A Voice In The Wilderness

(Scriptures: Isaiah 11:1-10, Romans 15:4-13, Matthew 3:1-12)

We continue today in the season of Advent. While many of our neighbors are going to the mall and letting their kids sit on Santa’s lap, we in the church are out in the desert with John the Baptist. The contrast couldn’t be more stark. And yet, today we also watched Al walk to the Advent wreath and light the candles of hope and peace – and these themes are picked up in our reading from Isaiah. And so even though John’s words are unlike anything you’ll ever hear from a shopping mall Santa, we can have faith that, ultimately, they are gospel – good news.

Today’s readings give us two powerful, and very different sets of images. The Isaiah reading tells us of a person coming in a spirit of wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and fear of the Lord – who is described as a shoot coming out of a stump. This person will bring such incredible peace that even the animal world will no longer be predatory. Even the animals will testify to God’s reign of peace. It’s almost like comparing the images we see on a nature show like Animal Planet – in which bigger animals hunt down and kill smaller animals – into something that looks like an old Disney cartoon, where all the animals live together in harmony. This mighty one to come will look out for the interests of the poor and vulnerable – will judge with equity for the meek of the earth. And then come these beautiful words: “they shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” And Isaiah’s vision is inclusive – even the nations – the Gentiles - shall inquire of Jesse. This image of the Gentiles coming to Judah to learn of God is echoed repeatedly in our reading from Romans, and we’ll see it again in Matthew’s Gospel. Similarly, last week’s Old Testament reading was also from Isaiah, and also had a theme of peace – it was the passage which prophesied that swords would be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks; nation would not rise up against nation, neither learn war any more. Isaiah gives us the image of the shoot coming out of a stump – the image is that of a place where there had once been a great tree, which had been cut down. The stump appeared lifeless and dead, beyond hope. The stump represents Judah, currently under attack from the very Gentile nations who will later come to Judah to inquire of God. But then, a shoot starts sprouting – in that stump, there’s still life. Even after a time of calamity and destruction, comes a sprout of hope. And that sprout, that shoot, will bring life, to Jew and Gentile alike.

And then comes that other image – that of John the Baptist, the wildman in the wilderness. We don’t get much background in Matthew’s Gospel, but Luke’s Gospel gives us some back-story – his father, Zechariah, was a priest, of the priestly order of Abijah. An angel proclaimed his birth to Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth, both old and long past the years of childbearing. But while John was born into a priestly family and likely spent at least part of his formative years among his father’s priestly colleagues, by the time we meet him in Matthew, he has long since left behind the world of the Temple, of sacrifice and liturgical ceremony. John is out in the desert, dressed strangely – in fact, with his robe of camel hair and leather belt, his dress evokes the community’s memory of the prophet Elijah. He lives a marginal existence, eating locusts and wild honey - a diet like that of the guy on Survivorman or one of those other wilderness survival shows - telling people they had to repent and get right with God – and people flocked out into the wilderness to hear him.

It’s not hard to imagine what his message sounded like – because we have street preachers right here in Philadelphia. They look funny. Sometimes they smell funny. Their voices grate on our nerves. Usually we try to avoid them. There’s one in particular, who died some years back, that I remember, and maybe you might as well – she was a lady with the sandwich board that used to preach in the area around City Hall some years ago – she had a sing-song, raspy voice, and day after day, fair weather or foul, she proclaimed her message: "Sinner….
Sinner…If you want to see the devil, take a look in the mirror…..” If you were on the El and she walked into your car, you might move to another car. But Matthew’s gospel said that folks went out into the wilderness to hear John the Baptist – his message that they had to change their lives hit home with them. In fact, Matthew goes out of his way to say that the people of Jerusalem, all Judea, and all the region along the Jordan – some of which was Gentile territory – came out to John. In Isaiah we read about the Gentile nations coming to inquire of Jesse, and we see that vision playing out in John’s ministry. John sacrificed much in the way of comfort – plentiful food and comfortable clothing, community life – in order to be faithful to God’s call. In this sacrifice, John’s listeners could see that John’s message had integrity – John not only talked the talk, he walked the walk of faith.

Matthew’s gospel says that Pharisees and Sadducees were coming out to see this wilderness prophet. Remember that the Pharisees and Sadducees didn’t get along – the Pharisees believed in the resurrection while the Sadducees didn’t; the Sadducees were tied into the Temple leadership – John’s father Zechariah likely knew lots of Sadducees - and the Sadducees played politics with Rome while the Pharisees were more for the common people. But, as the saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend – at least for the moment. They were able to put their differences aside for the moment and join together in a temporary, cynical sort of alliance against the threat both groups saw in John. And of course, John sees right through their charade of piety: “You brood of vipers -Who warned you to flee the wrath to come….!” Ouch! But, remember, John had grown up among the Temple establishment, so he likely knew what he was talking about. Heaven knows that in our day, there is no shortage of vipers among the clergy and lay leadership of some churches and even some denominations.

