Getting the word out.
Advent - John the Baptist
Matthew 3:1-12
John the Baptist is definitely not the type of individual that you would be eager to invite to your holiday gatherings. Talk about off-putting. His outfit alone would be off-putting enough. And it’s safe to assume that John would be unwilling to forgo his camel hair and leather for a Stuart plaid vest or a Santa Claus necktie. His palette too would be off putting, as well as hard to accommodate – locusts and wild honey. Undoubtedly however, the most off-putting thing about him would be his conversation. Without so much as a nod to the art of persuasion, instead with all the persuasion of a blow to the solar plexus, John would take up his favorite topic, his only topic in fact – repentance. No, John is definitely not the stuff of holiday gatherings. Let’s face it, the man is maladjusted. No wonder Herod Antipas threw him in prison.
But wait a minute, I recall something that Jesus said about John that may make us want to consider the matter further; something that Jesus said when the people of his day found John to be off-putting. Jesus said, “What were you expecting to find, someone in soft robes? A reed that shakes in the wind? You came to find a prophet, and I tell you John is more than a prophet. No one born of woman has arisen than is greater than he.”
Jesus understood John to be a man of unique greatness; and he understood John’s greatness, it is clear from his words, at two levels. He understood for one thing the greatness of those who bear the burden of the prophetic mantle. And a terrible burden it is. To speak the word of God? In this world? Jesus himself had born the weight of that burden. He had experienced the denial, the contempt, the derision, the rejection, the loneliness, that the spoken word of God engenders – of course not as fully as he would come to, or as fully as John would come to either, for that matter.
My guess is that if John had heard Jesus’ defense of him he would for a moment at least have been softened, as would have John’s predecessors, prophets the likes of Amos, Hosea, Jeremiah, and Isaiah. Jesus understood their experience, and to have been understood by anyone at all, much less by Jesus himself, when all others have misunderstood you, is a deeply moving thing.
Jesus understood secondly the greatness of John’s witness itself, for all its searing fury. John was called by God to bear witness to the depth and breadth and height of the fallenness of creation. John saw, indeed felt right down in the marrow of his bones, that defect that inheres in the created order
— that defect that renders God’s good creation subject to violence, famine, disease, decay, and death.
And he saw particularly the way in which that defect manifested itself in the most sophisticated creature of the created order – humankind – we who alone have been endowed with the capacity to know God. It manifested itself in us by the endowment in us of another capacity that is unique to us – the capacity for sin, the capacity for rebellion against the God whom we alone know.
And John saw too just how sin functions, how in service to sin we seek to substitute ourselves for God, how in service to sin we seek to glorify ourselves, how in service to sin we seek to reign in his place. And reign over what? What is there for us over which to reign but fallen creation -- and this is precisely what we in our sin seek over which to reign. We seek to be the gods of fallen creation.
In our own time and place in history this means we protect and secure, we privilege and prioritize with extravagant exaggeration ourselves and our collective selves – our race or class or nation. And we celebrate and boast our success at our endeavor by whatever brand of consumption best suits our taste. We stave off that spoiler death by a variety of means – by banishing it from our midst, by employing medical technology to prolong life at all costs, by shallow rationalizations, especially when we can find evidence that an individual somehow contributed to his demise.
And the result of our reign over fallen creation is increasing and impervious conformity and allegiance and bondage to the laws of fallen creation.
And to make matters worse, in the face of John’s all too penetrating insight into the fallenness of creation and human sin, John saw that the Kingdom of God was at hand, that he who would usher it in was nigh. The tension, the disparity was too great for his soul to bear. He reacted with urgency in direct proportion to this tension and disparity and cried out for the only redress that he could conceive, he cried out for the people to repent. And when they did not, enraged, he threatened that he who would usher in the Kingdom of God was coming with a winnowing hook and would throw them as chaff into an unquenchable fire.
For there was one thing, and it is the key thing, that God, according to his inscrutable wisdom, did not give John to know – that he who would usher in the Kingdom of God would not come with a winnowing hook, but instead would come determined to save us from our sin by bearing it for us.
Perhaps we can sense now some of the greatness that Jesus saw in John. And perhaps we can sense too, as reluctant as we may be and as daunting as he is, that John must be invited into our homes this holiday season. His words are probably more relevant and needed now than when he spoke them because ours is a society that has come to mark this season with near perfect conformity and allegiance and bondage to the laws of fallen creation.
I was listening to the news through headphones the other morning as I jogged along, and I heard a story that nearly made me stop in my tracks. It was reported that a major employer near tornado ravaged areas of Illinois had cancelled its Christmas party in light of the plight of so many local residents. The moneys allotted for the Christmas party would be donated for the sake of their relief. There was of course the implicit admission in the cancellation that the tone of office Christmas parties is incompatible with the devastation and loss those residents are experiencing. Corporate Christmas parties, can be, as we all know, a bit of a walk on the wild side – liquor on the boss’s dime, unbridled revelry, office intrigue laid bare. They are indeed incompatible with the devastation and loss that those residents are experiencing. But they are compatible with Advent and Christmas, I thought? Our society has become so conformed and allegiant and bonded to the laws of fallen creation that the offense that licentiousness -- the polar opposite of repentance -- brings to Advent and Christmas passed completely unnoticed by the reporter.
We must begin to wonder, is it really John who is maladjusted, or is it we? Perhaps our very shock at him is a symptom of our maladjustment to God and our adjustment to the laws of fallen creation.
And so John must indeed be invited into our homes this holiday season. And we must make no effort to domesticate him. We must hear the word of God from this blessed nonconformist, and the word of God is this: We are of a creation that is fallen. We are a people in our sins. The Kingdom of God is at hand, and he who ushers it in is nigh. We must repent lest the miracle of the incarnation -- God becoming man to save us from our sin -- be lost.
John’s last recorded words are about Jesus. “He must increase, and I must decrease.” And so it is. But before John decreases let us be sure to heed him and to thank God for him for preparing the way of our Lord. Amen.
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