Hebrew Scriptures – Isaiah 11: 1-101
1A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his
roots. 2The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.
3His delight shall be in the fear of the LORD.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear;
4but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the
meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the
breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. 5Righteousness shall be the belt around
his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins.
6The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the
calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.
7The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the
lion shall eat straw like the ox. 8The nursing child shall play over the hole of the
asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
9They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full
of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.
10On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.
Gospel – Matthew 3: 1-122
1In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, 2“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” 3This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said,
“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.’”
4Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. 5Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, 6and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
7But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8Bear fruit worthy of repentance. 9Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 10Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
11“I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12His 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.”
“The Road to Heaven May Not Be A Road at All.”
I have a collection of T-shirts. One of my favorites is the one that shows a solo kayaker paddling across a wild stretch of water, the shore far off in the distance. Above this inviting picture is the message: “The road to heaven may not be a road at all.” It speaks of my own passionate love of nature in all of its watery wonder.
The reason that my column in our church newsletter is entitled “…from Doug’s Deck” is that some of my most vivid encounters with the Spirit of God have happened while gazing at the world from across the deck of my kayak. Whether its water fowl or sea creatures, trees or blooming plants, we don’t do enough to preserve all of the wildness of nature – for it’s there that the full and unfiltered Spirit of God resides.
It reminded me of a poem that I came across just the other day, entitled simply, “Gift:”
A day so happy.
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.3
My immediate response was to say to myself, “We should all have such a day!” With me its more about seals and sea otters than it is sails, but the point is the same. The holy for which we all hunger so deeply is just outside these doors – in the wild. And yet it is in here too (our hearts) – if we would root ourselves in its “watery grace, in knowledge that nurtures us all.”4
Our scripture readings chosen for Advent reinforce the conclusion that any active anticipation of the coming of the Christ means that you and I have got to look deeply into our own hearts to find that divine spark – that deep and essential Mystery at the center of our lives – to find the Christ in our own being as we prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus. I think that if John the Baptist had been old enough, or if Isaiah had been young enough, they would’ve recognized the Mystery born in a stable, because that same Mystery also resided in their hearts. That’s their challenge to us in today’s scripture readings.
“Not by appearances shall he judge, nor by hearsay shall he decide,”5 intones the prophet Isaiah. And yet so much of contemporary America focuses only on appearances! Doesn’t it? T.V. commercials and magazine ads (especially at this time of year!) assure us that we are judged on how we look! And so we’re compelled to apply dye to our hair, perfume or deodorant to our bodies, and put on clothes of just a certain type and style so that we can be acceptable – even beautiful. Having worked so hard on our appearance, we’re not all that sure that we’d want a judge who didn’t notice all the trouble we went to to look this good! We know how we should look, but we’ve lost touch with how to be.
It is unfortunate that we do live in such an age of appearances and hearsay. And why not? Experience has taught us to be mistrustful and cynical. When we read the newspaper or hear a report on T.V. we immediately question its veracity. We feel manipulated every single day, even as we try to sort out the truth. Why are we really in Iran? What’s really happening in Israel…in Darfur…in Tibet? Who is in control of the CIA and its interrogation of alleged terrorists? Whose side are we on? What can all of the reports of murder and mayhem mean?
And yet today we’re promised a justice that is one with love. We’re told to live in hope.
John the Baptist was definitely not concerned at all about appearances. He dressed the way that he wanted to, ate unorthodox meals, and lived his own life. He gave public witness to the hard truth. He accepted himself without pretense, and knew who he was. People knew where he stood. But I think that helped them to know where they stood. That was his attraction. He was a measuring rod that people could use to look at themselves. And he offered them hope of change. We should never forget that: hope is the most important element in all of John’s seeming harshness – judgment wasn’t at the heart of his message; hope was. You don’t have to live enmeshed in old falsehoods and hypocrisy! You can be changed by the One who loves you. He will do for you what you cannot do for yourself. Any day. Today.
