Gospel: Matthew 3:1-12
Every year at this time we experience familiar, comforting signs in our popular culture of what’s ahead. The television commercial showing Peter arriving home from college for winter break and brewing a pot of Folgers coffee before surprising his parents. Radio stations whose broadcast hours are filled with holiday classics, old and new. Tree lots appear in shopping center parking lots and along highways. Light displays brilliantly illuminate the night sky. Charlie Brown struggles once more with the meaning of the season and Linus explains it in a way that still tugs at the heart (and yes, brings a few tears).
We also find familiar, comforting signs in our religious culture. The Advent wreath with its candles lit successively each week, one added to another. The color of our altar hangings changed to a deep purple and our communion set switched from silver to pottery. Key parts of our liturgy adjusted to reflect a penitential approach to the season. Our door wreaths and the tree filled with religious ornaments set in place. The singing of seasonal hymns, familiar and unfamiliar.
Whenever these and countless other moments pop up – even in late-summer when it’s far too early for them – we know what’s coming. They all point to something else.
Now let’s move back two millennia and consider the signs that people saw and heard indicating what was coming then. A man in the wilderness dressed in camel’s hair clothing and a leather belt. A diet of locusts and wild honey. A loud voice calling the world to repentance, and the same loud voice condemning those labeled as poisonous snakes. Water from the river. A differentiation between the baptism in that moment and the baptism yet to come. A mission lived out in the wilderness and on the banks of the Jordan River.
Whenever those moments popped up and signs appeared, the people then knew what was coming. These signs too pointed to something else. They pointed to someone else.
I do however see a bit of a distinction between the signs in these two eras. Today, we often just experience them. In that first long ago Advent season the people also experienced them, but on a deeper level, they also read the signs – older ones reflected in the appearance, life, and especially words of this man John. Each sign revealed in his life and ministry pointed back to the prophets of old and things that would have been extremely familiar to those following him.
First, let’s consider his appearance. People would have looked at John’s attire and immediately thought back to the great prophet Elijah: “He wore a garment of haircloth, with a girdle of leather about his loins.”[1] This was no accident, as – according to Warren Carter – “Evoking Elijah suggests that John may share aspects of Elijah’s prophetic role, especially Elijah’s call for repentance.”[2]
Then we look at John’s diet, made up entirely of locusts and wild honey. In limiting his food intake just to these items, he demonstrated piety, commitment, and an allyship with the poor who survived on the same diet. There was more to these food choices, though, than John living simply. Making similar choices would be a test for later disciples, challenging them “to consider whether they have staked everything on the kingdom.”[3]
Finally we consider John’s words, his call to repentance. This wasn’t about people saying, “I’m sorry,” and then moving on. John’s call was to a complete lifestyle change, a command to “abandon lives of unfaithfulness, injustice, and false allegiance, and to turn back to faithful living in the covenant.”[4] Those hearing his call would recognize the loud echo of the words of past prophets, the similar calls of Moses, Hosea, Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. “Make the heart of this people fat, and their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”[5]
There were also signs to be read in the location of John’s ministry. Look for instance at the baptisms conducted in the Jordan. This wasn’t just any river; its significance dated back to the end of the Exodus as the place where Joshua led the people of Israel into the Promised Land. For those then emerging from Egypt, it was the border between old life and new. For those now submerged in baptism, it too was the border between old life and new.
Look as well at John’s appearance in the wilderness, a place of deep theological importance to the people of that time. It was the wilderness through which those freed from Pharaoh traveled for 40 years. It was a place of redemption, revelation, punishment, and testing for God’s people.[6] It was a place significant enough that it was named almost 60 times between the books of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah.
We now have in summary all the signs – past and present – that point to something that’s about to happen. Those of the present are familiar and comfortable; those of the past are disconcerting. I think that if we’re honest, dwelling with John during this time – if we reflect deeply on what he says and does – makes us shift a bit in our seats. In the words of the Episcopal priest and writer Fleming Rutledge, “It would be hard to say which is more alien to our contemporary ideas of getting ready for Christmas, the season of Advent or the figure of John the Baptist.”[7]
Neither are comforting, nor should they be. In truth, prophetic calls and the prophets themselves weren’t about the business of making us comfortable. John wasn’t sent to put his world at ease. And rooted in that knowledge is a question: Where are the prophets today, and would we want to listen to them if we knew? It’s very unsettling to think that the Elijahs and Jeremiahs and Johns of old may be embodied in someone today, someone we encounter who points and tells us to repent – not just confess and go on our way but make a deep and considered turn back to God when we’ve gone off the path. It’s one thing if we recognize in ourselves that we’ve gone astray and turn. It’s another thing entirely when we’re blinded to it but it’s extremely visible to someone else and they call it out.
It’s possible the prophets we’re not finding or choose not to look at, those calling out to us, are living next door or walking by us on the street. Perhaps they’re in the grocery lines or at the gas pumps. But as a companion to that thought there’s another question, one that may make us even more uncomfortable. Gifts have been poured out abundantly upon each one of us to serve as, among other things, prophets. Through our baptism we are reborn into the threefold vocation and mission of Christ, a key part of which is the work of a prophet. So could it be that the prophetic voices we’re seeking, the voices calling people to God, or community, or service, or compassion, or love, are in fact our own, and we simply can’t or won’t exercise them?
Perhaps we’re not ready, or the time isn’t right, or we haven’t yet been called to raise them. It’s not hard to imagine that maybe John wasn’t ready – but he went. It is something to consider. So during this season I invite you to reflect on your own possible prophetic calls. Spend time in discernment about whether the prophetic voice the world hasn’t heard is yours. Everyone has something about which they’re passionate and care about and a wilderness from which they can call out. Perhaps it’s concern for the poor, hungry, and those in need. Maybe it’s the environment. Perhaps it’s broader community service for the homeless and neglected. Maybe it’s advocating for this church and the work done here in mission and community outreach.
Lifting your voices loudly in these areas may be the call you’ve already heard, or perhaps it’s one that hasn’t yet hit you. See where the call lies and where it leads. Rather than being uncomfortable with the roots of the season, rejoice in them. Rejoice in the calls of the prophets and consider how they urge us to remain on the right path. And rejoice that your voice may be just the one needed to call others back into right relationship – with their neighbors, with their world, and with God.
Amen.
[1] 2 Kings 1:8 (NRSV).
[2] Warren Carter. Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading, p. 91.
[3] Craig S. Keener. A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, p. 119.
[4] Carter, p. 93.
[5] Isaiah 6:10 (NRSV).
[6] Carter, p. 92.
[7] Fleming Rutledge, “The Axe at the Root of the Trees.” Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ, p. 293 (Kindle edition).