The Second Sunday of Advent, Year A

December 9, 2007

Matthew 3: 1-12

 

John the Baptist makes me feel awkward. He always has. He makes no attempt to hide his roughness and abrasiveness, calling people even to their faces “a brood of vipers.” And there seems a tone of self-righteousness in his call for people to repent. Who is he, this guy who seems not even to care about his appearance, who seems not to worry about offending people with his sharp words, who is he to preach to me?

 

A part of me would like to gentrify and tame him, and another part of me wishes he were written out of the story altogether. I feel enough stress already around this time of year; I don’t need more added to the plate; there are more pleasant thoughts than images of a “winnowing fork” and a “thrashing floor” and the burning of an “unquenchable fire.”

 

I thought about preaching the text from Isaiah today, with its images of wolves and leopards living side by side, with lambs and lions eating straw like an ox, and babies playing alongside deadly snakes. It is a text that makes me feel good, that takes all the tribulations of the world and sorts them out neatly, reinforcing a feeling of unequivocal hope amid sometimes exasperating despair. To borrow the phrase of a former president, it speaks of a “kinder and gentler” world.

 

But these rougher, more unsettling images of John the Baptist come to us like clockwork every year, as if to suggest there is something substantive to them, some reason we need to hear them, a greater purpose for them than just being the side show before the main event. John speaks with passion and with urgency and demands to be heard—whether or not we want to listen.

 

As we make our way time and again through the Bible, the process has sometimes felt like the motions of a see-saw: rocking up and down, back and forth, between comforting, paradisiacal images on the one extreme, and uncomfortable, devastating images on the other. There’s the Garden of Eden, but consequences for poor choices made in it. There are righteous kingdoms, but those same kingdoms eventually become corrupt. There are people who persecute Jesus’ followers, but later become ardent articulators of the gospel.

 

I remember playing on a see-saw. I’d sink down, and then be lifted up, and then sink back down, and then be lifted back up. The process would repeat itself over and over, and being a person who likes routines and patterns and predictability, I was happy on the see-saw because nothing could be more predictable, at least as long as there was proper balance.

 

But I also remember when the see-saw wasn’t so fun. If someone significantly heavier than I sat on the other side, I’d be forced abruptly upward and sometimes even fall off, and that wasn’t fun. And there were times when I was the heavier person of the two, and I would sit and go abruptly crashing to the ground, and that wasn’t fun either. It was a particularly bad feeling being the one stuck on the up side, though, because I knew what was about to happen. As soon as the person on the other side got off the see-saw, I, too, would abruptly fall.

If the bible story as a whole feels like a balanced rocking-back-and-forth, there are moments when it feels more like abrupt lifts into the air or crashes to the ground. Our experiences with John the Baptist probably feel more like those. Think how it feels to be stuck in the air. Think how it feels knowing we are responsible for keeping others stuck in the air? We’ve all been in both places. In those moments transformation—even abrupt transformation—seems preferable to the status quo.

 

And those are the times that John the Baptist’s preaching of repentance, the prophets’ forecasting of doom and destruction, and Jesus’ overturning tables in the temple begin to make sense to me. In those moments the “brood of viper language” may even be good: not as a means of demeaning others (which is never good), but as a means of helping them prepare for, helping them open their hearts, to the transforming power of the Holy Spirit.

 

God keeps trying to break in with this radical new kingdom, the one that Isaiah describes, but we keep getting stuck, losing our focus, even—perhaps inadvertently-- pushing the kingdom away. People like John the Baptist and the prophets before him refuse to lose sight of that larger vision; they refuse to be distracted by matters such as their appearance, or how others perceive them, or whether they stand out or blend in with the crowd. They see the coming of the kingdom, and are excited about it, and want for us to see it with them.

 

I want to be careful here, though. As I begin to recognize some legitimacy and helpfulness in the example of John the Baptist, I also recognize some merit in my initial distaste for him. While a world without people like John the Baptist would probably be dull and stagnant, a world too full of the same would probably be very confusing and destructive. I call to mind the see-saw image again; balance is preferable to overly weighting one side or the other.

 

There is a slippery slope between an awareness of a Day of Judgment as a constructive standard for ordering our behavior, and the practice of judging people: leading to their hurt and alienation. Judgment and judging are two different things. One is a biblical ideal and the other is not. An awareness of a Day of Judgment helps me keep a larger perspective in the choices I make. It reminds me that all choices have consequences, good and bad, and that my choices may be hurtful or helpful to others. Judging, by contrast, serves no constructive purpose.

 

Many of us have intentionally avoided the language of judgment either for fear of slipping into the trap of judging, or as a reaction against having been judged. I don’t ultimately believe, though, that John the Baptist called people a “brood of vipers” for the sake of hurting or alienating them, but as a loving way of perhaps opening their eyes to envision something larger, something new—the never stagnant workings of God.

 

During a plenary session at the College of Preachers the other week, a young Methodist minister dared express some of his opinions on hot-button issues. I use the word “dared” because he seemed to be aware his opinions would make him stand out from the rest of us in the room. He expressed his opinions and there was utter, awkward, silence. Then a young Episcopal priest, not me, began to dialogue with him, and the rest of us listened intently. Their dialogue went on for over ten minutes during which there remained great tension in the room.

 

Though I disagreed with the young Methodist minister, I was keenly aware of the courage it took to express his self honestly, even at the risk of alienation. I empathized with him because I have been in precisely the same position, and I know how awkward it can feel. Another part of me, though, wanted to avoid him for the rest of the conference because his opinions made me feel uncomfortable. I think he treaded lightly around me too, except for the fact that we were in the same small group. We had heard one another preach and offered one another feedback.

 

The awkwardness was broken, though, when just as we both were beginning to leave at the end of the conference, he approached me with a compliment. “You know,” he said, “you’re a really good preacher. I would come to listen to you anytime.” I thanked him for the complement and then said to him, “And I have the utmost admiration for your passion for poverty issues in India.” (He had lived in India, and his passion had really come to light in his sermons.)

 

And suddenly, the awkwardness between us was lifted, and the mood in the room was transformed. It was as if we had been shaken, confronted, and called to repent. We were no longer avoiding one another. We were no longer judging one another. We still had our differing perspectives, but they no longer seemed to matter. There had been conversion and transformation, and by the power of the Holy Spirit we were able to see one another not through the lens of controversial issues, but as children of God.

 

It was the very sort of transformation I think John the Baptist envisioned. I can hear him speaking to our often stubborn refusal to embrace such moments of conversion. “You brood of vipers, look at what you’re doing; look at what you’re missing; see the larger picture. You brood of vipers, what will it take to get your attention: falling to the ground on a see-saw, overturning tables in the temple, axing a tree and throwing it into the fire? You brood of vipers; the kingdom of heaven has come near. Embrace it already.”

 

Amen.