Our Gospel message comes to us today from the 3rd chapter of Matthew, beginning with the 1st verse.
In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
—Matthew 3:1-12 (NRSV)
All mighty God, we thank you for your word and the way that you in it revealed to us who you are and what you've done for us in Christ. Now as we open that word we pray that your spirit may be present, that all thoughts of worry or distraction may be removed and that the Spirit will allow us to hear your voice. And so, oh God, fill us with your spirit through the reading and proclamation of your word this day. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.
“John the Baptizer—Prepare A Way for the Lord”
Grace be unto you and peace, from God our Father and from our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Today, on this Second Sunday in Advent, we encounter one of the most interesting and dynamic characters, outside of Jesus, in all of the New Testament. His name is John. He was, according to Luke’s Gospel, the son of Zechariah, a priest living in Judea, who was married to Elizabeth, a relative of Mary, the mother of our Lord. But John was not known by his last name, as being a son of Zechariah. John was known as the Baptizer.
Now, I use the term John the Baptizer, instead of John the Baptist, because I wouldn’t want to give any of our younger persons reading this morning the impression that he was know for his association with a particular denomination of the Christian Church. John was known as the Baptizer, because it was to describe the significance of his unique ministry. John was called by God to herald and call people to prepare for the coming of the Messiah, the Son of God.
And let’s make no mistake about it. Not only was John’s ministry unique, he was unique. He could have followed in his father’s footsteps, and become a priest, and use that position to call people to prepare for God’s coming among us in the person of Jesus the Christ. But he didn’t. Like a hippie from the Sixties, he left his home, striking out on his own to seek a restless urge within him, leading him to find peace with his soul.
But unlike the hippies, who seemed to follow the beat of their own drum, the beat that pounded in John’s heart was the call of God. Nevertheless, John wound up in the wilderness, dressed in a garment of camel’s hair, and subsiding on a diet of locust and wild honey. And we might conclude that his hair was long and stringy, with a beard that would drive Nancy to demand that I go and see Rick for a cut and trim.
John was a rough wilderness person, weathered and stern. And his message was as stern as he was. “Repent of your sins, and prepare the way of the Lord, for God’s kingdom is coming among us.” He called a spade a spade. And yet, the Gospels tell us that in spite of his lack of tact, the people from all the regions left the comfort of their homes and traveled out in the wilderness to hear him preach, repent of their sins, and have their sins be cleansed by baptism.
But Matthew’s Gospel raises a couple of troubling aspects of John’s message for us to consider. When the Pharisees and Sadducees, those who lived their lives striving to keep the commandments and live a life of faith, came to hear John preach and seek his baptism of repentance, John rebuked them. Think about this, here were those who worshiped God on a regular basis, and truly strived to live according to God’s will, persons not unlike ourselves. And yet, John calls them a brood of vipers, snakes, those who would want to poison and obstruct the message of the Messiah. It is as if they only wanted to have their skins washed, not their hearts and minds.
There is a past, future and present tense to this message of Advent. John the Baptizer is calling on us, as he did the people of his day, to prepare for the coming of the Christ and the kingdom of God. And although his message is one that is grounded in history, calling the people of his day to prepare, and look forward to the beginning of Christ’s ministry, it calls them to act in the present moment of their lives with repentance.
And so, if we are to bring John’s message into our present moment, to learn from the past as we look forward to the future, we must realize that we, like those who were the religious faithful of the past, cannot escape John’s call to repentance. We must realize, that in the eyes of God, none of us have lived our lives as God would have us live. We still need to repent, and daily renew the promise of our baptism.
I think one of the problems of this passage from Matthew’s Gospel, is that we don’t understand how to interpret John’s message. To be sure, like a good Pentecostal preacher, he used the words that described our future in terms of hell and heaven, with the words of eternal fire. And as we look at this text this morning, is it not those words of John, those words that speak of fire, a little bit troubling to us?
On the one hand, John tells us, that unlike his baptism of repentance, Jesus will baptize us with the Holy Spirit and with fire. On the other hand, John tells us that those who do not repent, will burn in hell, in an unquenchable fire. Now I don’t know about you, but after watching villages in Vietnam burn after being bombed with napalm, I have come to realize the frightening danger of fire.
To put this in perspective, Barbara Brown Taylor, in her book, Gospel Medicine, stated, and I quote: “One of the most frightening things about John’s vision of judgment is that unquenchable fire of his. It is not possible to live in the Bible belt without a vivid image of hell, much more vivid than the clean streets of heaven.
Throughout Holy Scripture, fire is the one reliable sign of the presence of God. God speaks to Moses out of the burning bush. A pillar of fire guides the people of Israel through the wilderness after their escape from Egypt. When Moses goes up on Mount Sinai to get the Ten Commandments from God, it looks to those down below as if the mountain itself is being devoured by fire.
I do not mean to minimize the danger. This is not save fire; it can still burn… but it is God’s own fire, the fire of God’s presence, fire that wants to speak to us, guide us, instruct us, and save us. It is the fire of a potter who wants to make useful vessels out of damp clay. It is the fire of a jeweler who wants to refine pure gold from rough ore.
It does not have to be the fire of destruction, in other words. It may also be the fire of transformation, a fire that both lights us up and changes us, melting us down and reforming us more nearly to the image of God. It is the fire with which Jesus himself baptizes us, inviting us into bright, not hot relationship with him.
Even when the fire seems bent on consuming us in a fiery furnace, we find that we have company, and that even in the hottest regions of our own personal hells, we do not sweat lone.” End quote.
The point of my message this morning is not just that John was a very unique individual, chosen by God to prepare the people years ago to hear his message, but that we today should repent and prepare to receive the Son of God into our lives. His message, as rough as it was, speaks to us today.
As Barbara Brown Taylor points out, his message is not just a message of doom for those who fail to heed his call of repentance and come to faith in Jesus as the Christ, it is also a call for those of us who do embrace Jesus as the Christ, to be purged by the fire of reformation that Jesus inaugurated with his ministry, that we might become his disciples, and instruments of his ongoing compassion for those in need.
Personally, I do not fear the image of fire as being an eternal torment for my sins. Rather, I look to the image of fire as the means by which I am molded and shaped into the image of God, that Jesus the Christ has modeled for me to emulate.
So let us pray for God’s Spirit to come among us, to keep the fire of our Lord’s redeeming grace alive in our community, that we might be consumed by God’s grace, burn our sins in repentance, and learn to live as God’s redeemed people in Christ, who look forward to his presence, not only in the life to come, but in every moment of our lives.
Let us pray: Dear Heavenly Father, God of the prophets, you sent your messenger into the Jordan wilderness to prepare human hearts for the coming of your Son. Through the power of your Holy Spirit, help us to prepare for Christ’s coming into our presence, that we might hear the good news of your saving grace, repent of our sins, and transform our lives to be witnesses to your redeeming grace. This we ask in Christ’s Holy name. Amen.
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Scripture taken from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)® Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Sermon contributed by Rev. Ronald Harbaugh.
John the Baptizer speaks to us today.
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