12/01/2019
Matthew 3:1-12
Bettejean Cramer
(audio unavailable, manuscript below)
This Sunday’s Songs
Come Light Our Hearts by McCracken
O Come Emmanuel by Traditional
O Little Town of Bethlehem by Brooks/Redner
Once in Royal David’s City by Alexander/Gauntlett
O Holy Night by Roquemaure/Adams
Angels We Have Heard on High by Chadwick/Barnes
We Three Kings by Hopkins
Joy to the World by Watts/Mason
Prepare the Way by DaPonte
Doxology
Further Reading for Advent
Light Upon Light: A Literary Guide to Prayer for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany edited by Sarah Arthur
Bearing the Wait: An Advent Companion (Evangelical Covenant Church resource)
Cardiphonia Resources for Advent compiled by Bruce Benedict
God is in the Manger by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Oak Church Advent Resources compiled by Chris Breslin
Living the Christian Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God by Bobby Gross
Mary Had a Baby: An Advent Bible Study Based on African American Spirituals by Cheryl Kirk-Duggan & Marilyn Thornton
Song of the Stars: A Christmas Story by Sally Lloyd-Jones
Silence and Other Surprising Invitations of Advent by Enuma Okoro
Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ by Fleming Rutledge
Prophesy Hope!: an Advent Refelction on Hope, Peace, Love & Freedom by Danté Stewart
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift: A Family Celebration of Christmas by Ann Voskamp
Advent Calendar (poem) by Rowan Williams
God With Us edited by Gregory Wolfe
We are one week into December and already I am a little overwhelmed by this glorious season. I experienced my first rush of Christmas in early November when I walked into a local store and was assaulted by a rack of poinsettias, followed by rows of wrapping paper and bows. A small forest of pre-lit trees was surrounded by a collection of baubles and balls that encouraged families to create their own unique Christmas look. The shelves were piled high with gift baskets made for no one in particular but guaranteed to please everyone on my list—at least that’s what the sign implied.
I was struck anew with the awareness that celebrating Baby Jesus costs money, time, and energy. It involves making lists and buying gifts. Sending cards and baking cookies. It might mean attending so many Christmas events we have little time to enjoy the homes we worked so hard to decorate. Even those of us who know that Jesus is the reason for this season sometimes lose sight of him among the extravagance of the celebration.
What a contrast to the scene we read about in Matthew 3.
On this second Sunday of Advent, we find John the Baptist, standing in a barren wilderness, yelling loudly,
“Change your hearts and lives! Here comes the kingdom of heaven.”
“The one who is coming after me is stronger than I am. I’m not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. 12 The shovel he uses to sift the wheat from the husks is in his hands. He will clean out his threshing area and bring the wheat into his barn. But he will burn the husks with a fire that can’t be put out.”
Wow! This is not the sleeping baby Jesus nestled in soft clothes and cushioned by a bed of straw. This is not the cherubic infant, eyes bright with precocious wisdom, held by his Virgin Mother, painted by so many Renaissance artists.
John’s words pull our gaze away from the new born baby and toward his Second Coming. Look at the contrast to the way we celebrate his birth. When he comes the second time, he will come with might and worth. He will have the power to baptize people, not just with water, but with the Holy Spirit and fire. He will come armed with tools of judgment and justice, and the promise that he will clean house and set things right for all time.
I, for one, am not always sure how I feel about that. In the spirit of accurate theology, I know I am to be looking toward his second coming with even more excitement that I celebrate his birth. In the reality of daily living, I often forget. Oh, there have been those times when weighed down with the loss of a loved one or evidence of injustice, I can’t wait for him to come again. But during the good times, when life was full and the future holds promise, I don’t mind the waiting. I have concluded that those who live in abundance are not as eager to leave it behind while those who are lonely or suffering look longingly for his return. So John’s words challenge me to a life focused on his coming, a life less full of my own plans and priorities and more dependent on him. This was not only the message John taught; it was the life he modeled for us.
