(no subject)
Every year, it seems that the Christmas season starts earlier and earlier. When I was working in the retail world just three years ago, we would put out all the Christmas merchandise in late September or early October. This year, I saw some stores had Christmas trees out in late August. I am just waiting for the day that stores bring out Christmas merchandise in January - not the leftovers from that year, but the new stuff for the next year.
Each year, it seems we get more and more impatient for Christmas to be here. We are used to a world that has become more and more streamlined, more and more focused on the end result, that we are tempted to totally pass Advent in favor of the end result: Christmas.
This week’s texts, however, remind us that we are not yet in the Christmas season. With the appearance of John the Baptist, we are reminded to refocus our gaze from the busyness of Christmas, and back to the quiet waiting of Advent.
John appears, and from the description given of him, I would guess he was a pretty scary looking guy. Dressed in camel’s hair and a leather belt, eating locusts and wild honey, he doesn’t look like the type of person any of us would invite home for a meal. But John’s appearance is the appearance of prophet. When Elijah appears, he is “a hairy man, with a leather belt around his waist” . So in describing John’s appearance, Matthew is saying, “This is a prophet, along the lines of Elijah. Listen up people! You need to hear what he is saying!”
John appears, and prepares us for Jesus’ coming by directing our gaze to three specific things. And first is back to the record of Israel’s hope for redemption.
John is warning people, turning them back from their wickedness and arrogance. He is a frightening figure, yes, but also one who brings hope; he is preaching the coming of the kingdom of heaven, which is described in Isaiah’s prophecy - a place where the poor and meek will be judged with equity, the wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard with the kid, a place where the current world will be turned on its’ head, a reversal of the life which we currently know.
This passage always makes me think of a story I once heard about Henry Kissinger. After serving as Secretary of State, he went to Israel to run a zoo. When a reporter found out about this, he went to see why Kissinger had chosen such a different career path. Upon his arrival, he saw a cage that contained a lion and a lamb lying peacefully side by side. Amazed, the reporter said, “This is fantastic! How did you ever get a lion to lie peacefully with a lamb?” Kissinger is said to have replied, “Every day a new lamb.”
Leading the world to the kingdom of heaven is not a simple task. But it is someone from the shoot from the stump of Jesse, David’s father, indicating that this person will be a Davidic king, who will do so. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on this person, giving him many gifts: wisdom, understanding, and counsel - indicating one independent of foolish advisors; might - indicating one who is able to make wise and God-directed decisions, and who has the authority to ensure those decisions are effective; and fear of the Lord - indicating one who looks to the Lord for direction in all things, and delights in doing so.
Isaiah is speaking of Israel’s hope for justice, focusing on the coming Messiah. In this coming Messiah, the kingdom of God will be demonstrated with a profound peace. We live in a world that is full of war and terror - we can see it any night on the news or read about it in the paper. It can be hard to imagine a time when a wolf will lie with a lamb, when we are constantly bombarded with images of bloodshed and violence. But this peacefulness is exactly what the kingdom of heaven will be - a day when the lion and lamb can live together without a new lamb every day - and it is what John is proclaiming.
Then John begins to direct our gaze back to our own broken relationship with God.
John begins with preaching a simple, one sentence message, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” For Matthew, the “kingdom of heaven” is “the time and place and where God’s name is properly hallowed, and God’s will is perfectly done (Matthew 6.9-11)” . It is the time and place described by Isaiah - a place of total peace, in which the current world is turned upside down.
With this message, John was calling the people of Israel out, threatening them with divine judgment and offering them a chance to change their ways, because repentance is more than simply feeling bad about having done wrong. It is an action, a change of direction, a change of one’s mind, or a turning back. The process of repenting is not a one-time thing. It’s in the present tense, so a better way of translating it would be “Repent, and keep on repenting”. John is not preaching a repentance that is once for a lifetime. Instead, he is preaching repentance as a lifestyle of the people in the kingdom of heaven, a lifestyle that continues, not one that is a moment in one’s life. This repentance should not be procrastinated; the kingdom of heaven is near, and one does not want to miss it because they have not been in the process of repentance.
