John the Baptist is challenging to us because we need to change.
Love and the coming of Christ
Advent 2A | Matthew 3:1-12
This story probably sounds strange. John’s appearing in the wilderness, shouting, dressed weird, eating weird stuff. He doesn’t sound normal.
But this is what first Century prophets look and act like. It’s kind of traditional or normal for them. Expected.
And we have our own expectations for prophets, don’t we? They are often loud and attention-seeking. They have a message to share! And what do we usually do when modern-day prophets show up? We put our fingers in our ears.
But these people flock to John. They don’t tune out his message. They hear it and want more of it.
So as we dig into this moment can we just put on the table how different we are from these people going out to meet John the Baptizer in droves? That we are perhaps more skeptical or rigid? That we are less prone to trust a prophet? And because of that, we struggle a bit with understanding what this really means?
And maybe we’re not that different. We just haven’t experienced a prophet like John.
John was part of the prophecy.
The evangelist we know as Matthew says that John was what Isaiah was talking about when he wrote:
“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.’”
His is the voice of one crying out in the wilderness. The prophet who appeared there and spoke alone, when nobody else would speak.
“Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”
This is his message and his own work: Straightening the path for God. Make it easier for the one who follows.
So…what does that mean?
Preparing for what follows
Here’s an example.
Anyone who knows interim ministry knows what this is like. Interim priests have the unenviable job of bringing people to a place they don’t want to go so that they’ll be ready to accept somebody new.
Their job is literally to get people to change who may not want to change so that when change is visited upon them, they’ve already gotten the kicking and screaming out of their system. So they’re not kicking the person they need leading them.
Joe Rickards was here for two decades, so an interim needed to prepare the way for Chip Chillington. Two decades later, an interim needed to prepare the way for me. This is a familiar example for people who are forced to deal with change. Because the priest was retiring or leaving.
No circumstances are forcing these people to change. John is inviting them to change because the path he is preparing for the Lord is better than the path they’re on.
Repent!
This is what John means when he preaches repentance. It quite literally means turn around.
Many of us have negative associations with this word: repent. However, repent, to turn, is an important word in our tradition. Because it grounds our theological conviction in our physical bodies. When we’re invited to turn, we’re called to move our whole selves from unhealthy practices that endanger our bodies, minds, and spirits.
At the same time that we turn away from unhealth, we turn toward something. We turn away from what hurts and toward the one who saves us.
When I lived in Lansing, the county jail was not in the city, but in a suburb of Mason, several miles south of the city. They had the practice of releasing people at 12:01 am on the day of their release. Regardless of whether or not they had transportation.
So people would walk back to the city (eight or so miles) in the middle of the night. Which doors could they knock on at two or three in the morning when they got back?
The county was literally turning people back toward the source of their unhealth. And a community group I was a part of called on the county to stop. To turn itself in a new direction so it would stop sending people out at 12:01 with nothing. But instead to help them turn their direction when re-entering the community.
This is why repent is a good word!
Confrontation
Now what happens when John recognizes some religious leaders showing up to be baptized? Is he like “the more the merrier!”?
No. He calls them out in front of everybody.
Why do you think he does this?
The easy answer we give in our world is partisanship. When our prophets speak out we’re OK with it as long as it sounds neutral enough for everybody.
But when one says something, like “maybe we shouldn’t have any rich people.” People go “Woah! That’s not gonna play with our people.” Even when they point out that Jesus said it would be easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to get into heaven, we’re still all we can’t be biased against wealth.
So maybe we’re wrong about that. Maybe we’ve got the wrong idea and Jesus is saying wealth makes different circumstances.
So maybe John isn’t being biased so much as arguing that their repentance is a different thing. That preparing the way for the Lord requires different repentance from the leaders.
Who warned you?
John asks them “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” And I’m starting to think that what John is getting into with the leaders is this other repentance.
What do you think they think they’re getting here? Why are they there? Because John is telling them they need to radically change their lives.
Are these leaders hiding among the people to escape the guys back in Jerusalem? Or are they going to get dunked in the river by John and then simply go back to what they were doing before?
John’s calling for repentance! Turn your life around! Turn toward another path. If you’re an alcoholic, you don’t get to give up alcohol in your heart and still drink it every night.
So part of John’s job is to make the path straight! And here are people who are part of an established order that benefit from how curvy God’s path is going to be! Because of them! They’re protecting the curves in the road!
Who warned you? isn’t a question thrown at the leaders because John hates them or is trying to root out where they heard about John from really. Isn’t it more like, How did you all hear about this project? Because that way you’re used to isn’t going to pay off. This isn’t gonna fly with the big guy.
Can’t you hear the reverberations in our world?
In our time?
And while John prepared the way for Jesus, we are preparing the way for Jesus’s return. This is the traditional vision of Advent. That we read about the preparing for Jesus’s coming as we prepare for his second coming.
And what that looks like in our world is really similar. But instead of one person named John who is sent out to be Jesus’s opening act, God sends all of us out to prepare the way, to make the path straight. Not because we can’t enjoy the long way. Detours. Some light sight-seeing.
But because that Second Coming is the Kin-dom. It is the “on earth as it is in heaven” we pray for every day. And our work, of loving and serving God and each other makes that Kin-dom closer.
Becoming Prophets of Love
We gather in this place as a school of love; to learn, grow, and become the Prophets of Love. Proclaiming the virtue of love and of repenting toward love. So if our job is to love, we learn to love and we become practitioners of love. And then we are sent out into the world to love.
A world that needs more love. That needs Christ’s love. It needs us to love the Kin-dom into coming here.
Let us prepare the way! Proclaim a love that brings out more love. And confront systems of injustice: those obstacles to love, like selfishness, power, and greed.
And may we turn, or keep turning, from those ways of unhealth. Those things that degrade our bodies, minds, and spirits; especially fear and lust for power or control.
Turn away from that and turn toward love, trust, hope. Toward the way that is already being prepared. A path that is already being worn. A way of love in this world and beyond it.