"We Need John"

First Presbyterian Church
Peter S. Buehler
December 9, 2007
Matthew 3:1-12

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea…

One of the benefits of being a clergyperson is that, generally speaking, people treat you with respect. If they know who you are, that is. If they don't know who you are, you get treated like everyone else -- which isn't such a bad thing.

But when it comes to John the Baptist, I cringe. Because according to the Gospels he singles out clergy, along with other religious people, and he lets us have it with both barrels. Why does he do this? I tend to get defensive: Hey, John, what have I done that's so bad? Why do I need to repent? Why are you picking on me? What do you mean, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" Who are you calling a snake? How about showing some respect!

So in Advent, as we're getting ready to celebrate Jesus' birth, whom do we meet but John the Baptist! Why? Why him? Why repentance? Why all this anger?

I find it startling that each of the four Gospels -- Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John -- insists that in Advent we deal with John the Baptist. There's no way around him!
Which is odd, because he's so far out of our way -- miles outside of Jerusalem in the Judean desert -- but, say the Gospels, if we're sincere about meeting Jesus, John the Baptist is where we start.

Frankly, most of us would avoid him. We'd give him a wide berth: a wild individual -- munching on grasshoppers, his beard all sticky with wild honey. And his clothes! No Christmas catalog carries camel's hair; Eddie Bauer and L. L. Bean don't have it.

So why should we go out of our way to listen to this man?

According to the scripture, if we got anywhere close he wouldn't be hard not to hear. The word in our Bibles for "crying out" -- The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight -- also translated "howling." The voice of one howling in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord!

The Gospels are unanimous: we come to Jesus through the riveting voice and fearsome presence of John the Baptist. We come to the Savior by way of the prophet. We come to the stable by way of the wilderness. Listening to the voice of God's anger, we hear the call to be reborn as God's people. We need John the Baptist if we are sincere about Christmas.

I want to say this very clearly. We tend to dismiss John the Baptist, we make him a cartoon character -- someone wandering the streets of New York with a ragged robe, a dirty beard, and a sign reading, Repent! The end is near! We avoid him; instead, we move through Advent as if each week has the same message and the same mood, as if getting ready for Jesus doesn't require anything of us, anything hard.

The message of our commercial culture at this time of year -- really every time of year -- so easily drowns out the spiritually demanding message of Advent, yet the Baptist howls! He will not be silenced. He howls at us: You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance.

He points his finger at us, not at people outside the church, not at those we think are more deserving of his wrath, he points his finger at us because we think we're OK -- OK the way we are, we're good people. Only John the Baptist won't settle for that because God doesn't settle for that! If we are to be God's people then we have to give up any notion that we can be good on our own, that we don't really need forgiveness, we are fine as we are, just a few minor flaws here and there. The very thought that we are good enough -- that we can dismiss our faults because we're just human like everyone else -- is a sign of our insincerity.
We, of all people, must let any insincerity in our hearts be exposed. We must listen to the Baptist.

I washed the windows at our house recently, inside and out. I was more than diligent, I was Mr. Clean (without the earring). Of course, it had been awhile; the winds and the ash blowing around this summer and fall had left the windows pretty dingy. So I went at it. And the results were very nice, I must say -- the windows sparkled, giving us a clear view of the outdoors; no more dinginess.
Until the next day at about 3:00 p.m., when the sun's light hit the windows at a certain angle, suddenly all I could see was circles and streaks and smears.
This can't be, I cried! I got out the Windex and the paper towels and started to redo a few panes, but all I did was change the pattern of streaks and smears.
What's the point, I said to myself. So I waited a half hour for the sun to go down -- problem solved. The windows looked fine again.

I wonder if we are like this. We live good lives, we try to be fair and kind, we manage our tempers, we don't complain, we do our best. We come to church, we say our prayers. Our windows look pretty clean. Then the light comes in at a different angle and we see things in a disturbing light, not just our imperfections but our sin, our stubbornness -- our pride in thinking that we are fine as we are, our sense of security in thinking that God's anger could not ever be directed at us. Yet God's Spirit is a cleansing fire.

John the Baptist would prepare us for Christ, but only if we let him see our insincerity. Have there been concerns in our lives we have denied or ignored --
questions and doubts we've kept to ourselves, hurts we've kept hidden, personal secrets we've not wanted to reveal, not even to God? Have we been spiritually flat, maintaining our practice of faith without much conviction? Do we ever wonder if God feels this way about us?

