Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!
John told the crowds that their old ways of thinking, by which they justified the actions of their former lives and excused those things they failed to do, must change. If they continued to run this same mental computer program they could expect no change in behavior, no genuine growth in righteousness. And because "the kingdom of heaven" was finally at hand the need for such a change had become urgent.
A voice of one crying out in the desert
To come to John they stepped into the desert, back into the memory of an Israel that was led by God through the desert to the promised land. In terms of geographic location, they had dwelt in the promised land, but thus far their experience of the promise of the promised land had been limited and partial. The promise had not failed, but their own response had always been fragmentary and lukewarm, without the love God desired.
Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her (see Hosea 2:14).
In the desert the people of Israel could remember who they were meant to be, whom they had always been called to become by God. There they could commit to beginning again, and reenter the land from the Jordan River just as the Israelites crossing the Jordan with Joshua had first entered the promised land.
and were being baptized by him in the Jordan River
as they acknowledged their sins.
The point of this baptism of John was not merely that it be an external ritual. The place he baptized was the same place where Naaman the Syrian was cleansed of his leprosy when he followed the command of Elisha. And John was interested in nothing some much as that the people who came to them have a definite desire and intention to make a break with the spiritual leprosy of sin.
At that time Jerusalem, all Judea,
and the whole region around the Jordan
were going out to him
What accounted for the popularity of John and his message? It was not because he was entertaining, or that his message appealed to the intellectual curiosity of academics. It was not that he himself made any attempt by his self presentation to appeal to anyone. It could have only been the undeniable prophetic voice with which he spoke, reminding those in Israel of many others in their long prophetic tradition.
In particular, John seemed to remind them of Elijah, by how he dressed, where he preached, and what he said. And this people, who were already eager for the Messiah, knew that Elijah was to come again and prepare the way before the Messiah could come (see Malachi 4:5).
In the presence of the prophetic call, and with potential nearness of the Messiah, those who were sincere came to John "as they acknowledged their sins". To them this was obviously necessary. In the close proximity to the holiness of God they felt deeply how their own sin was an obstacle, a part of the problem that had prevented the promise of the promised land from reaching an uncompromised and total fulfillment.
When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees
coming to his baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers!
Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?
As we follow John the Baptist into the desert we do so with the desire that God himself will again speak to our hearts, to allure us into responding to him with all that we are and can be. Yet sometimes we go merely because we think we ought to go, because we see others doing so, or because it looks interesting. If we spend our time in the desert telling ourselves everything is fine because, for example, "We have Abraham as our Father" we will be wasting precious time.
It is true that we find ourselves in a different situation than those first Israelites who came to John. Many of us have already received Holy Baptism which conveyed with it "the Holy Spirit and fire". But this makes it all the more urgent that we produce "good fruit as evidence" of our repentance, since for those to whom much is given much will be expected. But these fruits are not meant to be merely a function of our effort. If they were we could just stay in our towns and cities and ignore this Advent season in the desert. We could simply work harder where we were. But we are here in this desert so that the many distractions and false alternatives of daily life lose their grip on us enough that we allow God to take hold more completely than had been the case before. In the city are many voices which attempt to draw our love from us. But none of those voices can deliver what they promise. In this desert we can come to recognize how truly needy we are, and how hopeless is our situation without God. We can come to repent of the sins that only serve to substitute for the love of God, precisely because we find ourselves in the presence of that love and can finally recognize it and desire it enough to allow ourselves to be changed by it.
Allowing God's love to take hold of us in our desert journey is the preliminary step necessary to "[p]repare the way of the Lord" and to "make straight his paths". Not only is this one who comes filled with the Spirit at his coming, but he shares all of these gifts of his Spirit with those who welcome him. It is precisely a Kingdom of such individuals that can experience the peace promised by Isaiah.
Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
the calf and the young lion shall browse together,
with a little child to guide them.
In Christ we can welcome others, whether they are wolves or lambs, leopards or kids, calves or young lions, just as we ourselves were first welcomed by Christ no matter what may have been our past. It is his intention to unite us all in himself so that we can be a single chorus of right praise, so that we "may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ."
No comments:
Post a Comment