For
the Psalm: Canticle Four (Benedictus
Dominus Deus); Baruch 5: 1–9; Luke 3: 1–6
This is the homily given
at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, by Fr. Gene Tucker on Sunday, December
9, 2018.
“MATCHING OUR INSIDES TO OUR OUTSIDES”
(Homily text: Luke 3: 1–6)
“If
you want to come to this diocese, your insides must match your outsides.” That
statement came from the first bishop I served under. I’ve thought a lot about
it ever since he first said it some years ago now.
Matching
our insides to our outsides is the essential meaning of John the Baptist’s call
to repentance, a theme (and a text) we hear every Second Sunday of Advent. (I
think this Sunday could easily be known as “John the Baptist Sunday” because of
our consistent focus on the Baptist’s ministry in each year of our three-year
cycle of lectionary readings.)
Matching
our insides to our outsides has to do with living an integrated life, a life in
which God’s ability to see into the deepest recesses of our hearts and minds
reminds us that no aspect of our life escapes His notice. Matching our insides
to our outsides has to do with wholly living and holy living. It has to do with
avoiding a condition known as hypocrisy (which, as the two Greek words from
which we derive this word, means to have “low judgment”.)
Let’s
turn our attention, then, to John the Baptist’s warning, and before John, to
the words of the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, from whom John’s call arises
(chapter forty of Isaiah, beginning at verse three). We will trace this clarion
call from Isaiah’s first warnings, which took place in the eighth century, BC,
and then to God’s deliverance of His people from exile in Babylon, a time in
which God prepared a way in the wilderness for God’s people to return to the
land that God had promised them, and then to John the Baptist’s time.
Along
the way, we’ll note some similarities between each of these timeframes.
We
begin with Isaiah’s original warnings.
Isaiah
warns God’s people to do two major things:
1. Abandon the worship of pagan
idols, and 2. To do right by the widow, the orphan and the poor. In Isaiah’s
day, the Temple that King Solomon had erected some 200 years before still
existed, and it was still the center of the people’s religious life, at least
by all outward appearances. But Isaiah paints the picture that, once people had
left the Temple’s precincts, they dabbled in all sorts of other kinds of
worship of gods that are no gods, objects of their own making (as Isaiah) says,
objects of silver and gold, gods that cannot hear and cannot speak. And, of
course, they cheated the poor, the widow and the orphan.
There
was an outward appearance of good and proper worship, but another reality was
harbored within the hearts and minds of God’s people. The people’s insides
didn’t match their outsides.
Fast
forward into the time of the return from exile in Babylon, an event that took
place in the year 538 BC. Let’s retrace this history just a bit: The
Babylonians conquered Jerusalem and Judea (known as the Southern Kingdom) in
586 BC. They carted off to Babylon many of the people (not all, mind you, but
essentially the upper and ruling classes, plus others). God used this exile to
purify His people and to rid them of their love affair with pagan gods and
idols. It’s as if God said, “I’ve got to fix this fascination with idolatry.” It worked.
And
so, in 538 BC, King Cyrus of Persia (the Persians had conquered Babylon by this
time) set the people free to return to their homeland. God’s people’s insides
now matched their outsides as a result of God’s purifying act.
It
is in this context that we read Isaiah’s words from chapter forty: “Prepare ye
the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” (I am
quoting from the Authorized – King James – Version of the Bible).[1]
Now
we come to John the Baptist and the time of the beginning of Jesus’ earthly
ministry.
As
we compare Isaiah’s time in the eighth century BC with the time of the Baptist
and of Jesus, we see similarities:
People’s insides didn’t match their outsides. There was a major
disconnect between their outward observance of the Law of Moses and their
faithful administration of the Law’s requirements in the ceremonies that took
place in the Temple in Jerusalem, but there was still a fascination with
idolatry, and there was neglect of the widow, the orphan and the poor.
This
last statement requires some unpacking.
The
idolatry against which John the Baptist rails isn’t the sort that involves worshiping
an object of silver or gold. But it does involve making the Law of Moses into an
idol. And it does involve elevating the Temple to the point of making it an
object of worship for its own sake. Seen in its proper light, the Law and the
Temple were established by God in order to point beyond themselves to the God
that created them in the first place. Idolatry involves putting anything in the
place of God’s proper place This is the sort of idolatry that John speaks
against.
Oppression
of the powerless (the biblical language for this is often cast as a disregard
for the widow, the orphan and the poor) was also taking place. A common
attitude among God’s people in John the Baptist’s day was that – if a person
was a widow or an orphan or poor (or sick) – that person must’ve committed some
grievous sin that resulted in their condition in life. Such people were to be
avoided, so the common attitudes maintained.
Essentially,
what we see portraying in the pages of holy Scripture is a disconnect between
the inner disposition of people’s hearts and their outward behavior: Hypocrisy,
in a word.
We
shouldn’t find it the least bit unusual, then, to see the Baptist at work out
in the desert, calling people to confess their sins and to undergo the ritual
cleansing of baptism. People could have gone through a ritual bath (known as
the Mikvah in Hebrew) before entering
the Temple’s precincts, but it’s possible that taking that sort of a bath would
have associations with simply going through the motions. Instead, John the
Baptist chooses a venue that is completely removed from the sorts of things that are going on in Jerusalem.[2]
Matching
our insides to our outsides is the goal of an integrated and holy life, a life
lived in God’s favor and in God’s sight.
Matching
our insides to our outsides begins with a confession of the ways in which we
fall short of God’s holiness and righteousness. It involves “coming clean” with
God, to admit those things that God already knows. We have to begin in such a
place, and in no other.
Only
then can God prepare a highway for us to return home.
Preparation
is a key Advent theme. Preparation for the coming of the One who entered our
human condition in humility, entering our human condition by emptying Himself
of all the power and the place that He – the Second Person of the Holy Trinity
– possessed before time and in eternity. He came in order to prepare the way
for us to return home to God.
In
order for the journey home to begin, we must get on the road, God’s road, the
one that He prepared for us by sending His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to
show us the way.
Then,
and only then, will our insides match our outsides.
AMEN.
[1] Many Bible scholars believe that chapters 40
– 55 of Isaiah are actually the work of another writer, perhaps one who was a
member of something like an “Isaiah School” of writers, one who wrote at the
time of the return from the exile in Babylon.
[2] It’s worth remembering that John was the son
of a Temple priest, Zechariah, which meant that John could have also served in
the Temple. But he chooses not to, deciding instead to minister out in the
desert.
