Isaiah 11: 1 – 10; Psalm 72; Romans 15: 4 – 13; Matthew 3: 1 – 12
Given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, IL; Sunday, December 9th, 2007
Ever met a “calloused” person? (My dad would call them “hard boiled”.) You know, the sort of person whose hardened attitudes make them indifferent to others, to life in general.
Webster’s dictionary describes “callousness” in just that way: “made hard, hardened, indifferent, insensitive, unsympathetic”.[1]
Sometimes, when we encounter a “calloused” person, it’s because of the life experiences they’ve had…Perhaps some tragedy or another that has deeply wounded their spirits, and they form a hard shell in response. In other cases, simply going about the routines of daily life can make us calloused, for we can easily begin to think “this is the way it’s always going to be (including my problems and situation in life).”
Life gives us callouses.
It was to a calloused people that John the Baptist’s voice rang out, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is near!”[2]
The Jewish people in John’s day had good reason to be calloused….
- In their daily life, they struggled under the brutal occupation of the Romans. Though theirs was a “recognized” religion, and they had the ability to build a Temple in Jerusalem and to observe their religious practices, the past glory of their nation was trampled under the feet of the Roman army, day-by-day. The hundreds of crosses that dotted the landscape, bearing the bodies of crucified Jewish men,[3] was testimony to the fact that they were an enslaved, conquered people.
- Their religious observances strictly followed the mandates of the Mosaic law. The 400-some-odd provisions of the Torah were rigorously studied, so as to apply their provisions to every facet of daily life (think, for example, of the debates between the rabbis of that age with respect to what a person could – or could not – do on the sabbath day). Consistently, the New Testament writers portray the religious atmosphere of 2,000 years ago as being one of outward observance, but inward hardness, callousness.
Against these two streams of life that were present in his day – hardship and routine – John the Baptist’s voice rings out, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is near.”
So, before we consider our own situation in life, we ought to spend some time taking a good, long look at John the Baptist….
John the Baptist’s father, the Temple priest Zechariah, predicted his son’s future role….In the Song of Zechariah [4](latin name: Benedictus Dominus Deus) (found on page 50 of the Book of Common Prayer, 1979), he said, “And thou, child (John the Baptist) shalt be called the prophet of the highest, for thou shalt go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation unto his people for the remission of their sins.”
And so here, in Zechariah’s words, we hear the two key themes of John’s purpose and role:
- To be called the prophet of the highest,
- To go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
- To give knowledge of salvation unto his people for the remission of their sins.
And indeed, John’s baptism was a “baptism for the forgiveness of sins”, as we read in the Book of Acts, chapter 19, verse 4, and as Luke confirms in today’s Gospel passage, as we learn that people came, “Confessing their sins.”[5]
Furthermore, John confirms his own role in preparing the way, as he tells those who had come for baptism, “One who is more powerful than I”[6] is coming.
Then, too, John’s role was to complete the prophetic strain which had as its focal point the coming of the Messiah.
We should stop there for a moment, and unpack the prophetic strains that find their union in John the Baptist….there are two strains present, and we see them both in today’s reading:
- The “Elijah” strain: As a brief review of Old Testament history, remember that Elijah was the 9th century BC prophet who was active during the exceedingly wicked reign of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. It was an age noted for its idolatry in the worship of the Caananite god Ba’al. Worship of the true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, fell out of favor, and at one point, Elijah laments that, “I, alone, am left.”[7] It was also a time of relative peace and prosperity for the Northern Kingdom of Israel. So Elijah was God’s prophet in a time of callousness toward God, callousness caused by indifference to the claims of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, which was accompanied by the distractions of the worship of Ba’al, all occurring during a period of relative prosperity and lack of outside threats.
a. Similar descriptions of Elijah and John the Baptist: Identification between the two prophets becomes stronger when we realize that both wore similar garments: In II Kings 1:8 we read that Elijah was a man with “a garment of hair and with a leather belt around his waist”, matching almost exactly the description we have before us today in our Gospel reading, that John the Baptist wore “camel’s hair and had a leather belt around his waist.”[8] Furthermore, Jesus confirms John the Baptist’s identification with Elijah, as we read His words in Matthew 11: 14, “He is the Elijah who was to come.”
b. The significance of the Elijah connection with John the Baptist: In Malachi 4: 5 “See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes.” The expectation in much of ancient Jewish thought was that Elijah’s appearance would herald the coming of the Messiah, God’s anointed one.