Of course, as Jews, the Sadducees and Pharisees saw themselves as God’s chosen people, while the Gentiles in the surrounding nations were not. The Sadducees and Pharisees thought they would be saved by their family heritage, their status as leaders of God’s chosen people, their membership in a long line of ancestors leading back to Abraham. But John the Baptist bursts their bubble – “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor.’ ” Last week’s Isaiah reading, as well as this week’s reading from Romans, speak of the Gentiles coming to glorify God’s name – and John the Baptist tells the crowd that God can raise up children for Abraham out of the very stones on the ground, if God so desires. The Sadducees and Pharisees cannot rest on the accomplishments of their ancestors. Their own lives had to be right with God. In a sense, through John, God is telling these religious leaders, “Yes, yes, I know your ancestors well – but their deeds of faith are in the past. So what have you done for me lately?”

John goes on to use even more urgent imagery – “the ax is lying at the root of the trees”. If I’m a tree, one thing I don’t want to see anywhere near me is an ax. If I’m a tree, an ax has the power to turn me from a towering oak into a stump – sort of like the stump in the Isaiah reading. John is giving the Sadducees and Pharisees a stark choice: bear fruit or be cut down. Produce or perish. Grow - or die.

John also uses the image of a winnowing fork. A winnowing fork was used with grain that was newly harvested from the fields. The farmer would use the fork to throw the grain up in the air. The chaff, or husk, of the grain was lighter, and when the grain was thrown up in the air, the breeze would carry it off. The heavier kernel would fall to the floor, and it was those kernels of grain that would be used to bake bread, after the chaff or husks had first been removed.

In the United Church of Christ we rarely hear this sort of stark, “turn or burn” language. It makes us uncomfortable. It reminds of us slick TV evangelists and wild-eyed fundamentalist preachers condemning everyone around them to hell. That’s not who we are in the UCC. So I’d like to follow John’s words in a slightly different direction than what you’ll hear from the TV preachers – though I have no intention of letting anyone off the hook of John’s words.

John’s words are first and foremost motivated by a sense of urgency. He is presented as announcing the coming of “one who is more powerful than I.” The coming of this “more powerful” One will change everything. John wants his listeners to be ready for the coming of this powerful Savior of the World. I can see almost picture John wanting to pick these smug religious leaders off the ground and shake them – “Wake up! Pay attention!”

John knew well the words of Isaiah that we read today – the image of the peaceable kingdom of God, in which justice and peace would be the order of the day. He also saw clearly how things were – and that the status quo of hostility and injustice wasn’t leading toward the vision in Isaiah. John also knew that this “powerful one” who was coming would bring in the Kingdom of God – Isaiah’s peaceable Kingdom – but this would require, not just minor tweaking or tinkering with the status quo, but radical change, gut-level, heart-wrenching change. John’s listeners couldn’t rely on religious ritual – as represented by the Sadducees – or the inherited faith of their ancestors. For them to experience the blessings of the Kingdom, they had to make a personal commitment – and this meant their lives had to change.

Today’s readings offer a very real challenge to us here at Emanuel, but also offer great hope. John’s words remind us that we can’t put our faith entirely in our history and our heritage – as if to say, we’ve always been here, so we’ll always be here. John challenges us – in fact, urgently challenges us - to continue to make a personal and a congregational faith commitment, a commitment that will bear good fruit, both in our individual lives and in the life of our gathered congregation here at Emanuel. We can’t rest on our history. God is always challenging us, as individuals and as a congregation, “So what have you done for me lately?”

The image of the winnowing fork separating wheat from chaff may lead us to think of God separating the good people from the bad people. That is one way to read John’s words. However, I think we’ll acknowledge that most people, likely including all of us here, are a mixed bag, wanting to be faithful to God, but often distracted by other priorities or led by sin into behavior destructive to ourselves or others. And I very much count myself in that description. The line between good and evil is not a line that has perfect people on one side, and perfectly awful people on the other – but rather the line between good and evil runs through every individual human heart, and every congregation. So I see the winnowing fork as a symbol of God’s commitment to work in our lives to clear away the chaff, the distractions, to clear away anything that stands between us – us as individuals and us as a congregation - and God. This is how John’s voice in the wilderness calls us to prepare the way of the Lord – to allow God to remove the chaff of evil and destraction in our lives, to clear away the rocks and fill in the potholes on our life journeys, to allow the Lord to clear the way so that we may walk in fellowship with God.

The great hope in our readings comes from our faith in an awesome God who, even if we are cut down like the stump in the Isaiah reading, can always help us to sink our roots deep into the soil of Christian faith and bring forth a shoot of new life. Or, to use John’s image, we as Gentiles are like those rocks and stones that God can use to produce children for Abraham.

God uses our individual acts of faith, hope and charity to help bring Isaiah’s vision into reality. God can use the caring community here at Emanuel to inspire those around us to say, “See how these Christians love one another.” God can use us to help change Philadelphia into a place that is truly a city of brotherly love and sisterly affection. All we have to do to be awake, and to be willing to let God use us in His service.

During this Advent season of anticipation and preparation, may we be awakened to God’s powerful presence, here on Fillmore Street, and in our individual lives. Amen.
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Please join us at Emanuel United Church of Christ on Sundays at 10 am. as we prepare the way to welcome the coming of the Christ child. We're on Fillmore Street (off Thompson). www.emanuelphila.org