In our human relationships, have we held back our love, waiting for others to be more deserving, more loving toward us? Do we assume that we are as good as we're going to get, or as good as we need to be, and therefore have we stopped examining, and changing, and improving our attitudes about other people, especially those people we don't like? Do we believe that God is all done with us, or do we believe that it is worth the effort and prayer and spiritual diligence to become a better person, a more Christ-like person? Are we passionate about preparing for Christ?

This is going to seem at odds with Christmas, but I would invite us to think about God's anger and our own. The Gospels have us encounter John the Baptist, particularly us in the church, for a reason, and that reason is that God's anger is good. Admittedly, we avoid the topic; God's wrath, we often think, is a vestige of the Old Testament; New Testament faith, as shown by Jesus, means outgrowing anger, the notion of God's anger and the practice of our own. God is angry in the Old Testament and loving in the New Testament, or so we think -- until we hear the Baptist howling in the Gospels, and we see Jesus himself being angry, throwing over money-changers' tables and cursing fig trees. Is God's wrath a primitive way of thinking, something only fundamentalists and radicals still hold to?

What do we believe about God's capacity for anger?

Some of us grew up mistrusting it. Either it was so feared that it was never expressed, except that it was expressed with sneers and silences and coldness and sarcasm. Or anger was shown in fearsome ways that left scars, deep ones.
We hear too many stories about adults who lack the grace and courage to face their demons and instead take out their rage on the innocent. Some adults even justify the punishments they inflict by citing scripture, God's wrath on disobedient children. If there is such a thing as religious abuse, this is it. It's no wonder that many of our neighbors, victims of angry adults, stay away from the church and from God.

Even this past week a 19 year-old man with a gun took the lives of eight people in an Omaha shopping mall, before taking his own life. What terrible pain was in his heart? How is it that guns like the one he used, an assault rifle, are so accessible? When is this going to change? And do we think that our holy God sits by without passion, without anger and tears, without howling about a world where beautiful wondrous human life is suddenly so cheap?

We have to make a difference. We have to bear fruit worthy of repentance. Somehow the message of Christ's peace needs to be expressed in words and deeds -- our words and deeds, no matter how small -- even, at times, with anger.

Granted it is perhaps the most difficult and dangerous emotion, and one we are cautioned to be most careful with. We distrust those who speak glibly and irresponsibly about God's wrath, especially those who would suggest that human tragedy is the result of God's vengeance.

But to take away God's wrath is to take away God's righteousness, just as taking away a parent's deep concern for her child is to take away her highest hopes for her child. It is the same for a spouse or a friend: to take away anger is to take away love -- we love our friend, our spouse, our parent, our child, our sister or brother in Christ enough to be angry when we see something wrong that can be set right. If we care, we say something -- awkwardly, perhaps. Not always in the most sensitive or appropriate or judicious way, perhaps -- but we risk our love and we say something because we care.

There is something in us that is passionate and not passive. John the Baptist doesn't squelch our righteousness, our desire for justice and mercy in this world, he ignites it!

But it begins, we begin, with repentance. Religious people don't get a pass; if anything we welcome the Baptist's scrutiny of our moral lives, our spiritual lives, our personal lives. Our honesty, our complete sincerity before God is asked of us. Advent is the season we go out of our way to encounter John. We trust him.

Writer Kathleen Norris is someone I trust. I like her because she makes me think; my windows get a little cleaner when I read what she says. In her book Amazing Grace, Norris thinks out loud about God's anger -- the harsh words of the biblical prophets, the hard and demanding sayings of Jesus -- and she makes a simple but an important distinction: God's anger is different from ours, she says. It is truly and more whole-heartedly righteous than human anger could ever be.

I read this and said to myself, You've never thought that, have you? That God's anger always speaks the truth.

She goes on: Now that I appreciate God's anger more, I find that I trust my own much less. If I can remember this when I am tempted to anger, I am less likely to inflict my rage on others.

And, we can imagine, more likely to speak up when she is tempted to be silent, when the truth, or an innocent person's well-being, is at stake. Really, what the Baptist is saying, what Advent is saying, is Come to Jesus. The time is now.
Get ready by bearing fruit worthy of repentance.

He asks us, Is there one change we will make? Something we are doing, something we are not doing, that should be changed? An attitude, a way of thinking, perhaps, that is getting in the way of our witness for Christ? Something we think we can't change, it's just who we are?

Maybe something in our church we feel we can't change, it's just who we are?

We keep trying, we keep trusting. The Baptist gets us ready for the Savior, the joy is just ahead. We don't have fear -- we have the help we need. In the Apostle's words, the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

So we give thanks and praise to Almighty God, who searches our hearts, guides our prayers, shows us truth, and gives us grace.

Amen.