Year A, Advent 2 Matt 3:1-12
Like many of you, I have been busy trying to get things decorated and festive. We have a lot of Christmas decorations as that is a go to present for a priest and there are two priests in our family. I think we are up to 7 crèches…only one of which we purchased. Yet you know what decoration you never see—John the Baptist in his camel hair with a dead locust hanging out of his mouth. Yet, John the Baptist pops up twice in our Advent readings, calling people names, telling them to repent. It’s a wonder he doesn’t have his own Advent calendar.
It’s interesting that
he shows up during Advent for a few reasons. Remember this is the adult John
the Baptist. John the Baptist and Jesus
are born within a few months of one another.
What is adult John the Baptist doing preparing us for something that
happened 30 years before? John the Baptist was not preparing people for the
birth of Jesus— he was preparing people for the reign of God.
Many people at the
time thought that he was the prophet Elijah, who had lived 100s of years before
and was also a little rough in his appearance.
Elijah did not die, he was taken into the sky in a chariot. Since he didn’t die, many Jews expected him
to return right before the Messiah was to come. Some Jews are still waiting for
Elijah to return, which will herald the coming Messiah. From the few texts we have in the Bible about
John, he never said he was Elijah, but the author of the Gospel was obviously
trying to make a connection. If John was
Elijah and pointing to Jesus, then that’s further proof that Jesus was the
Messiah that they had all been waiting for.
At Christmas, we
tell the story of Jesus’ birth…which is a pretty great story. I never weary of
hearing that story. But Christmas is
also supposed to be about the incarnation itself, which means that God became a
human being and lived among us. John’s
presence in our readings during the season of Advent wasn’t preparing people for
the birth of Jesus, but he was preparing people for the life and ministry of
Jesus.
John had a very
specific vision of this ministry. He
said, ‘I baptize
you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I
is coming after me…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.’
Whenever I read this, I recoil a little. I have
to wonder, did John the Baptist get it wrong, or am I wrong about Jesus? Next
week we will read another story about John the Baptist after he has been
arrested where he asks Jesus if he is the one they have been waiting for, or if
perhaps there is someone else coming. He
wasn’t yet convinced that Jesus was the Messiah, because he wasn’t what he
expected. To that Jesus responded something along the lines of “I am healing
people, raising the dead and bringing good news to the poor. “ Jesus clearly thought that those things were
what made him the Messiah, not the winnowing fork and unquenchable fire. That said, Jesus did talk about the fires of
hell a few times in the Gospel of Matthew.
We don’t like talking about that in the Episcopal Church, but it’s
definitely there.
However, I wonder if there might be a way to
consider this message that John the Baptist delivered as an opportunity for
growth, rather than a judgment.
Typically when we think of the separation of the wheat and the chaff, we
see them as groups of people. You are either the good wheat that is gathered
lovingly or you are the chaff that is burned in the unquenchable fire. Fire can be destructive, but it can also
refine or purify when the fire is controlled.
At the time Jesus lived, they refined metals like gold and silver using
intense heat, which would melt away the impurities.
What if the fire that Jesus brought was a fire
that refined, rather than a destroyed? When
Jesus talked about repentance, I believe he was asking us to look at ourselves,
and how we might allow ourselves to be refined.
That refining would require that we release the sins that hold us down,
our judgment of other people, our selfishness…whatever it may be. That is what repentance is, it’s not only
examining ourselves, but also accepting God’s guidance as we do so. It’s allowing God to burn away the parts that
get in the way of us being loving, generous, faithful and brave. It’s not about sorting the good people from
the bad people, but sorting ourselves out.
At the end of the world, Jesus will still judge
(if we are looking at it from a Biblical perspective), but I really don’t think
that is what we should be focusing on right now. The way we prepare for the incarnation, which
is God in the flesh (God among us), is by acknowledging that while we are
flawed and there is room for improvement, being human is at least partly divine
because we are children of God.
There is not one single person in this church (or
world) who is perfect. There is not one
person in this world who is worthy of God’s love because of who we are or what
we do. And there is such freedom when we
can accept that. What makes us worthy of
God’s love—what makes us perfect, is that God loved us first. When God came to this earth, God decided,
these people who keep making the same mistakes over and over again, are worth
everything to me. Maybe, just maybe,
showing up as a human, showing them God in the flesh will help them see —see
what their worth truly is. That’s what
the incarnation is. That is what we are
preparing for in this season of Advent. It
is about preparation and repentance. But
it’s not about becoming someone else, it’s about returning to who we were
created to be, beloved children of God.
That will take some work. We
might need some refining, but it will be worth it.
