Matthew 3.1-12
All around the world today—in churches that range from Roman Catholic, to Anglican and Episcopalian, to mainline Protestants who follow the same appointed scripture readings week to week—worshippers are hearing words that seem ill-suited to the holiday spirit. “You brood of vipers. Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance.”
John the Baptist isn’t exactly a bundle of joy and gladness. And he refuses to be domesticated by seasonal sentimentality. Each year on this 2nd Sunday of Advent we are encountered by him. At the beginning of each of the four gospels we are encountered by him. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all begin their gospels with John the Baptist setting the stage for Jesus. Only it’s hard to know what to do with him. He is not only unavoidable, but he is also uncomfortable. This is not Nat King Cole singing ‘Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire.’ This is a prophet of God singing about chaff burning with unquenchable fire. How would you like to open a Christmas card with that as the greeting? But here John is, forever summoning us to rethink and reorder our lives, orienting ourselves to an altogether new perspective—the perspective of God in Jesus Christ. “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
John the Baptist’s whole sense of purpose and life—his entire being—is on fire with the reality of the One who is coming. John says that the Lord will judge between those who are on the way, and those who are in the way, as he comes to prepare the way of the Lord. John separates trees that bear good fruit from those that are dead wood, separates wheat from chaff, and burns up anything that isn’t useful.
And note that John’s preaching isn’t against non-believers but religious people. Pharisees and the Sadducees are on the receiving end of his fiery words. Elsewhere in the gospels, John proclaims God’s verdict on dishonorable government, corrupt the legal systems, the greed of the rich. But today John’s words are against the religiously serious and the spiritually sophisticated. In other words, he is telling good and faithful people that there are problems not just out there, as in ‘If only those others got their act together my life would be so much better.’ No, John is calling faithful people to renewed life, calling faithful people to respond to the near presence of God with their whole being and life. He is summoning people like us to rethink and reorder our lives to God.
And this project of new life is launched, according to the Gospel of Matthew, in the wilderness. “In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’”
Only why there instead of in the temple courts of Jerusalem where the devout might be inclined to hear a message from God; why not the public marketplaces where crowds gather; why out on the margins? In the scriptures, the wilderness is not merely a decorative detail or scenic backdrop. It is the place God works.
The wilderness is the great biblical symbol of both judgment and new creation. The people of God in the Old Testament were shaped and formed in the wilderness, purified there, renewed there, learned to trust there. The wilderness is the place where God strips away illusions, untangles distractions, and enables his people to hear again. People who take wilderness camping trips often discover clarity, renewed gratitude, resilience, and a surprising sense of peace that reshapes their daily life. It’s an encounter with God.
John’s ministry begun in the wilderness calls people to a place of honest reckoning so that Christ can transform them. It is a place of judgment and of new beginnings. That is why people flocked to John rather than fleeing from such a challenging character. “Jerusalem and all Judea” went out to be baptized by him. John’s message struck a deep chord for people longing for change, for new possibility, for a life no longer trapped by failure. John’s call to repentance was heard as the promise of renewal. If God were truly coming near, as John declared, then change was not only necessary, in God was possible. The wilderness judges what is false in the world and in our lives so that God’s mercy can restore us to what is true.
And the image for this judgement and transformation is fire. “He will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” Now this sort of fiery judgment is something many people feel they must reject as contrary to a loving God, impossible to believe if grace is true. Only I can’t help but wonder if there is more to this fire than we might first think. It is an image of judgment to be sure. And there are plenty of times in the scriptures when fire is an image of God’s wrath. Yet as you listen to the scriptures and take note of the images in the Bible, fire is also a sign of God’s goodness and faithfulness.
God led the Israelites out of Egypt and through the wilderness with a pillar of fire to guide them by night. Even when fire is a threat, like the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace, God was with them. God was with them. Fire is a sign of God’s steadfast faithfulness and dependability, of God’s promise and presence. St Paul, the great New Testament preacher of grace, talks about a coming day when fire will reveal the truth of our lives. God’s fire “will test what sort of work each of us has done.” Yet this fire, while not safe or cozy, is a sign of God’s steadfast faithfulness. Whatever in our lives is built on Jesus, Paul says, will endure—the things in our lives that are precious and good, holy and true. But whatever is not built on Christ, our pride and hypocrisy, our dishonesty, our blindness to human need and suffering, the wrong we have done and the good left undone—the chaff of our lives—will be burned away. Yet Paul pledges that we ourselves, we as people created in God’s image, we will not be destroyed. We will be saved, Paul says. “But only through fire.”
“He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” Only this is not a fire of destruction for destruction’s sake. This is the fire of a potter who wants to make useful vessels out of clay. This is the fire of a metalsmith who wants to refine pure gold from rough ore. Christ judges what is false in the world and in our lives so that his mercy can restore us to what is true.
Any reference to judgment in the Bible should be placed in this greater framework of God’s faithfulness, of God’s greater purpose, of God setting right all that is wrong in the world and in our lives. Judgment is God saying ‘No’ to everything that destroys and God’s ‘Yes’ to everything that makes life flourish. Of course if you look at your life and see only your sin, the things you’ve done wrong in thought, word and deed, things done and left undone—in other words, the impurities, dirt, and dross a metalsmith doesn’t intend—then you will hear John the Baptist’s fiery preaching with fear that those flames will burn you up, burn up who you think you are. But if you look at your life from the view of a metalsmith’s vision and desire, of God’s vision and desire for your life, then you will see how that fire will remove from you the corrosion of sin, the false idols of pride, the things you want to hide from others and hide from yourself but aren’t hidden from God. That fire will be both grace and mercy, burning away all that is impure and untrue. This is good news because it is the promise that God will not let the world stay as it is, or your life as it is. Theologian Karl Barth says, “We must pass into the burning, searching, purifying gracious judgment of the one who comes.” This is a fire that makes us new, makes us vessels of God’s life and instruments for God’s work. Christ judges what is false in the world and in our lives so that his mercy can restore us to what is true.
And within mercy we are free and secure to repent. Repentance is not primarily feeling bad but thinking differently—a reorientation of our life to God. I know that ‘repentance’ often sounds like something that goes hand in hand with heaviness, guilt, and shame. But repentance is not a prerequisite to Christ’s love, it is the fruit of being encountered by Christ’s love. Repentance is an invitation from God to respond in faith to the faithfulness of God in Jesus Christ, to the life God desires. Repentance is a hopeful word because God has something better for us than the way we are living now in a world wearied by violence, by division in our communities, by anxiety in our hearts, by the good we want to do but cannot do, and the sins and failings that we cannot seem to shake.
John’s message strikes a deep chord for people longing for change, for a new possibility, for a life not defined by one’s failures. Christ judges what is false in the world and in our lives so that his mercy can restore us to what is true. “Mercy triumphs over judgement,” says the New Testament letter of James. Mercy triumphs over judgement. And like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace, God is with us in the fire. God is with us. Isn’t that the name the angel said to give Jesus, “Immanuel, God with us”? In the fire God is with us in mercy and love. “One who is more powerful than I is coming after me,” John says. Then, pointing to Jesus, he adds, “He will baptize you with Holy Spirit and fire.”
So in Advent we pray and live in ready anticipation. Come, Lord Jesus. Come.
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