READINGS

1. Matthew 3:1-12
2. Isaiah 40:3
3. Malachi 3&4

HOMILY

Here we are coming closer to come inside the discernment, which began in the previous homily.

So it is the very beginning of Matthew's Gospel.

This is not the infancy narratives, which we'll get to later during the Christmas period or immediately before the Christmas period, but the very beginning of Jesus's Ministry.

Before Jesus's Ministry, we have the ministry of John the Baptist.

So something is being set up from which we're going to learn how to discern, how to work out what it is to follow the Lord, to be able to say "Lord" and mean it, which is going to be a central theme in Matthew's Gospel.

What our passage today begins with introducing us to John the Baptist.

In those days, John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, the wild place, just outside a liminal space, the area around the Jordan.

This place marked the inside and outside, the difference between the foreign and a home, the difference between before Israel and Israel, so a whole lot of symbolic references there.

He's saying:

repent for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near 

The Kingdom of Heaven is more like the presence of the Holy One, who is drawing close.

This is the message that he's coming, and he's saying "change your minds, change your hearts, you know the kind of things that the Holy One of Israel demands of you".

Now's the time to get ready to actually receive the Holy One, because nothing stands your hearts are not ready.

So here we have John the Baptist being described as this: the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said the "voice of one crying out in the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord and make his paths straight".

However, there's a very slight difference, because the the original in Hebrew reads as "the voice of one crying out in the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord".

So people are being told to prepare the word of God in the wilderness, but here it's the one crying out in the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord.

You may think it's a big difference, but it explains why the wilderness is being used here and why John was inhabiting the wilderness as he began the preparation.

He's now being described with a whole series of references to previous life in Israel that poeple would all have known:

1. Camel's hair: reference back to the time of the Patriarchs;
2. Leather belt around his waist: reference to the Prophet Elijah, because that's exactly what Elijah was described as wearing;
3. Locusts: a reference back to the Exodus;
4. Wild Honey: reference to Samson.

He is somehow combining all those figures, all those people with shared stories that people would have known about.

Since we're modern and frivolous and we don't have such a shared culture, we would say he was doing prophet cosplay, but obviously he was actually living it out really and inhabiting the space that they had inhabited, therefore being in a space to speak powerful words.

Anyone can cosplay a figure from history, but it is much more difficult to actually live into the role for a long time, to prepare yourself so that people acquire the density of what you're doing and that what you're saying rings true, rather than appear just as another marketing campaign.

So John the Baptist starts to announce the coming and people knew that this was a frightening thing.

People of Jerusalem and all Judea were going up to him.

That's important precisely, because in Isaiah 40:

A voice of one calling:  

“In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain.  

And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people will see it together.  

For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

The whole point is that all people are coming up.

This is something that actually appeals to all their shared common history.

Furthermore they want to be prepared, they understand that they're not living up to the calling to be Israel and so they go and they seek this baptism, which John has invented and they confess their sins.

It's interesting that Matthew doesn't describe it as a baptism, which forgives; but, as they were baptized, they confessed their sins. So it was a way for them to start to start over.

Curious enough, this great coming out of people also brought forth the religious and cultural leaders.

So then it says:

when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees come in for baptism

As many authorities have pointed out, the idea of Pharisees and Sadducees doing something together is unlikely.

You were talking about groups that had a strong division of each other.

They were highly critical of each other: it would be as if the media culture and business culture came out together.

The Sadducees the rich people who owned all the property were very keen on political stability and didn't want anything touched that interfered with money and so on.

So he says to them:

you brood of vipers who warned you to flee from the Wrath to come

This uh image of the group de vipers is actually worth thinking about, because the suggestion is that they've come out especially from Jerusalem, which was obviously their center.

A brood of vipers are small snakes that would come out if, for instance, a pile of brushwood, in which they were hiding or nesting, was started to be burned. That's when they would come out and that's when they might be dangerous.

So snakes in general try to keep away from from humans, but if suddenly frightened by something coming, they will come out and be dangerous.

So here the image is that he understands that they are hearing the warning that something terrible or terrifying is going to happen to their system, their nest.

