A Call for Repentance—Lectionary Reflection for Advent 1A (Matthew 3)

 

Matthew 3:1-12 New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

3 In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, ² “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” ³ This 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.’”

⁴ Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. ⁵ Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region around the Jordan were going out to him, ⁶ and they were baptized by him in the River Jordan, confessing their sins.

⁷ But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? ⁸ Therefore, bear fruit worthy of repentance, ⁹ and do 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. ¹⁰ Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

¹¹ “I baptize you with water for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is more powerful than I, and I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. ¹² 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.”

*******************

                Advent is a season of preparation. That’s a message we hear time and again through the years. We tend not to like such seasons, whether it’s football, baseball, or the liturgical year. There’s a temptation to skip over the preseason and get to the real thing. In this case, it would be Christmas. Yet, those preseason games are important. They let the athletes learn their positions and game plans, and of course, this is a time to get in shape for the season. Could it be that when it comes to living the Christian life, there are seasons of preparation where we hear messages that can be challenging but necessary? These might be the seasons when we hear hard truths and calls for repentance. Is not Advent, like Lent, a season where we look inward and discern where there are issues to be dealt with before we move forward?

                Being that this is the Second Sunday of Advent, the Sunday when we light the Candle of Peace, having already lit the Candle of Hope, we might ask what must be done in preparation for experiencing lasting peace. Here in Matthew 3, we hear a call for repentance and even a word about divine judgment, along with acts of purification and refinement. In this passage, we encounter for the first time John the Baptist, who is down at the Jordan preaching repentance and baptizing folks who come out to hear him preach. John offers this message of repentance and water baptism, but he seems to know that it’s only preparatory work. There is another who will come to complete the job. Thus, he is the one whom Isaiah spoke of. He is the “voice crying in the wilderness, Prepare the Way of the Lord” (Isa. 40:3). While Isaiah might have had the path from Babylon back to Judah in mind, in Matthew it is the way of Jesus, who is coming to baptize with fire and the Holy Spirit.   

                Matthew describes John as something of an eccentric prophet in the vein of Elijah. He’s dressed in animal skins and eats locusts. He is a wilderness prophet, and his way of life fits with his message of repentance. His message is rooted in the larger message of the coming “Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew uses heaven as a stand-in for God). In preparation for the arrival of this realm of God, the people will need to repent and be baptized as a sign of that repentance. Since John’s baptism is an unrepeatable act, unlike the baptismal rites practiced at Qumran, which were daily acts, his baptism is more likely related to proselyte baptism. In other words, to be baptized marked a moment of conversion. The location John chose is important as well. Alan Culpepper reminds us that the Jordan served as “a boundary of the promised land.” Later on, the Jordan would serve as a “metaphor for death and crossing into freedom” as seen in hymns such as “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks I Stand” [Culpepper, Matthew, NTL, p. 57].

                John’s message is, like that of Jesus, apocalyptic. He envisions the coming of God’s realm, which will be inaugurated by the coming Messiah, the one who baptizes with fire and the Holy Spirit, the one John is unworthy to bend down and tie his sandals. According to Matthew, the crowds have come to the Jordan. Some may have come to the Jordan because they hoped he might be the one who would inaugurate a new age. They were the ones who responded to the call to repent and receive baptism from John. Others, of course, came out of curiosity to see this seemingly eccentric prophet. He might have appeared rather entertaining to many in the crowd. Standing among the crowd were members of the two leading religious parties, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. So, why were they there? Did they come to be baptized? While the Pharisees may have agreed with elements of John’s message, the Sadducees would not have embraced this messianic call. While the Pharisees did expect the coming of a Messiah, the same was not true of the Sadducees. Nevertheless, in Matthew’s telling of this story, the two stood together and John wants to know why they’ve come to the river. Even as he issues his call to repentance, he calls the religious leaders a “brood of vipers.” A viper is a snake, and while not all snakes are dangerous, vipers are quite dangerous as their bite is full of poison. The reading for the day from Isaiah 11 envisions a child playing with an asp and reaching down into an adder’s den, unafraid of its bite (Isa. 11:8). What John wants to know here is why they chose to come to the river. Are they there to make a mockery of the scene or are they ready to change their lives (perhaps so a child can dwell with them without worrying about their bite)? In any case, John warns them that they will need to bear the fruit of their repentance. They can’t rest on the laurels of their heritage as children of Abraham. In fact, God can turn stones into children of Abraham. So, make sure your claim to heritage is matched by the fruit you bear.   

In Matthew’s account, John has been charged with preparing the way so that the Realm of God (Kingdom of Heaven) might emerge. If this is going to happen, then there will need to be radical change in the land. Using a harvest image, Matthew speaks of the one who is coming to sort the grain on the threshing floor, separating the wheat from the chaff with his winnowing fork. He will gather together the wheat and then throw the chaff into an unextinguishable fire (Mt. 3:12).  This isn’t an easy text to preach, especially in circles that struggle with the idea of divine judgment.  If God is love, then how can we preach and hear a message like this?  Surely this isn’t the God of Jesus? And yet, it is. The message here is that God has expectations of us. Repentance and baptism are only the beginning. From there we must bear fruit as a sign that change has taken place.

When it comes to the image of the baptism by fire, we might see fire as a refining agent. It serves to rid us of that which doesn’t reflect the values of God’s realm. Thus, as we undergo this fire of divine judgment, we are purified and ready to enter the realm. Thus, rather than being an act of destruction, it is an act of healing so that we might enjoy full communion with God who is holy and in whom there is no evil.

  So, what does this word from Matthew have to say to us as we venture through Advent?  Isn’t it a good thing that we can get distracted by the frivolity of the season in all its consumer glory?  It is at this moment that we hear a call to repentance.  To repent is to turn aside, and journey in a different direction.  There is hope, however.  If repentance takes hold, then it will lead to fruit.  It will place the neighbor before us so that we might be in a relationship. 

In a sermon Helmut Gollwitzer preached the Sunday after Kristallnacht, he spoke of the judgment he and his congregation, along with the nation, deserved because they allowed this horrific event to take place. In the conclusion to that sermon that called for a day of national penance, he declared:

Now just outside this church our neighbor is waiting for us—waiting for us in his need and lack of protection, disgraced, hungry, hunted, and driven by fear for his very existence. That is the one who is waiting to see if today this Christian congregation has really observed this national day of penance. Jesus Christ himself is waiting to see.  Amen. (Gollwitzer in Preaching in Hitler's Shadow: Sermons of Resistance in the Third Reich, p. 126).

            As we take this next step toward celebrating the good news of the incarnation, what words of preparation do we need to hear? How might we search our souls and come before God in repentance, letting God remove from our lives that which separates us from both God and neighbor?   

Image Attribution: Miller, Mary Jane. John the Baptist, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=59675 [retrieved November 27, 2022]. Original source: Mary Jane Miller, https://www.millericons.com/.