Text: Matthew 3:1-12 (RSV)
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.
One night last week, Katie and I watched “The Man of La Mancha.” I hadn’t seen it for years, and Katie had never seen it. So I pulled the DVD off the shelf and put it in the player.
If you’ve never seen it, it is really magnificent. It’s an adaptation of Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes, and tells the now-familiar story of a nobleman from La Mancha named Alonso Quixano, who reads so many chivalric romances that he decides to become a knight-errant (caballero andante) to revive chivalry and serve his nation, under the name Don Quixote de la Mancha. The most famous part of the story is when he mistakes a windmill for a fierce giant and attacks it; the windmill remains undamaged, and even though Alonso is knocked off his horse, neither is he. This scene is where we get our phrase “tilting at windmills” to describe the behavior of people who pursue lost causes or who fight imaginary enemies.
The signature song of the musical is one I’m sure you’ve all heard: “The Impossible Dream.” The lyrics go like this:
To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go
To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star
This is my quest, to follow that star
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far
To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march
Into hell for a heavenly cause
And I know if I’ll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lay peaceful and calm
When I’m laid to my rest
And the world will be better for this
That one man scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To fight the unbeatable foe
To reach the unreachable star[1]
Alonso – Don Quixote – is assumed to be mad. But was he? Is it madness to strive to “right the unrightable wrong,” to try to make the world a better place because you strove with your “last ounce of courage to fight the unbeatable foe” and “to reach the unreachable star”?
I don’t think he was mad at all. If he was, then I think this world could use a lot more of that kind of madness.
Back in his day, there were no doubt a lot of people who thought that John was mad. There he was, out there in the wilderness, wearing that hair shirt, eating locusts and honey, and baying at the moon about repentance and making straight the pathways of the Lord. To say that John the Baptist was a “colorful character” is the understatement of the century. No one who encountered him could forget the experience.
In John, the voice of prophecy was reawakened with a vengeance. And his message was direct and blunt: Repent! Do it now! The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand! You do not have the luxury of deliberation! Make your choice!
We need to note where John did his prophecy – in the wilderness.
Professor Karoline Lewis writes the following about this: “’In the wilderness’ – a potentially overlooked setting for the prophetic tidings of our dear friend John the Baptist…John appears in the wilderness and cries out from the wilderness…we can’t overlook a prophet’s place. Why? Because a prophet’s place gives a prophet purpose. A prophet’s place locates the testimony to an explicit need…
“We tend to forget that the prophets in ‘Old Testament Times’ were not doomsdayers or predictors of the future. They were truth-tellers of the present. They were able to speak about what would be only insofar as the past and the present, God’s past and present, determined a certain trajectory…You are prophetic when you preach in and from the place your people are for the sake of the place God needs them – and you – to go. When you try to prophesy just for the sake of prophesying, you could very well end up sounding like a noisy gong or a clanging symbol…Prophetic preaching happens in and comes from a place that suggests meaning. From a place that imagines an intersection between God’s world and our world.”[2]
David Ewart writes the following on his “Holy Textures” blog: “The wilderness is a dangerous place filled with bandits, wild animals, and wild spirits. It is a place that respectable people avoid except for respectable reasons such as travelling for business or religious festivals or visiting family.
“But it is also a place of spiritual cleansing, testing, and renewal: The 40 years spent in the wilderness during the exodus from Egypt; the 40 days spent in the wilderness by Jesus.
“That John is in the wilderness is fitting for a prophet. That people from Jerusalem, Judea, and along the Jordan were coming to meet John is a testament to the public acclaim that John has acquired – and to the heightened anticipation of big changes.
“Notice that though Matthew reports that people were confessing their sins, unlike Mark and Luke report, John himself only says that he is baptizing ‘for repentance,’ (Verse 11) and not, ‘for repentance of sins.’
“The repentance John is seeking is individual change of attitudes and actions, but also of societal change of attitudes and actions. When the Kingdom of Heaven comes near it is…coming to change the world.”[3]
And that awful place is where John did his work – yet people came to him out there, not to laugh, not to mock, not to ridicule, but to listen to what he had to say. John’s preaching spoke to a deep need in the hearts of his people; it touched a nerve that hadn’t been touched in centuries. 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.’”[4]
John’s message proclaimed the impossible dream of his persecuted people and gave them the courage to actually try to do that spiritual housecleaning he challenged them to do. John deliberately chose to be in the wilderness, because there was nothing out there to distract people from what he was saying.
And what he was saying was that God was putting his plan in motion – “that the world might be better for this.”
This is the meaning of Advent. It’s a time for us, too, to maybe go a little mad ourselves, and dare to dream that impossible dream that God’s reign is not just on the horizon, but already at work around us and within us; to maybe cast caution to the wind, risk ridicule, and tilt at a windmill or two – “Yes, peace on earth and goodwill to all humankind is possible,” “childhood hunger can be eradicated” (Just to name a couple).
In these next few days of Advent, let us open wide the portals of our hearts and dare to dream the impossible dream of a world that conforms to God’s vision for it – and maybe, just maybe, we will discover that that dream is not impossible, after all!
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
[1] The Impossible Dream lyrics © The Bicycle Music Company, Helena Music Company, Songwriters: Joe Darion / Mitchell Leigh, Source: LyricFind
[2] Lewis, Karoline, “In the Wilderness,” Dear Working Preacher, http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=4764
[3] Ewart, David, “Matthew 3:1-12,” Holy Textures, https://www.holytextures.com/2010/11/matthew-3-1-12-year-a-advent-2-sermon.html
[4] Barclay, William, The Gospel of Matthew, Volume One, The New Daily Study Bible, Louisville, Kentucky, Westminster John Knox Press, 2001, p. 50