That the vipers are now coming out and they're dangerous and can cause trouble.

He knows that they don't share the same values as the people who've come out sincerely saying "yes, we are failing to be Israel"; on the other hand, these are the people who want to control what Israel is for their own interests.

So they're coming out, and yes they're prepared to go through the mechanisms, they have to be seen to be like everybody else, so they share the same values as everybody else, which they don't, but what they're really interested in is not having their castle disturbed.

He says:

bear fruit worthy of repentance 

In other words, actually show that you need your hearts changed, that you want to change your hearts.

do not presume to yourselves we have Abraham as our ancestor 

In other words, don't be presumptuous that your belonging is going to save you.

for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham

The Lord alone knows which stones he's referring to, presumably some stones in the river Jordan, but he had the notion that a completely different Temple might be built up.

He says:

even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees 

Maybe the Romans are already around, you know that the situation is grave, you know that there is going to be a threat to Jerusalem from the Romans eventually; everyone can sense that.

Are you going to resist that? Are you going to start to produce good fruit to make sure that doesn't happen? Every tree that does not bear fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

He's moving from the imminent threat to the possibility that they might be able to step outside, but only if they're actually genuinely prepared to change.

Then he says:

I baptize you with water for repentance 

In other words, for those of you who want to change their hearts, come here and get covered, so that your repentance can be seen.

but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me 

The powerful one is the a key term for the Lord.

I am not worthy to carry his sandels 

As opposed to other Gospels "to undo the strap of his sandels".

The carrying of the sandals would obviously have been a servant task.

However, in this particular case, it may also be a reference to the levirate law whereby an elder brother who refused to marry his older brother's wife, but the younger brother (to this elder) could come along give him his shoes and say I will take the wife.

So the giving of the shoe would be a sign that this person was going to take on the marriage to.

John the Baptist is saying "I'm not worthy to be conducting the marriage, but the one who is to come will be the spouse, the spouse of Israel, so I'm not up to that".

that's the one who's coming and he will baptize you with Holy Spirit. 

Again, they put here in the Bible in our transition "the Holy Spirit", but it's with Holy Spirit and Fire.

This is a reference again to the apocalyptic quality of the coming of the Spirit as John understood it.

At any rate, if that's what's really going on, if that's really what will happen, because in the Book of Malachi, where one is coming before the end (of the Prophet Malachi), the promises that comes with fire.

So what's going to look like the coming of the Holy Spirit and what will it look like when fire comes?

Will these be two sides of the same coin, will some people receive it as something holy and others or something utterly destructive?

We're heading for the beginning of this discernment.

his winnowing fork is in his hand and he will clear his threshing floor 

Again they would have picked up others refers to the place where the Temple was, which was the threshing floor on which the vision of the most high gave David permission to set aside this space for the temple, which eventually Solomon built, but that was the basis, it was the threshing floor in Jerusalem.

and he would gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff will burn with unquenchable fire 

So the winnowing fork is going to do the separating; it's going to separate between the grain and the chaff.

This fulfills elements of Malachi, which refers to the food being taken into the granary.

Winnowing is quite a good way of separating out the grain for food and chaff, which is then genuinely used for burning.

A quick way to start a fire is to have a sufficient amount of chaff, which then helps you burn stronger fires very quickly, since it will burn with unquenchable fire.

So here we have John coming in indicating the threatening nature of what's going on and people knowing that they must do something to change and already there being all sorts of political religious reaction of the sort which we're entirely accustomed.

As we live this, how do we hear this? What would it be like for someone to come and occupy one of our seminal spaces?

Someone who has proved themselves capable of speaking wise words, someone who's not just very rich and happens to buy a multimedia project and then trash it for immediate political interests, but someone who has acquired credibility, so that they're not perceived as enacting cheap cosplay, but are actually able to say a word.

What would it look like for us to feel moved by that person? What would it be like to hear the words and start to to repent? What would it look like then to start being discerning? What's the One coming in is bringing? How will we know? How will we be able to follow? How will we recognize and be recognized?

That's how our Advent journey is developing.