Text: Matthew 3:1-12
The Proclamation of John the Baptist
3 In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, 2 “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” 3 For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said,
“The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.”
4 Now John wore a garment of camel’s hair, and a leather girdle around his waist; and his food was locusts and wild honey. 5 Then went out to him Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan, 6 and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sad′ducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruit that befits repentance, 9 and do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 10 Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
11 “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. 12 His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
“Brood of vipers”? “The axe is laid to the root of the tress”? “The chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire”? No warm fuzzies today, it seems.
Well, we knew that already from last week. Nonetheless, it would be nice to get a little bit of warmth to carry us through these increasingly cold and dark winter days.
But that’s not what the Jesus of Matthew’s Gospel is about. There is serious business at hand and John is first on the scene. John’s presence, John’s words, are a deafening thunderclap that no one can ignore. Hearing John was like hearing the voice of God Himself. As William Barclay tells us, “At this time, the Jews were sadly conscious that the voice of the prophets spoke no more. They said that for 400 years there had been no prophet. Throughout long centuries, the voice of prophecy had been silent. As they put it themselves, ‘There was no voice, nor any that answered.’”[1]
In John, the voice of prophecy was reawakened with a vengeance. And his message was direct, blunt – positively “in your face”: Repent! Repent now! The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand! You do not have the luxury of deliberation!
OK, so just what, exactly, is meant by “repent”? What, exactly, is “repentance”?
We think this is a no-brainer. To “repent” means to say “I’m sorry,” right? It’s like we press the “reset” button when we say, “hey, I messed up, and I’m sorry,” isn’t it?
As it turns out, the answer is a big, fat NO! Saying “I’m sorry” – as important as it is – is just the beginning. It’s like a tiny, and ultimately very unsatisfying, appetizer before a huge meal of Porterhouse steak, potatoes, and a huge salad, all washed down by … OK, you get the idea.
Repentance – real repentance – is much, much more than just saying “I’m sorry.” The Greek verb μετανοέω (metanoeó) literally means “to change one’s mind or purpose.” To me, it evokes the image of a person driving down a street and then suddenly doing a U-turn when he realizes that he’s going down the wrong way. It’s way more than simply saying “I’m sorry” to make nice with people – for the moment – so you can just keep doing what you did before, until the next time, and the time after that, and the time after that … when you’re forced to say “OK, I’m sorry” again. It means you have completely abandoned that unsatisfying and ultimately dangerous walk of life and have promised to yourself and others that you will not be going that way ever again. The noun related to the verb μετανοέω (metanoeó) – “metanoia” – is one that we use today to indicate a deep and total “change in one’s way of life resulting from penitence or spiritual conversion,” according to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary.
This is more than skin-deep; it is nothing less than the total transformation of the person, from the inside out. Repentance is the recognition that where you’re standing right now is the wrong place, and that the direction you’re headed is the wrong direction. It is extremely uncomfortable.
And this is what John preached. (No wonder he had to live outside of town!)
But he wasn’t alone out there in the wilderness: “Then went out to him Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.” People flocked to him in droves – even Pharisees and Sadducees! John’s message struck a nerve and answered a deep longing in those who came to him – a longing born of the knowledge that there was something, if not wrong, then missing, in their lives that John’s message spoke to. The more challenging his words, the more they liked hearing them. Being “scared straight” is not a new concept – because that’s what John did.
And there was more to it than that. John baptized people in the holy River Jordan, washed them of their sins. But he told them in no uncertain terms that this was just the beginning: “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.”
I kind of wonder how the people who heard him say that felt. It seems pretty frightening, especially the reference to fire. But, as we’ve just noted, the bold and challenging message John preached wasn’t enough to scare them back to town, so what did they hear in his words that we don’t?
We live in a day and age where we are positively allergic to being corrected. We love to stick to our guns, state our opinions, hold fast to our views, and talk about our right to do so with words like “That’s my opinion and I’m entitled to it!”; but just let someone disagree with us, just let someone say “you’re wrong,” and – well, to use the old phrase, “them’s fightin’ words!” I confess to you right now that I am without a doubt the worst offender I know in this regard – the best sermons I write are always the ones I write for myself, and I think this is one of them. Let me share a life lesson – I have found that, whenever I allow myself to act out of anger or indignation, even though I’m right (because I totally always am), I find that I always regret it – 100% of the time. The negatives of acting – or, more correctly, reacting – that way invariably outweigh the positives. I have found that not saying something sometimes is much harder than saying something.
So, yes, we do have the right to our opinions – but it may be that, somewhere along the line, we lose the recognition that our opinions, no matter how deeply held, might actually be wrong, or at least not entirely right. William Barclay quotes the Greek philosopher Diogenes, who said, “The truth is like the light to sore eyes. He who never offended anyone never did anyone any good.”[2] Yet when others do offend us, it often doesn’t go any farther than just having our feathers ruffled. We react to the other person’s words, but we fail to take to heart that what so offends us about what they’re saying is that they might be right. The light of truth Diogenes speaks of shines into our sore eyes, but we only feel the irritation, not any possible enlightenment. In such a situation, it’s not even possible to say even an insincere “I’m sorry,” much less feel a sense of repentance. If we are the be-all and end-all of our personal universes, the authors of our own fates, then we can’t by definition ever be wrong, so we can’t ever be in need of forgiveness, and hence have no need of repentance, because there’s nothing to repent of! And we get all wrapped up in ourselves so tightly that there’s no room for anyone else. There’s a great German word for this: verklemmt. It means to be all uptight, inhibited, seized up. And that’s no way to live.
Maybe that’s it. Maybe we moderns have lost something that the people in John’s crowd took for granted: That no, we are not just a bunch of individuals who happen at times to collide with each other like so many billiard balls; that we are all in this together; and that we can and do need others as they need us, and that we need their forgiveness as they need ours, and that we do indeed do things of which we need to repent.
So when John talks about the One who was coming who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire, it may well be that these people greeted the prospect with excitement, not dread – the bad old days were going to come to an end, and the fire of God’s own righteousness was going to purge and burn away all that was false and impure, including those things in their own hearts that they despised but couldn’t seem to get rid of themselves. As Barclay puts it, “[John] urgently summoned men and women to righteousness. John’s message was not a mere negative denunciation; it was a positive erecting of the moral standards of God. He not only denounced people for what they had done; he summoned them to what they ought to do. He not only condemned them for what they were; he challenged them to be what they could be. He was like a voice calling them to higher things. He not only rebuked evil, he also set before men and women the good.”[3]
This is why we have this text today. Advent is our end-of-year chance to get ready for that earth-shattering event called Christmas, as well as to get the new year off on the right foot. This is our chance to get ourselves in alignment with God’s vision for us. This week, I’d like you to take a moment or two and just daydream about what God’s vision for you – you personally – might be. Who is it that God calls you to be? How might you begin to walk in that direction?
A second thing you might consider doing is identifying one thing about your life right now that you’d like to change, that you’d like to repent of, so that you can indeed walk in the direction of God’s vision for you unburdened by it. Imagine the feeling of lightness that will come with taking that load and handing it over to God! What a great feeling! What a day that will be!
TODAY can be that day!
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
[1] Barclay, William, The Gospel of Matthew, Volume One, The New Daily Study Bible, Louisville, Kentucky, Westminster John Knox Press, 2001, p. 50
[2] Barclay, William, The Gospel of Matthew, Volume One, The New Daily Study Bible, Louisville, Kentucky, Westminster John Know Press, 2001, p. 51
[3] Ibid, p. 51