8 December 2013

“John the Baptist is in the building”
Matthew 3:1-2 / Isaiah 11:1-10
Advent 2 A
8 December 2013


Yes, here he is.
It’s the second Sunday of Advent, and, ladies and gentlemen, John the Baptist is in the building.
Once again.
I know, I know … for those who have been through the four-week season cycle that is Advent before … you know this guy, John the Baptist.
Some may welcome the presence of the hair-shirted bug eater as a milestone along the way of the season … you can set your calendar and your clock by him … two more Sundays till Christmas! Others, perhaps, treat his appearing like the old Listerine commercial, not “the taste people hate,” but “the prophet we tolerate once a year.”
And certainly, there are some who just don’t understand why Mister-Gloom-and-Doom has to be part of our Advent preparations at all. Especially in this year of the three year lectionary text cycle where we get the Baptist, not once, but TWICE … yes, two weeks in a row, come back next Sunday for the second half, “John the Baptist has left the building.”
But that’s next Sunday.
So why is he here, anyway?
Well, there’s a simple answer. John the Baptist is the bridge … the human bridge … between the Old Testament prophets and Jesus.
Our clue is in the first three words of today’s Gospel text …

In those days …

Those days … those years of the turn of the millennium from Before the Common Era to the Common Era … BC to AD … they were turbulent ones for Judea. The freedoms won by the Jewish Maccabees in their revolt (what’s celebrated as Hanukkah) … the Maccabee-won freedoms were forgotten … the Romans had taken over, set up servant-kings (first Herod the Great, then his sons) who kept the Jews in line.
And most Jews did … stay in line, that is. Their leaders divided into two parties … the Pharisees, who were the forerunners of the modern rabbinical movement, and the Sadducees … you remember them from the Gospel of a couple weeks’ ago, they were a rival group to the Pharisees who, unlike the Pharisees, did not believe that there was any life beyond this one.
But there were other groups … the Essenes … the Zealots … and these groups were not about to stay quiet in the face of what they saw was too much cooperation and collusion with the Roman invaders. The Zealots were more violent in their criticism, guerilla warriors trying to keep the memory of the Maccabees alive. The Romans, when they caught them … and they usually did … made a public spectacle of their punishment … death by crucifixion.
The Essenes were not violent … they withdrew to the desert, the wilderness … a group of ascetics who gave up many of the material comforts of this life to be about their reforming and purifying, “cleaning up” Judaism.
It was of this Essene group from which John the Baptist likely got his start … and his learning … for his ministry.
Now in those days of religious and cultural upheaval it wasn’t at all uncommon to find religious fanatics out in the desert, proclaiming repentance, and baptizing people. In those days many people were searching after something, a word, a message, to help them through these difficult times.
John’s message was a familiar one … repent … turn around, confess your sins, change your ways, be baptized. Be baptized … which was a long-established Jewish cleansing ritual symbolizing repentance. This was, after all, the message of the ancient Israelite prophets … repent … and many went out into the wilderness to do just that.
Including … including John’s rivals, the Pharisees and Sadducees.
But our text has a misleading translation in it … it says these Pharisees and Sadducees were coming for baptism … which then doesn’t make a lot of sense with how John reacts to them (for the very act of being baptized was part and parcel of repentance and confession). No, what was more likely happening here was that the Pharisees and Sadducees … the religious leadership of Jerusalem … had gone out to the wilderness to watch, and criticize John, his preaching, his teaching, his religious activity.
And so now it makes more sense why John goes off on them.

You brood of vipers!

Yes, it’s a lot of gloom and doom for this Second Sunday of Advent, especially in the words of John which follow.

Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
One who is more powerful than I is coming after me … he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
He will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.

