2nd Sunday in Advent
December 6, 1998
This passage from Mathew that we are looking at today, one of many we
will hear the next year, is an odd sight, in the middle of the Advent
season. I mean, when I think of Advent, that time in the Christian
calendar when live in expectation of Christ arriving amongst us as the
child in a manger, I personally don’t think of John the Baptist. What I
think of is Mary and angels and guiding stars and the magic of that
moment some two thousand years when was Christ born. I DON’T think
of John the Baptist in the river Jordan, eyes blazing like a madman, fitted
in clothing of camel’s hair, and eating bugs in the desert. For me, this is
not an Advent image. And yet, this story is also about the arrival of
something new. Here John is screaming out his lungs in the desert,
making a public spectacle of himself for all of Judea to see. Here, John
is clearly modeling himself after prophets who haven’t been seen among
the people in literally hundreds of years—“he looks like the prophet
Elijah,” people are probably saying to themselves. But everyone is
curious, aren’t they? We always like to look at the strange, the unusual,
the offensive, even when it makes us uncomfortable, even when it
dislodges our sense of comfort. Maybe that’s why people like John the
Baptist are irresistible…we look because we like, at least secretly, to be
a little bit scared. Its like being at a horror movie when you’ve got your
hands over your eyes, but you’re looking through the slits of your
fingers. And John is like a horror show in the desert, and people are just
too curious NOT to go out and check out the show. But what he says is
not a horror, what he says doesn’t scare us, and in actuality, what he
says gives us hope. “REPENT FOR THE DOMINION OF HEAVEN HAS
COME NEAR.” What was far away is no longer far away, what seemed
like a dream is no longer a dream, what he says echoes what Paul said
to us last week in Romans 13—“the night is far gone, the day is near.”
Repent because we can longer afford to pretend to believe that this is
any ordinary day, that this moment is one of those ordinary moments
strung together for us by time itself. This is NOT one of those moments,
John shouts to the crowds gathered around the river; no, he says to
them, this is no ordinary moment. REPENT FOR THE DOMINION OF
HEAVEN IS NEAR. Heaven is closer than you think, John shouts to us, it
is quite literally arriving among us. And because it is so near, because
heaven’s arch has bent and has bowed to this world, we cannot live as if
this was just any moment—Repent, he howls to the crowd, repent, turn
around, return, change your mind—come home—come home to the God
who has come among us to be with us, to laugh with us, to cry with us.
This is no ordinary moment, this moment requires the extraordinary—
repent, John says, turn around and come home. And once more, John
says to those who’ve come to gape at the freak in the desert, if you think
you can play your religious games when this moment comes, when
dominion of heaven comes among us, you will find that those religious
games won’t be enough anymore, that what is found to be hollow inside,
what is found to be shallow—your words, maybe even your life—that will
be burned away and the world will see what’s really on the inside. We are
not playing games anymore, because when heaven arrives among us, all
of our pretensions will be shown to be what they are—shallow, hollow,
false. This moment requires the extraordinary, this moment requires
that we live what we say, that we never think we can rely on anything but
Grace itself. And so wild-eyed John is baptizing people in the river
Jordan, asking people to plunge themselves beneath the cold waters of
the Jordan, as a sign that when heaven arrives among them, that they
will be ready for this moment, that they have prepared themselves to be
real and to be honest with God and with each other and with
themselves.
And so they flock to this place to be told that by this spectacle in the
desert, this one who eats locusts and wild honey in the lonely Judean
desert. But what really reminds us that this passage on John the Baptist
is about “arrival,” that it is about our expectation of the God who comes
among us during this Advent season, is the verse directly after our
Lectionary passage, verse 13: “Then Jesus arrived at the Jordan from
Galilee…. “ All of a sudden heaven arrives among us. All of a sudden,
over the hill, out of the desert, comes the Christ, comes heaven given
human form. Heaven arrives among them from Galilee. How ordinary,
how ordinary, heaven looks. And yet, ordinary is how the manger, in the
end, looks. It is a child who lies in a manger, not some glowing light, not
some thundering lightening show, just a child in a manger, crying
because he is hungry, crying because he is cold. And yet, and
yet…REPENT FOR DOMINION OF HEAVEN HAS COME NEAR. Heaven
comes over the hill, heaven comes out of the desert, heaven is found in
the manger, and nothing, nothing will ever be the same. Heaven arrives
among us and all our pretensions, all of our religious platitudes, all the
religious games we play, are in danger of being burned away, and what
we are left with is the God who sees us as we really are. These
moments of arrival—heaven coming out of the Judean desert, heaven
coming to us in a manger—require the extraordinary. Repent, return,
turn around, come home. So during this time of arrival, which is what
advent really means, we are asked to respond in an extraordinary way,
to hear John’s call to come home, to not play games anymore, to be real,
to be honest, to live into our calling to be who Christ has called us to be.
Repent. Return. Turn around. Come home. Amen.