To summarize what we’ve learned thus far about the Elijah strain which is present in John the Baptist:
i. Their ministries took place during times of indifference to the worship of God, caused by distractions.
ii. Their plain dress contrasted with the fine dress of royalty of the 9th century BC (Ahab & Jezebel) and the religious royalty (the Sadducees & Pharisees) of the 1st century AD,
iii. The coming of Elijah would signal the coming of the Messiah. - The “Isaiah” strain: It is Isaiah’s voice we hear in today’s reading (Isaiah 40:3), as Matthew tells us that John the Baptist was the “voice of one, crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’”[9]
a. A time of difficulty: Many biblical scholars call the portion of Isaiah from chapters 40 to 55 as Second Isaiah. Written, many scholars believe, during the time of the Babylonian exile (586 – 538 BC), it was a time of deep distress for the chosen people, as they were a conquered people, seemingly without hope.
b. A call to return home: Chapter 40 is essentially a call for God’s people to return home to the promised land, and especially to the Holy City, Jerusalem. Its description is of a highway in the desert, a way for God’s people to return home.
So, to summarize the “Isaiah” strain which is present in today’s Gospel:
i. Isaiah’s words were written during a time of difficulty,
ii. They offer hope to a conquered people,
iii. They create the vision of a way to return home, a “highway in the desert”.
So, now, to return to John the Baptist…We see that his words are a call to a people whose callousness has been created by the routines of life….their religious routines, that is. And specifically, we might say the outward religious observances, but the inward indifference toward God. Perhaps it’s fair to describe the people of 2,000 years ago as being “stiffnecked”, as Moses did in Exodus 32: 9, or as one of the first deacons, Stephen, did in Acts 7: 51.
One reason for being called “stiffnecked” is pride, and the sin of pride seems to be what John the Baptist is attacking when he addresses the Sadducees and Pharisees who had come out to the Jordan River: “You brood of vipers,[10] who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Do not say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.”[11]
But the other issue with which God’s chosen people were dealing was the lack of hope that their status as a conquered people offered them. Many, no doubt, longed for the day when the hated Romans would be overthrown, and the glories that they remembered of King David 1,000 years before would be restored. Their callousness seemed to stem, in part, from the hardships that life as a conquered people offered them daily.
Life gives us callouses.
As we enter more deeply into this season of Advent, a time of preparation, the two themes before us today call us to:
- Set aside the distractions, the routines of life, that obscure the central place that God ought to have in our hearts and minds.
- Seek the help of the Holy Spirit to heal the wounds of life’s traumatic experiences that create hardness of heart and a lack of hope for a better life.
To do so is to confess our sins of indifference and hardness of heart, and our failure to commend the faith that is in us”,[12] in order that a way may be made through the deserts of life for God.
AMEN.
[1] Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House, 1996
[2] Verse 2
[3] Capital punishment in the form of crucifixion was reserved for slaves and for conquered peoples. A Roman citizen could not be crucified.
[4] Its complete text comes from Luke 1: 68 – 79.
[5] Verse 6
[6] Verse 11
[7] I Kings 19:10
[8] Verse 4
[9] Can’t you hear the marvelous setting of these words as they occur in Handel’s great work “Messiah”, in the opening recitative, sung by the tenor soloist!
[10] Literally in the Greek, “children of snakes”
[11] Verses 7 & 8
[12] From the litany for Ash Wednesday, Book of Common Prayer, 1979, page 268.
