isaiah, "The voice of one crying out in the
wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”
He’s in the wilderness as one who is making ready the way for the one who is to
come. He says, “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is
more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals.
He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire." This one is
coming after John, following him, out there, in the wilderness.
John isn’t the opening act for someone who’s going to show up in town the next
day, where he’s supposed to be. John, in his camel’s hair underwear, his
unkempt hair, with locust legs stuck in his teeth, is saying the one who is
coming will follow after him—in the wilderness. And this one who is coming will
be even more powerful, baptizing with fire, a fire of refinement and judgement.
But no one like that would come in the wilderness,
right? No one like that would really come after John, right? I mean, the God of
the universe would surely make his presence known in the gold-gilded marble
halls of the temple, right? At the very least, God would appear in the grand
palaces of power, perhaps in the pulpits before the unrolled scrolls of
scripture. Surely God would chose to show up in town, where the action is,
where the power is, in the expected places of strength and authority among
those chosen or powerful enough to wield it, yes? God would never really follow
after someone, especially someone so…radical…right?
That’s about as crazy as driving out past the city
limits to get your dry cleaning, as crazy as heading to outskirts of town to do
all your grocery shopping. God showing up in the wilderness, after someone like
John…why, the next thing they’ll say is that God would be born as a helpless
infant in a feedbox to some unwed teenager in some Podunk town in the middle of
nowhere, that God isn’t some old man with a beard on a throne in the clouds,
but one who was executed as a criminal after a rigged trial, that God isn’t
taking names and judging like some sort of cruel gameshow host, but is actually
taking names and calling us beloved in spite of our sins and failures. Yeah,
the first thing they’ll tell us is that God is going to show up outside of
town, in the wilderness, after some baptizing preacher, then they’ll tell us
that God was a baby in a manger, that God is love, that God loves us enough to
die to show us, and that God loves all of us…
No wonder folks want to drag him back into town, shove
him back in the temple, keep him settled safely in the syntax of the words on a
page. No wonder the Pharisees and Sadducees come out to hush John up. God
belongs in town, in the proper understanding, in the proper context, among the
proper people—those who already believe the right things about God. After all,
if you listen to a voice in the wilderness, if you get dipped in the muddy
creek by a bug-eating Baptist, if you really believe all
that stuff about the manger, the shepherds, the magi, the feeding of thousands,
the washing of feet, healing the sick, the nailing to a cross, and the whole
thing about him being raised from the dead, about this Jesus of Nazareth being
the “one who is coming after John,” the one with the power to baptize with fire…chances
are you may not be so willing to go along with the religious folks “in town”
who want to claim a monopoly on God.
Jesus came to set the whole thing on fire, to refine a religion bogged
down with the notion that God was only for those who met the qualifications, to
burn away the chaff of a system that sought to make those of the margins, in
the wilderness of existence, invisible and insignificant. Christ came to show
us that the way of God isn’t found “in town” among the well-to-do and the
brightly polished, but out in the wilderness, in muddy creeks, in stables, in
the fields with young, frightened shepherds, in the leper-lined streets, in the
crowded cells of prisons, in the welfare lines, the overflowing homeless
shelters, the side of the on-ramps, the drafty trailer parks, the crowded
border crossings—that the way of the Lord is always among those we least
expect, always among those we would never expect. The way of the Lord
comes like a voice in the wilderness, calling us to repentance, calling us to
“come and see,” to come and follow the one who baptizes with a fire that burns
away every single things that stands between us and our neighbor, a fire that
burns away everything that stands between us and God. On this second Sunday of
Advent, may we heed the voice in the wilderness, as we draw closer to the
cradle of Christ, as we draw nearer to the coming of the one whose “winnowing fork is in his
hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the
granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” Amen.
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