For the next few minutes I’d like for you to join me on a journey. Let’s step away from the busyness of Christmas preparations, strap on our Birkenstocks and hike into the wilderness with the people who came to hear John. Let’s imagine ourselves sitting on rocks in this remote and sparsely populated area. These steep cliffs and deep ravines provide the perfect place to rest, to think, and to see what God would say to us. We would not be the first ones to do this. This is the very wilderness where David hid from his enemies and where Jesus went alone to pray and was tempted by Satan.
From this vantage point, let’s listen again to John as he proclaims, “Here comes the Kingdom of Heaven.” When we look more closely, we see these words are layered with meaning.
On the one hand they are true in the most literal sense. Even as John was uttering these words, Jesus was on the horizon. The kingdom was coming in the form of a man who now walked the rock-strewn paths to join the crowds being baptized.
But there was a deeper meaning. In Jesus, God was coming, indeed had already come, in human form from heaven to infuse earth with an entirely new way to see life. In Jesus, who lived, died, came back to life, and ascended into heaven again, the old order would pass away. God would take up residence in the human heart.
This new Kingdom of Heaven will be eternal; it will have no end. From the time of John’s announcement to our present age, we have seemingly lived in parallel kingdoms. As believers in Jesus, we claim citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven. And yet we live out our lives in a world where countless leaders rise and fall. At a world and national level, we witness a continual swing between evil and benevolent rulers and between wise and foolish leadership.
When we are completely honest, we can see the competing kingdoms within our own lives, the struggle between living by our own standards or living by God’s. It is great news indeed that the One who is coming will have the final word. He will clean out the threshing floor, preserve the wheat, and burn the husks in a fire that will never go out. We don’t see it now, but we know it is promised. The One who came as a baby, who established the kingdom of heaven in our hearts and lives, is coming again to set things right for all eternity. We sense this calls for some change in us, a new way of thinking and living, but we are often not sure how to bring it about.
“Here comes the kingdom” would have been understood differently by the people who first heard John announce it. The Jewish people who poured into the wilderness from the surrounding cities and towns to hear this strange man knew the Old Testament prophesies about a king who was to come. Although the voices of the prophets had long been silent, the people remembered and longed for the arrival of this new earthly king. Their hopes were tied to their certainty he would be a formidable warrior like King David. He would overthrow their oppressors and establish them once again as a proud and independent nation.
John’s challenge to ‘change your hearts and lives’ was also familiar rhetoric. The prophets of old had continually linked righteous living with God’s favor. As s a nation of God’s Chosen People, they had been warned of sin and urged to repent for centuries. Now here, 400 years after the last prophet had spoken, John delivered the same message and proclaimed their deliverance was at hand. I can only imagine what good news this was and how eager they were to repent of their sins, to change their hearts and lives. They couldn’t grasp just yet that John was not speaking of an earthly kingdom, but a whole new way of understanding life.
It may seem odd that John preached such a vital message in this sparsely populated wilderness. Even now it could take up to four hours to walk from Jerusalem to this area by the Jordan River. And yet, the wilderness was the appropriate place for John to proclaim this One who was coming. It called people out from the ordinary and away from the noise and productivity of daily life. It required intentionality and effort to come this far. By removing themselves from the familiar they opened themselves up to receive something new. It was a metaphor for the breaking out of established structures of authority. People who worshiped in synagogues and relied on priests to offer sacrifice for their sin repented in the open air. People who had been experienced rites of purification from water in temple jars were now immersed in the Jordan River.
The meaning of this new kingdom was beyond understanding, yet in John’s life and ministry we see its values. John himself would have been uncomfortable with any attempt to use him as a role model. He didn’t come to draw attention to himself but to turn the spotlight on “the one who is coming.” John was not the main event, not even the headliner. He was merely the voice that called people to prepare for the arrival of the kingdom. He deflected every attempt to give him more credit than the one who was coming, the one who was so much greater than John that John wasn’t worthy of doing the most menial task, like carrying his sandals.
In John 1:22 there is an account of Jewish leaders sending priests and Levites to question his identity. They asked him outright, “Who are you? What do you say about yourself?” And he declared, I am a voice crying out in the wilderness, make the Lord’s path straight, just as the prophet Isaiah said.”
John could have responded by listing his own impressive family line. He could have said, “I too am a Levite.” His father had been one of the priests; and his mother was descended from Aaron, Moses’ brother, and the first of the priestly line. That certainly is what most of us would have done—attach ourselves to an impressive family line.
