Scripture text: Matthew 3:1-12
So, John the Baptizer. We come into the second week of Advent with our annual introduction to Jesus’ cousin, his herald, the “voice of one crying out in the wilderness.” John is all these things and yet he remains one of the more enigmatic figures in the Gospel story. People don’t get him. They didn’t get him at the time and I’m not sure people get him now. And maybe for the same reasons.
Let’s travel back in time to the 1st century. It’s a Roman world and pretty miserable if you aren’t Roman nobility or one of their lackeys. The people are hungry for change. They’re looking for a charismatic figure to lead them into a new era. A time when things will be great again.
Sound familiar?
Oh, yeah...that guy.
Ok, there’s some parallels between John’s time and our own. People were looking for political change, political revolution. John fit the bill of that charismatic figure, so people flocked to him to hear his message. His message fit their hopes in its own way also, a call for repentance. If we just get rid of sin, people reasoned, God will bless our efforts to redeem our nation.
That should sound familiar also. After all, there are a number of people (as I’ve pointed out) who voted the way they did if the mindset of “If we just get rid of (insert minority group here), God will bless our efforts to redeem our nation.” If we just get rid of sin... If we just get rid of the sinners...
The Pharisees and the other religious leaders of the day show up also to check out John. They, of course, have the most to lose if things change, so they want to know what’s what with the enemy. John excoriating them as he does (You brood of vipers) also plays into the crowd’s expectations that he’s the herald of a new political order.
But this isn’t what John is about. Matthew, whose version of John’s story we receive, is rather vague about the content of John’s message. Luke fills in those gaps by telling us that what John is preaching is a repentance that takes one from a life of selfishness to selflessness, from taking to giving, from looking out for #1 to self-sacrifice. He’s not calling for a political revolution, but for a moral one.
He is the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord. He is the herald of the Messiah, the one who is coming who will baptize with fire and change the world. Get ready.
That’s John’s purpose. That’s his job. He’s no revolutionary leader like George Washington or the late not-so-lamented Fidel. Of course, what ends up happening is a lot of these folks just transfer their revolutionary expectations from John to Jesus, which wasn’t any better. In that regard, John in some ways fails in his task. They don’t get what this is all about.
Do we?
It is very easy for us to misunderstand John’s purpose even IF we understand his call for a moral revolution. We spent so much time of our Christian life being bombarded by the idea “if we just got rid of sin, God would love us again.”
"The gospel declares that no matter how dutiful or prayerful we are, we can't save ourselves. What Jesus did was sufficient." - Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel
But that’s not the point of John’s call to repentance. He understands something that we often miss.
You see, if we start living a life of sacrifice and selflessness, we start to live like Jesus. And if we live like Jesus, if we act like Jesus, we might start thinking like Jesus. And if we start thinking like Jesus, we might start understanding Jesus.
You see if John’s call to repentance is a call to moral perfection, then Jesus makes no sense. Jesus shows up on the scene and he doesn’t go to the morally upright. He doesn’t hang out with the “good people.” He goes to the tax collectors, the lepers, the prostitutes. He hangs with sinners. That’s where his focus is. He’s with the poor, not eating $200 dinners with the President-elect and the powers-that-be.
The very author of this Gospel would have been excluded if this was all about moral perfection.
But if we follow John’s counsel, we see why Jesus does this. These are the ones that need him. These are the ones who are precious to him. These are the ones that he loves. You see, as we well know as Christians, Jesus comes to save the world. The whole world. EVERYBODY if possible. That’s the plan. That’s what this scheme of God’s is about. Salvation of the whole world.
If we start living a life of sacrifice and selflessness, we start to live like Jesus. And if we live like Jesus, if we act like Jesus, we might start thinking like Jesus. And if we start thinking like Jesus, we might start understanding Jesus. And what we want starts becoming the same as what he wants. We look upon the “sinners” (however we might define them in this day and age) as precious children of God that he sees.
Considering the nature of our times, John’s call for a moral revolution is something we should all take seriously. For our society has grown frighteningly hostile to people that Jesus, were he living today, would include in his inner circle. People he loves. People he wants to save. We live in an era where threatening letters are written to mosques, where swastikas are graffitied onto churches, and schoolchildren whose skin color is not white are bullied mercilessly. This is not the world Jesus wants.
Jesus wants a world of welcome and acceptance. He loves you. He loves me. He loves all. He wants to save all people from sin and death, you, me, and everyone. To that end, he came. To that end, he was born. To the end, he died on a cross. To that end, he rose again on third day.
John knows Jesus’ purpose, but the world wasn’t ready for it. In many ways, it still isn’t. John’s work isn’t done. His moral revolution is still necessary. We, even now, need to prepare the way of the Lord. We need to open our eyes to see the world like Jesus and we need to call others to do the same. Because Christ came to save the world. Do you understand what that means? Act like Jesus, think like Jesus, and you will. Amen.
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