Turn

John the Baptist was a scary dude in a scary place.

First, there was his appearance. He wore clothing made of camel’s hair. And when Matthew says this, I don’t think he means a soft, lovely men’s camel hair sport coat like you can buy in a fancy department store today. I think he means stinky, rough, dirty cloth crudely woven from the hair of stinky, rough, dirty camels. This fabric was tied to John’s body with a strap of leather. I’m picturing Tarzan, or maybe Fred Flintstone.

Not only does he “look kinda funny” (to quote a line from Fargo), but he acts kind of funny too. My colleague, Taylor Burton-Edwards, who is a Greek scholar, tells me that “crying out” really means shouting at the top of his lungs. LIKE IN ALL CAPS! ALL THE TIME!

“Crying Out”
by Taylor Burton-Edwards
The Greek participle used here is bo-w’ntos (w standing in for Omega, or long o in Greek). It’s the verb form of the root noun, bo-h’ (h standing in for Eta, the long e in Greek). Lidell and Scott’s Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon (1889, p .152) notes “bo-h’” sometimes refers to a shout, sometimes a battle-cry, or sometimes the roaring of the sea in a wild storm. Always, it points to a voice sounding at full volume and high intensity. Always, it can’t help but catch attention in a most dramatic way. And almost always, the person who is “crying out” has an urgent message to deliver, a matter of life and death that must be heard above the fray of whatever else is going on.

Finally, John the Baptist lives out in the dry, mountainous, harsh wilderness east of Jerusalem. The Judean Desert must have been a hard place to live. It was and is rugged and hot during the day, but could be very cold at night. Water is scarce. Very little grows there. I checked the weather for the area on the day I wrote these notes, in late June, and the high was forecast to be 106 degrees F with very light breezes and not any chance of precipitation all week.

So this individual, this scary character named John the Baptist, is out there in the desert shouting at the top of his lungs, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight!” And amazingly, people from everywhere—from Jerusalem and all Judea, and all the region along the Jordan— not only flock to hear him shout at them, but to confess their sins and then subject themselves to his particular brand of baptism: a baptism of repentance.

It is to these people—people who came out into the wilderness, out from the safety of their homes and neighborhoods to a place of insecurity and discomfort, to hear this scary man shout at them and compel them to confess their sins and turn away from their old way of life—it is to these folks that John first brought the good news: A much more powerful one was coming. One who would baptize them not with water, but with Spirit and fire! This one would not just ask for repentance. With his winnowing fork, he would separate the wheat from the chaff!

So I can’t help but wonder: Who were these people, and why in heaven’s name did they go out into the desert to confess their sins, repent, and be baptized by John? What were they looking for?

For many people, the Christmas season conjures up a kind of idealized vision of the fictional world of Christmas created by movies, music, and a plethora of holiday television shows. The Christmas of the media world is a happy place, where perfect families gather around a crackling fire to drink eggnog under the twinkling lights of a beautifully decorated Christmas tree. It is a world where families don’t fight, no one is ugly, and Aunt Patricia doesn’t take too many pills. It is a world where terrorist acts, vicious political gerrymandering, and the realities of the economic crisis don’t intrude. It is a world where children are good so Santa, who knows if they’ve been bad or good, will reward their righteousness with material goods. It is a world that doesn’t look like our present reality. And perhaps most importantly, it is a world that doesn’t have much to do with the birth or coming again of Jesus Christ at all.

I need to confess that, for a long time now, I have been somewhat of a Christmas Scrooge. It isn’t that I want to jump on the bandwagon to “Put the Christ back in Christmas.” But maybe I do. Maybe I need to repent, turn, and just admit that I want Christ to be central to Christmas. Because the truth is, for me, if preparing for Christmas is not primarily about trying to give myself over to Jesus Christ, the holiday season becomes nothing but a depressing, empty, and disappointing annual event. Without the acceptance of Jesus Christ as the purpose for Christmas, a person is left only with holiday music, holly and mistletoe, tacky displays of lights, piles of presents, and a whole list of unfulfilled expectations.

How do we, as followers of Jesus Christ, return the purpose of Christmas to Jesus Christ? How do we prepare for his birth and coming again, not by having parties, decorating our houses, and giving gifts wrapped in fancy paper, but instead by giving ourselves anew over to the way of Christ?

I suppose giving ourselves over to Jesus Christ begins with God’s gift of grace to us. It is something we feel inside. Some call it a moment of conversion. Others call it baptism by the Holy Spirit. John Wesley called it assurance. Maybe during the season of Advent we could call it the Spirit of Christ coming into our hearts. But whatever we call it, we know when it happens to us, because it does cause us to confess our sins and turn ourselves away, over and over, from the trappings of this world so that we can reorient ourselves back toward Christ.

If we are to remain in Christ, we have to give ourselves over again and again, all our lives. The seasons of the Christian Year, especially Advent and Lent, remind us of this need and call us annually to commit ourselves anew to Christ.

If we want Christmas to be about more than what the media says, for those who are already followers of Jesus Christ and for those who do not yet know him, maybe we ought to begin by doing what John the Baptist called on people to do before Jesus came into the world the first time: Repent.

Pharisees and Sadducees ... and Viper-Babies, O My!
by Taylor Burton-Edwards
When we see specific religious groupings within first-century Judaism named in the New Testament, it’s important to understand who exactly is being named.