Happy Second Sunday of Advent.
Ah, but wait a minute.
First of all, a word to us self-absorbed twenty first century types. “It’s not all about you … or me.”
These words of John, the final six verses of this text today, on this Second Sunday of Advent, these words were meant to be FIRST for John’s rivals, his enemies, the Pharisees and Sadducees, those religious leaders who often chose to ignore or even mistreat those who God’s law called them to pay special attention … the poor, the widow, the orphan, the stranger in their midst … these leaders who so often chose the political comfort of collaborating with the Roman invaders, over justice … these were the ones who had come out from Jerusalem to criticize and complain, perhaps to take word back to their superiors in Jerusalem about this hair-shirted bug eater ranting and raving in the wilderness.
It’s certainly consistent-talk with the Israelite prophets who went before John, critical of the political and religious leadership of Israel of their day. Compare John’s words to some from Isaiah, which appear before our text-verses for today:

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good …

Or from Amos:

Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?

Or from Zephaniah:

Gather together, gather, O shameless nation, before you are driven away like the drifting chaff, before there comes upon you the fierce anger of the Lord, before there comes upon you the day of the Lord’s wrath.

Now, make no mistake, we need to hear these words clearly today, too, as a call to repentance … a call for us to turn around and confess our sins. Indeed, Advent used to be known as a “little Lent,” a winter season for introspection, self-denial, and yes, confession and repentance.
However … and this is a big however … however, I think we need to hear the words of John the Baptist with an asterisk next to them.
John the Baptist may be in the building this Sunday, yes, but we must not lose sight of what looms largest in this building.
The Cross.
The symbol for God’s self-giving love, God’s FORGIVENESS, in Jesus Christ.
John may know that he’s the one to come before Jesus, but he sure shows here that he doesn’t know much about Jesus.
John does a great job of calling the people to repentance, to confessing their sins, but he has nothing to say about forgiveness.
John needs a lesson in God’s grace … God’s unconditional love, forgiveness, peace, wholeness, shalom in Jesus Christ.
Strangely, though, the first words John says in our text point toward this.

The kingdom of heaven has come near.

Yes, John, it’s true, the Kingdom has come near. But not with your threats.
It’s come near because God has willed it to come near, in Jesus.
God loves, God gives, God saves in Jesus the Christ, the One coming after John who will not only speak God’s Word of grace, but will live it … Jesus, who will go to his death for it, for us to have it … and who will be raised into God’s eternal Kingdom of Heaven, to bring this love, forgiveness, shalom, wholeness, GRACE to God’s beloved children, on earth as it is in heaven.
And wonderfully enough for us today, on this Second Sunday of Advent, it is this word which Isaiah brings to us … the word of the inevitability of God’s Kingdom, the Kingdom of Heaven, come to us … as Isaiah looks forward to the Messiah, the Christ:

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him …
… With righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist;
The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.
On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

Shall. Shall. SHALL. WILL.
This SHALL happen, this WILL happen, it is inevitable.
No, it isn’t here yet, but it’s a-comin’. As surely as the sun rises each day, it’s a-comin.’
God’s reign of FORGIVENESS, of LOVE, of PEACE … not just endless repentance followed by fear and wondering if we’ve done enough to be forgiven … borne enough fruit to be forgiven … or if we’re just that bad chaff that will be burned with unquenchable fire … offscourings, garbage, dreck …
NO, NO, NO.
John the Baptist is NOT Jesus the Christ. Thanks be to God.
So what of John?
Should we still hear John’s words? Certainly.
Should we still repent? Certainly. We haven’t stopped sinning … screwing up … breaking community-love-body-of-Christ by what we’ve done and haven’t done. That’s for sure.
But don’t John-the-Baptist stay stuck there.
Be drawn into the inevitability of the Kingdom of Heaven, not just come near, but here. It shall be, it will be … and that Word, these signs, word, water, bread, wine, gathered sinner-saints, forgiven and freed … all these give us courage and faith, love and strength to go and show and live the Kingdom of Heaven into being NOW …
Not perfectly, not perfectly, but baby steps. Baby steps.
Risked and shared in love and forgiveness, grace and peace, and certainty, the certainty that comes from the gift of God’s SHALL and WILL … for us, and for all creation.
Yes, John the Baptist is in the building. And … on this Second Sunday of Advent, that’s OK.
But Jesus is always here, FOR US. For us, for grace, for forgiveness, for life.
And that’s far, far better.
Amen.