We might even rationalize how much easier it might have been for John if he had preached in the temple, acting on the authority he had according to the family line. Yet 700 years before his birth, Isaiah had prophesied that he would be the voice of one crying in the wilderness. John humbly placed his confidence in God and who God had declared him to be rather than in what his family heritage allowed him to be.
So, we find John, who by birthright could have donned the white linen robes of a priest, in the wilderness dressed in camel hair clothing and living on locusts and wild honey. This would have seemed less strange to the Jewish audience than it does to us. John’s appearance reminded them of the Old Testament prophet Elijah, who had worn camel hair and a leather belt. But those of us who are less familiar with the stories Elijah may find John’s peculiar attire and his limited diet extremely odd. Clothing made of camel’s hair? Locusts and wild honey? Some scholars have suggested he was just a rugged outdoorsman or too poor for a better wardrobe and more substantial diet. Others have seen his lifestyle as symbols of his humility.
All of these are suggestions are probably true, but I backpacked into the Grand Canyon once, so I have an additional perspective. John’s attire and diet indicate his focus on a greater goal and a need to travel lightly. His camel hair clothing would have lasted a long time and needed little upkeep. Locusts and wild honey were portable food. They would have been reasonably available in the wilderness and John could seek them out when he was hungry. No backpack or picnic basket needed. He was not burdened by possessions, but free to move as the Holy Spirit led.
John epitomized the values of the coming kingdom, a kingdom that Jesus spoke about in Matthew 6, where he said, “Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or what you’ll drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food, and the body more than clothes?” I am reminded again of my own life, of the things I worry about, of the lists I make and things I save. I wonder, not for the first time, what it would look like if I were more focused on Jesus and his second coming. Would I live with less and give more? Would I be more concerned with injustice than personal offence? Would I fight for others and not against them? Would I share the good news of Jesus as easily as I discuss the nightly news? Would I be willing? Am I be able?
What a contrast John’s life was to that of the Pharisees and Sadducees. He denounced these self-righteous peddlers of their man-enhanced laws saying, “You children of snakes! Who warned you to escape from the angry judgment that is coming soon? 8 Produce fruit that shows you have changed your hearts and lives. 9 And don’t even think about saying to yourselves, Abraham is our father. I tell you that God is able to raise up Abraham’s children from these stones. 10 The ax is already at the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit will be chopped down and tossed into the fire.”
Their titles of authority mean nothing in the coming kingdom. The flowing robes of their religious position don’t hide the fact their self-righteousness actions have failed to bear fruit. Their dependence on the family line of Abraham reveals a low view of God. They know little about God’s heart, God’s power, or the way he will grow his family.
This is great news indeed for those of us who long to bear the fruit of a changed heart and life. If God can make children from the stones along the river bank then God can make children from people not born in the Jewish line, people who have nothing to offer, people who have made mistakes, have been broken, have fallen and tried to get up…people like us. The power to change is not ours; its his.
Fleming Rutledge, in a sermon preached in 1983, sums this up more eloquently than I can.
“It is God’s power that gives good deeds and inner strength and spiritual discipline and faith and repentance. We are able to repent and bear fruit because he is coming. “
“What does it all mean?
- It means any number of things.
- It means that you are being changed and I am being changed.
- It means that we Christians are going to be weaned away from our possessions and oriented toward being everlastingly possessed by the love of God.
- It means that we will become less interested in receiving personal blessings for ourselves and more interested in making Christian hope known to those who sit in darkness.
- It means that we will becomes more and more thankful as we become less and less self-righteous.
- It means that we will gradually become less preoccupied with our own privileges and prerogatives and gradually see ourselves more and more in solidarity with other human beings who, like us, can receive mercy only from the hand of God and not because of any human superiority.”
Thank God, the kingdom has come and is coming. Thank God, the one who comes baptizes us with the Holy Spirit and fire, that he is the one who changes our hearts and lives.
As we hike back out of the wilderness and memories of John fade, as we rejoin the festivities of this joyous season, perhaps we will let our eyes linger a little longer on the one who has come and is coming again.
