I recently read a snippet from an interview with one of our most famous living Bible scholars, John Dominic Crossan. The topic of the Left Behind mania came up – you remember those books that were so popular in the nineties? They promoted the rapture concept, the notion that believers will one day, unexpectedly get scooped up into heaven, leaving behind a world on the verge of chaos. According to the theory, there follows a cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil, ending with the triumphal return of Jesus to earth. This is the kind of stuff that begs to be made into a movie franchise.
We touched on the concept last week, with our first Sunday of Advent texts focusing on the end of the world.
Crossan had an interesting take on the rapture mania. He said he thought the obsession about Jesus’ second coming was a result of people being disappointed with his first coming. We have always kind of wished that Jesus had eradicated evil the first time.
And that is what many of those in Israel hoped for too, including John the Baptist. Listen to what he says:
“…the one who is coming after me is more powerful than I ... He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
Scary words. And John is a scary guy. What kind of person dresses in camel’s hair? Who makes a diet out of locusts and wild honey – wild honey! There is nothing domesticated about this man.
He comes out from the wilderness shouting orders: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near! Prepare the way, make his paths straight! Get ready or get out!
The people swarm to him – they want in on this baptism. They are rightly afraid and will do whatever is necessary to get on the right side. I can imagine angry John standing in the river, waist-deep, as each new candidate for baptism wades into the water toward him, trembling. He grabs ahold of them roughly, pushing them down under the surface as they utter their confessions.
He was a powerful presence, this John, and he drew a lot of attention. It swelled from the ground up, but eventually the men in positions of power took notice. They start coming down to the river, too, to check this out for themselves.
I can’t say I know what their motivations were. There might have been some authentic desire for this new life John was proclaiming; they might have felt compelled to repent just as the others did. Maybe they were afraid, too. But maybe they just wanted to check out this situation – this guy who rises up out of nowhere, an overnight sensation who might be a threat to their authority in Israel. Maybe they wanted to assess the danger.
Whatever brought them there, John does not assume they have come ready to repent.
“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” He lets loose with a stream of angry warnings. If the people weren’t afraid before, they definitely are now. Then the big warning:
“His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
John the Baptist is on a mission to prepare the people for some serious housecleaning. And you know what? I imagine that many of them were thinking, “Yeah, it’s about time.”
Things were not great. The people lived in fear of the empire. They suffered poverty as a result of the corruption among the powerful. And the image of a Messiah with a winnowing fork in his hand and fire in his eyes was not unwelcome. Some of them probably wanted someone like John to come along and burn it all down.
Eradicate evil for good. This is what it sounds like John is telling them.
But John, he did have a few things wrong about the one who is coming.
To be clear, John was right about a lot of things. He was right about the need to repent, which is simply turning toward God. To repent is to turn away from the ways that keep us estranged from God and toward the way that has been prepared for us – out of the wilderness – to reconnect with God. John was right to say that the kingdom of heaven has come near. Jesus was there in their midst, ready to begin his ministry on earth. God came down, love came down, ready to reconnect with all of us. The kingdom was near and is near.
John was right about the urgency. It is always urgent for us to turn away from our crooked, broken ways and find our way back on the path that has been made ready. It is urgent that we all acknowledge that it will not do to rest on the accomplishments of past generations. Just as the Israelites could not simply say, “We have Abraham as our ancestor,” it will not suffice for us to say, “We have this church that some good people before us built.” Complacency will not be enough.
John was right. And Mary was right. In her song we find in the first chapter of Luke, the Magnificat, she proclaimed how the world was about to turn – filling the hungry with good things, turning the rich away empty. Scattering the proud in their conceit, casting down the mighty from their thrones, lifting up the lowly.
Just as Isaiah was right. The wolf shall lie down with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the lion shall feed together, and a little child shall lead them.
I know what you are probably thinking. It is hard to believe that these words are true. We look around us and find them unimaginable. How could it be right?
In the language of the church, we are living in the age of “now” and “not yet.” Jesus came to usher in the realm of God’s love and grace. We live with one foot in this world and one foot in that realm.
And so, it is right for us to heed John’s call to repent. Even though John, himself did not really know what kind of Messiah Jesus would be; even though his images of unquenchable fire miss the mark; even though John is terrifying, he is serving the important purpose of getting our attention. He is getting us ready for the world to change.
And the change he envisions, the change Mary and Isaiah proclaim, is a change that demands our participation. Not to answer violence with violence, but to be a part of changing the world, for good.
Repent and see that the kingdom of heaven is so very near.
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