The Pharisees were perhaps the largest “party” within first-century Judaism. Their primary influence was through the synagogues scattered throughout the region, and their primary concerns were about how to live a holy life based on prayer and God’s requirements revealed in Torah, prophets, and writings. [Read more]

To repent means to turn, and then to turn again, and again and again, to God. It is to turn to the kind of life we know we ought to be living. It is to turn to the kind of life we decided we wanted to live the very first time we felt that assurance, that baptism with fire, that presence of Christ, that Holy Spirit, coming into our hearts.

When John the Baptist called on people to repent, he meant for them to return to the way of life charted by the covenant between God and Israel. Many of them had strayed so far from this way of life that when John saw them coming for baptism, especially the Pharisees and the Sadducees, he could not keep himself from commenting that the approaching crowd looked like a “brood of vipers” and asking, “Who warned you to flee from the wrath that is to come?” And then he said that if they were to receive this baptism they had better “bear the fruits of repentance” by changing how they were living so that by their acts others would know they had returned to God.

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near—

Turn back toward God, because heaven is right around the corner.

Turn back to God, because the possibility of deep and abiding joy is very near.

Turn back toward God, because Christ is coming.

Turn back toward God, so you can free yourselves from the false expectations peddled by the media.

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near!

What is the kingdom of heaven? We will explore that more next week; but for now, let me just say that it isn’t just the place we go after we leave this earthly life behind. It is the way of living that Jesus came to show us. It is living according to God’s vision for creation. It is living as Jesus lived and taught.

To the extent that we are able to give ourselves over to Jesus, that is the extent to which we enter the kingdom of heaven in this life. And the only way we can abide in it is by turning, and turning, and turning again to Christ.

What are people looking for? What do we need to confess? How are we preparing to receive Christ? What do we really want for Christmas? Don’t we want the kingdom of heaven to be more than what happens after we die? Don’t we want it to be what happens now, while we live?

“Pharisees and Sadducees ... and Viper-Babies, O My!”

by Taylor Burton-Edwards

When we see specific religious groupings within first-century Judaism named in the New Testament, it’s important to understand who exactly is being named.

The Pharisees were perhaps the largest “party” within first-century Judaism. Their primary influence was through the synagogues scattered throughout the region, and their primary concerns were about how to live a holy life based on prayer and God’s requirements revealed in Torah, prophets, and writings. You might say, for them, God’s holiness was most known in how people lived their lives day by day. Their close association with the synagogues, spread everywhere Judaism existed, gave them powerful and widespread influence. Theologically, the Pharisees embraced a number of doctrines not specifically mentioned in Torah, but which had become more fully incorporated into Jewish beliefs after the exile in Babylon. These include a belief in resurrection, at least some sense of a decisive Day of Judgment, the reality of a personal Satan as a force and locus of evil, and the work and presence of angels and demons all around us. Jesus’ own beliefs and the shape and location of his ministry (out among the people rather than centralized in Jerusalem) were more closely associated with those of the Pharisees than any other religious party of his day. And after the destruction of the temple in AD 70, it was in essence the Pharisee vision of Judaism that became mainstream Judaism from that point forward.

The Sadducees were located primarily in Jerusalem and functioned as the guardians of the ritual and worship of the temple. They also cared about holiness, but for them the heart of holiness was found in adherence to Torah above later writings and ensuring the ritual was offered with the purity Torah demanded. Many of them were priests. You might say, for the Sadducees, God’s holiness was most known and in its highest form in right worship. They had forged a strong relationship with the Roman government at the time, and many also functioned as leaders in the government. These two realities — their association with the temple and their relationship with Rome — were the sources of their power and influence at the time of Jesus. Theologically, they might be called much more conservative than the Pharisees, as they did not admit into their doctrine anything not specifically called for in Torah. Thus, they generally denied resurrection, afterlife, and the notion of Satan as locus or director of forces of evil. They also tended to reject much talk of angels as well.

How could John the Baptist have known he was addressing Pharisees and Sadducees in today’s reading? Both could be identified by their dress. Pharisees, or at least their leaders, often wore long, blue fringes on their prayer mantles and phylacteries (small boxes containing the ten commandments) on their wrists or foreheads. Likewise, since many (though not all) of the Sadducees were also priests in the temple, they often wore temple vestments. Note how the clothing of each group reflected the things each cared about most-- prayer and obedience to Torah in daily life for the Pharisees, and the purity of worship in the temple for the Sadducees.

Note, too, John’s specific address to and then question of the Pharisees and Sadducees who came to him. He called them “offspring of serpents.” We might also translate that as “clutch of baby vipers.” Was this an insult, or an exclamation of surprise? (See: “You, Brood of Vipers!”—Or What to Say to People Who Have Come to Be Baptized)

John Chrysostom, a significant leader in the fourth-century church, believed it was at least partly, if not largely, the latter. Some snakes, including “vipers” are viviparous, giving live birth rather than laying eggs. And the legend of viviparous vipers was that in giving live birth, the mother was in essence destroyed by the babies breaking out of her as from a discarded shell. John’s use of this vivid image of newborn viviparous snakes may well have been intended to convey his amazement that even leaders among the Pharisees and Sadducees had come to him for baptism when he, himself, had never warned them about “the wrath to come.” As support for this, note, too, that Matthew does not use the verb “boa’w” (shout) to describe how John addressed them, but the verb “eipen,” which means simply, “said,” in a typical conversational way.

John then immediately gave them, and by extension all of us, instruction about what was at stake in taking on his baptism — a real, vital repentance. They (and we) are no longer dealing with matters that either the most exacting daily obedience to Torah or the purest attention to detail in ritual could address. We are dealing with one who comes baptizing with Holy Spirit and fire. We must truly repent, turn, change our actions, dramatically, else our attentiveness to righteousness in any form will be swept away with the chaff into unquenchable fire.