The people to whom John is preaching recognize that they have broken from God, and when they hear John’s message, they receive John’s baptism as a way of identifying themselves back with the covenant. One scholar observes about John, “He summons not outsiders but insiders to radical reorientation, calling religious people in particular to stop insisting that they know best and to cease resisting God, God’s judgment, God’s sovereignty.” This is no minor change in one’s life; it is a life-changing process that continues as we go through life. And it is no easy task. How often do we resist God’s sovereignty and believe that we know better than God? How often do we go through our day without taking time to listen to what God is saying to us? Probably much more often than we are willing to admit.
If the first two things that John is urging us to shift our focus to are backward-looking, John now moves forward to the final shift of our focus: forward to Jesus. John is Jesus’ advance man - he’s already done the work of shifting the people’s thinking back to Israel’s hope for redemption, and he has gotten us to consider our own broken relationship with God. Now the way has been prepared for the Lord, the paths are straight; everything is ready for Jesus, who comes to join us in our repentance.
Jesus - the one called Emmanuel, “God with us”, a name that is so very appropriate. Jesus comes, identifying with the turn that God’s people are making, and joins them in that turning. He meets people where they are, and joins them on their personal paths of repentance. But Jesus recognizes that repentance is not only a personal change of direction; it is also a communal one. And so, he gives himself to John’s baptism, the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. From this point, he gives himself to all with whom he interacts.
Jesus gives the gift of the Holy Spirit as he gives himself to all the sinners to whom he opens his arms. In our baptism, we join with Jesus’ death and resurrection, and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. We are claimed as children of God, sealed with the Holy Spirit, and marked with the cross of Christ forever. Jesus reaches out his hand to us and to all of God’s children, restoring our health and raising us to new life. We receive the gift of the Holy Spirit - the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
Through the power of the Holy Spirit, we are given the gifts to produce fruit that is worthy of repentance - fruit that is the result of our faith, not the cause of our salvation, which we receive solely through the grace of God, and not because of our own works. Being baptized with the Holy Spirit is more than a general cleaning. Water cleanses us on the outside, but the Holy Spirit cleanses us on the inside - reviving and rejuvenating us to be empowered to spread the Gospel message to all of God’s children. Our baptism is a one-time event, but, like repentance, the process of our baptism continues every day. Our baptism is a daily dying to our old, sinful self, which leads to the rising of a new person, living before God in righteousness and purity forever.
Through the gift of baptism, we recognize that the kingdom of heaven has arrived - but at the same time, we continue to wait for it to arrive. We have been baptized and cleansed, but we still await the cleansing to come: the removal of all the chaff - the sin - that is in our lives.
We look at our own lives, at the chaff that exists in them, and we fail to see it. We ignore those in need; we do not love our neighbors as ourselves. We go on in our busy lives, never taking time to consider how God fits in, let alone putting God first in our lives. We rush around from store to store - cooking, cleaning, wrapping presents - so lost in preparing for Christmas that we lose focus of the Advent promise that we have been given: the promise of eternal life through the one who was, who is, and who is to come. We lose focus of the gift of the Holy Spirit that comes to us through our baptism. We lose focus of the one who meets us at the font, claims us as God’s own child, and pours out gifts of grace and mercy upon us.
Through the simple message, “Repent the kingdom of heaven has come near”, John brings our focus back to where it belongs: the coming of the one born to set us free from the power of sin and death. We refocus on what is important, and we wait, quietly, patiently, as we pray, “Come, Lord Jesus”.
With that prayer, we await the day that will appear when all predatory relationships are no more, and the whole world - lions, lambs, leopards, humans - will be at peace. What a glorious day that will be. Amen