Matthew 3:1 - 12
In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah:
“A voice of one calling in the wilderness,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.’”
John’s clothes were made of camel’s hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey. People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.
But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.
“I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
It's Advent. You knew John the Baptist would show up at some point!
John makes an appearance during the season of Lent when we consider purification and cleansing. He shows up during Advent because his basic message is, "The Promised One is coming. Get ready!"
His message, "One is coming after me," harmonizes with the basic Advent prayer, "Come, Lord Jesus!"
Several elements of the passage strike me as important for Advent and spiritual understanding. I'd really like to say something about John's idea of Jesus' coming. He had a skewed understanding of what the coming of Jesus would be about. John imagined Jesus would be about judgment, separation and violence -- "wrath," "chopping down trees," and "fire." I'm tempted to go there, but I'll save that for another time.
I do want to say a word about John's idea of repentance. For John, repentance was about leveling paths, or "making paths straight."
Repentance literally means to take on a larger mind, or to go beyond the mind you currently have.
Put another way, we each have life-assumptions out of which we do life day by day. Those life-assumptions provide a kind of reliable framework for us. That framework is comfortable because it has been shaped over the span of our lifetime. It includes how we think about life, how we feel about certain people and situations, and how we see and interpret life-events. To live with this framework -- or mind -- keeps us small. As long as we stay confined in our own experiences and ideas about how life is shaped, we cannot join God in the larger dance of peace, reconciliation, compassion and love . . . what Jesus called the "kingdom of God."
Repentance means going beyond this small thinking, this small living. It means that we enter a larger life-world by giving up egocentric ideas about how life is structured. We enter the larger God-world where "all things are possible."
This is the kind of repentance to which John invites us. He invites us to open ourselves to the larger world of God's kingdom.
The opening to which John invites us is characterized by straight or level paths. His language implies lowering the peaks and raising the valleys so that the path is passable. A part of getting ready for God is this work of leveling, this shedding of the baggage we carry in order to have a spirit of openness before God.
The goal in this leveling seems to be that we avoid a "teeter-totter" spirituality that swings from high ecstasy to the pits of despair, and back again. Not uncommonly, many Christians live in these extreme swings, with their sense of connection to God blown about by whatever the winds of external circumstances bring.
John advocates a "straight-path" spirituality that is not blown by the winds of outer circumstance, but is steady and persevering, doggedly determined to live even the routine, mundane moments of life rooted in the Source of Life.
This makes John a perfect voice for Advent. We are each to make a "straight path" within ourselves for the Promise of God. How do we do that? The answer is as different as there are people. You have to find your unique way to level the path in your life, as I have to find it in mine. What is non-negotiable, though, is that we each must get ready.
We must each prepare within our hearts a way for the Lord and make straight paths for him . . . perhaps with a special commitment to prayer during Advent . . . perhaps we work our way through a particular piece of devotional material . . . perhaps we give ourselves a day of retreat as a pause during Advent . . . perhaps we consider gifts that are mindful of those who lack basic life necessities.
Here's what I know: John says to get ready, which includes repentance and making straight paths. We cannot make him come. Our repentance and straight paths do not force God's hand. But you and I are called to prepare, to get ready.
You can't make him come. But if you don't get ready, you can miss him when he does.
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