Isaiah 11: 1 – 10
Psalm 72: 1 – 7, 18
– 19
Romans 15: 4 – 15
Matthew 3:1 – 12
This is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania
on Sunday, December 4, 2022, by Fr. Gene Tucker.
“TO AFFLICT THE
COMFORTABLE”
(Homily
text: Matthew 3: 1 – 12)
It’s
been said that the preacher’s job is to “afflict the comfortable and to comfort
the afflicted”. As I reflect on my years as a priest and as a preacher, I
believe that description of any worthwhile preacher’s calling is right on the
mark.
This
Second Sunday of Advent might well be called “John the Baptist Sunday”, for on
this Sunday in the Church Year, we hear an account of John the Baptist’s work
out in the wilderness, calling God’s people to genuine repentance, and
therefore, into a true, lasting and fulfilling relationship with God.
John’s
message afflicts the comfortable. Consider his words: “You brood of vipers! Who
warned you to flee from the wrath that is to come?” His words are aimed at the
Sadducees and the Pharisees who had come out to the banks of the Jordan River
to check out what he was doing.
If
ever there was a group of those who thought they were among the “comfortable”
ones, it would be the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Pharisees were a lay
group, dedicated to the rigorous observance of even the smallest details of the
Law of Moses (Torah). They were proud of their accomplishments and the
resulting prominent place in society they enjoyed. The Sadducees were the
Temple priests, the highest of the three orders of priests, those who served in
the Temple.
But
these two groups had some significant differences. For one thing, the Pharisees
accepted the authority of not only the first five books of the Hebrew
scriptures, those attributed to Moses’ authorship, but they also accepted the
authority of the writings of the prophets. Moreover, they also accepted the
realization of the possibility of resurrection. The Sadducees, on the other
hand, rejected the authority of the prophets’ writings and also the idea of
resurrection.
But
here they are, in league with one another, checking out what this
good-guy-gone-astray, John the Baptizer, was doing, hanging out with the
troublemakers in the wilderness. (It’s possible, though we don’t know for sure,
that some of the Sadducees had known John as he was growing up, for John’s
father served in the Temple.)
These
two groups were secure in their identities, and especially, in their importance
in God’s view of things. They were children of Abraham, heirs of God’s
promises. They were righteous, strict keepers of God’s holy laws. They were
invested in the highest levels of society. They’d earned their rightful place
in the scheme of things.
But
John cuts through all of these layers of self-importance and self-identity,
saying, “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’,
for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham”.
John’s
words are meant to “afflict the comfortable”, and to tear away the layers of
insulation that protected these self-made people from the heat of God’s
judgment.
But
is there any comfort in John’s message?
Indeed,
there is.
John’s
work offered a true, lasting and enduring foundation for a relationship with
God. That foundation rests on the reality that it must begin by digging down
into the deepest layers of our hearts and minds, to the place where we realize
that we have nothing to offer God but ourselves, in our fallen and sinful
state. John’s message is that such a beginning is, in reality, a self-emptying
process, just the opposite of what the Pharisees and the Sadducees were all about.
John’s
message and work centered around a baptism, a fall into the waters of the
Jordan River, acknowledging our own spiritual filth, which – if we are willing
to open up and admit – is our true condition, absent all its attempts to dress
up and to cover its essential nature.
Baptism
reminds us of our own helplessness. It is a beginning which starts with nothing
and winds up with everything. It mirrors our Lord’s own self-emptying, by which
He set aside His own place at the right hand of the Father to come and to take
up our humanity to the full.
Dear
friends, the comfort in John’s work and message is this: God seeks us out,
desiring above all things a personal, ongoing, deep and passionate relationship
with each one of us. What great, good news. But the initiative in this
wonderful relationship is God’s, not ours. All we can offer, all we can do, is
to respond in the words of the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, “Here I am, Lord.”
AMEN.
