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Sunday, December 05, 2010
Are You John the Baptist?
By Rev. Jerry Herships
Matthew 3:1 – 12
1In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, 2“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” 3This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” 4Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist and his food was locusts and wild honey. 5Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, 6and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
7But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8Bear fruit worthy of repentance. 9Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 10Even now the ax is lying at 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 one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12His 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.”
I have to be honest. Sometimes I read a Bible passage and just go, “huh.” I know there are some of you out there thinking that Pastors and Preachers have it all figured out. Maybe some others do, but I suspect there are at least a few of them like me. There are easy passages to figure out what the writer was going for, and there are others where I am simply looking and going, “I got nothin’.”
It is in these moments that seminary training does pay off. Part of seminary isn’t just teaching us how to interpret text, but also where to go and what resources to use to help us interpret text. Half of knowledge is knowing where to go to find that knowledge.
That was the case here. For the next three weeks, I am going to preach from what is called the lectionary. It is a listing of texts that any preacher in the country can turn to and see what, in theory, all the other pastors are preaching on that week. It gives you an Old Testament verse, a Psalm, a Gospel and one of Paul’s letters to pick from. I went with the Gospel.
I then turned to one of the commentaries. Commentaries are giant books that scholars write to explain biblical passages in depth. How in depth? Here is the Gospel of Matthew. Here is the commentary explaining the Gospel of Matthew. Sometimes they are no help at all. Sometimes they say very interesting things. For example, the commentary on this passage says that Pharisees and Sadducees, during John’s time, would not have been hanging out together. They were opposing religious parties and pretty unlikely to be working together. Matthew isn’t presenting reality in this instance, but rather showing the opposition to John as a united front, in much the same way there will later be a united front against Jesus.
While I think that’s cool, in a Bible geek sort of way, it isn’t what I think we should focus on in this passage. I’ll get to that in a minute.
In the mean time, I am wondering if any of you have ever tried to explain AfterHours to someone who hasn’t been to AfterHours? I’m curious about how you explain it to someone else. After all, not every church’s Call To Worship is slapping together PB&J. We are a bit of a strange duck, although I hope none of you describe us that way.
I usually say something like, “we are church for people who don’t do church,” but that doesn’t explain it all. I will say we are focused on serving others outside our walls. The fancy church word for this is “Missional.” We are part of a larger church, St. Andrew Church, which, in turn, is part of a larger denomination, The United Methodist Church. The United Methodist Church is part of a larger group called Protestant, which is a sub group of the Christian faith. There. Is that clear as mud?
I think a simpler way of saying it is that we are trying to live our lives as close to Jesus as we can and we are trying to do the things, and behave in the ways Jesus told us to live. That cuts through a lot of BS doesn’t it?
See, I think for a lot of us, there are parts of the wider church community that really rub us the wrong way. I think there are parts of organized religion that really bug me. The good news is that we are in good company because it also bugged John the Baptist and Jesus too! We see value is following God through this master teacher named Jesus. We just sometimes struggle with all the rest of it.
I definitely feel this way sometimes. I feel like I have one foot in the church world and one in the secular world. I think some of you feel the same way. We want to be associated with something bigger than ourselves, and we want to believe that the thing bigger than us is God, but God’s fan club that we often see out in the world, is not necessarily a club in which we want to belong. Having a foot in both worlds is challenging, but I believe everyone here is in that space. It is nice to be a part of each community, but as a result, you can’t really claim either as your true home. It is like we are bridge people.
The passage we read today is all about bridge people, John and Jesus. John already had his own thing going when Jesus came on the scene. He had his own followers, his own disciples. But, John was not necessarily a member of “the establishment.” He wore a camels hair get up and ate bugs. Not what corporate America would call, “a suit.” And I think when you call someone a “pack of vipers” you have to know that is not the way to win friends and influence people. John was not going to be getting a key to the executive washroom anytime soon. Yet, he was doing the work of God. No doubt about it.
Jesus, although he is not in this passage, is still a central character. He too is anti establishment, and as a result, the establishment kills him. But we will save that part of the story for Easter.
Even when Jesus does come, he doesn’t do it the way we expect. John is expecting this wild, separating the wheat from the chaff, type of event. “You watch, he’s going to put the good guys over here and the bad guys over there.” Yet that’s not how Jesus comes into the world. Why would he start his formal ministry that way? He enters the world as a small, innocent baby, born in a strange land in a manger. Put another way, Jesus was a helpless, homeless immigrant baby, born to an unwed mother. God comes in and, right from the start, blows our mind.
So John blows our mind and clearly doesn’t fit the mold. Jesus comes in and he doesn’t fit the mold. Are we seeing a pattern? The God of the universe does not do things in the usual way. We get to see God in a new light, the light of the world.
Maybe that is what we are to do here with Afterhours and this advent season. We are to own our uniqueness as a community and try to look at Advent with fresh eyes. Advent means to get ready or to prepare. Maybe this passage is telling us that this Advent season, expect the unexpected.
In this passage we see John bust into the story, out of nowhere. The actual passage begins with a Greek word that both the NRSV and the NIV miss. The Greek word means “now” or “but.” It evokes suddenness. John appears without preparation or warning. There goes God again, bursting into the scene in another unexpected way. Out in the wilderness, John is doing God in a new and surprising way.
AfterHours is like John the Baptist, doing church in a new and unpredicted way. This is always going to involve risk. John ended up losing his head over the deal.
AfterHours is also like John in another way. John is an outsider. He is being a prophet and doing the work of God, but the organized religion of the day doesn’t get him and he doesn’t get them either. He is not outside the faith, but he isn’t hanging around with the Sadducees and Pharisees. As we’ve said, he’s not a company man. He’s not quite “in” and not quite “out.” And yet God is using this “outsider” to make inroads for the Kingdom. It is here in Matthew that we see the openness of accepting others even when they don’t fit inside the nice and tidy box we call “The Church.”
AfterHours sometimes seems too “churchy” for those people who don’t go to church all the time or are new to it. And we are very often not churchy enough for those who are accustomed to a more traditional understanding of church. But we are hopefully opening people’s eyes to seeing God and church in a different way.
In a lot of ways, all of us are like John the Baptist. We are all outsiders in one way or another. Everyone has felt that way at least once in their life, that feeling like you don’t fit in. By claiming Afterhours as your church home, you are saying you are comfortable doing God in new and unique ways. You are a little bit counter cultural, like John and Jesus. You have to be bilingual, you have to be able to talk secular AND church. By doing this we all become bridges that help bring people to God.
This Advent season, let us prepare for Jesus’ arrival by opening our eyes, seeing the season in a different way, seeing the work we do in a different way, and seeing that God is always bursting onto the scene in new and exciting ways.
Let us be John the Baptist in our corner of the world.
Are you John the Baptist? Are you sharing the arrival of something great? All I ask is that you do it in your own way. God is going to love how you get the message out there.
Amen.