So this wild man from the desert is the quintessential prophet. His uninhibited words correspond to his uncivilized dress, as he scornfully repudiates traditional religious authorities and everything that they stand for. Advent, then, is a time for reviewing our own long-standing inner authorities – our tendency to see and do things in the same old ways just because we’ve “always” seen and done them that way.
That is the Pharisees’ point of view. In their commendable desire to preserve Jewish identity in the face of Hellenistic and Roman demands for international uniformity, unfortunately they came to emphasize ritualistic and racial purity above matters of the heart and the spirit. To them this wild baptizer must’ve seemed like a demented fanatic who, while he might be sincere, threatened the very existence of the Judaism that they’d come to be comfortable with.
We don’t seem to be able to imagine very well a world so different from the one we’ve gotten used to. It is a scary thing, sometimes, for us to look deeply inside ourselves and at our community and to really begin to understand how we’re being called to repent, to prepare, to be open to change.
We know about these kind of battles in the church, don’t we? But if we begin to feel too self-righteous, too convinced of our own point of view, it may be that our indignation has simply become automatic, unexamined. It may be that our habitual positions no longer have any room for heart and spirit. It may be that there’s a wild one inside of us, clamoring to get out. If that’s true, I can understand why we may be a bit worried. Who knows who or what will be upset? Maybe everything we’ve ever worked for or believed in will be lost!
The church in today’s scripture lessons, though, is being asked to put itself in the place of the Jews of John and Jesus’ day – to feel the pride we have in our accomplishments and our traditions, and then to hear that voice crying in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” Or is the voice saying to us, “In the wilderness, prepare the way”…?6 Either way, to do that we’ve got to make room for the wild one within us.
So John announces the advent of the kingdom. But it will come only when all that is holy in life comes to live in us. We don’t have to look up to see God. We don’t have to look back to see God. We only have to look to that wildness all around us and within us. It’s a dangerous precedent that John’s starting here – and, God knows, it has been abused. As the theologian John Dominic Crossan noted, “Jesus came preaching the Kingdom of God. What he got was the church.”
Well, you have to start someplace.
In being reconciled to that powerful and fluidly creative Spirit within us, though, we can become reconciled with our own deepest nature. At this point the lion really does lie down with the lamb – that “lion” being the imperial touchiness and self-righteousness with which we’ve defended ourselves against all comers. The “lamb,” then, is that tender new ideal – too easily sacrificed as those who would dare to follow the wild One. And yet when that One is heard, when we do find our true heart, our viper’s nest is no longer a threat to our wild and wonderful inner child. Then all of our conflicts may be reconciled – we begin to accept each other as Jesus accepted us – and the gentiles make merry with the “chosen people.”
A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.
No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.
This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.
His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.
We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.
The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.7
So…“tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”8
* * *
1 For the prophet Isaiah, peace with justice was the result of the knowledge of God. For him the Tree of Jesse was no evergreen. The monarchy had been a dismal failure. It was, he thought, a dead and dormant tree. God had lopped off its branches. Isaiah’s image of the branches of the Tree of Jesse refers to the historical kings of the nation. With a single stroke of the pen, Isaiah wrote them off. They had failed God. The prophet foretells a return to the “roots” of the monarchy, though. There will be a future king, but he will look and act like no king anyone has ever known before.
2 A lot of our hymns at this time of the year emphasize John the Baptizer’s role as the “forerunner” of Jesus – the last of the prophets. Yet careful study of this character challenges this conception. John and Jesus were contemporaries. John was unbelievably popular. His imprisonment and execution by Herod Antipas is a sign of the depth of his appeal to the common people. And his movement had enough disciples to extend well beyond his death (see Acts 18: 24-28; 19: 1-7). To this very day a sect of middle-Eastern Gnostics, called the Mandaeans of the Tigris River Valley (Yes, that’s in Iraq.), trace their origins to John, and in spite of the war they continue to worship and practice a baptism of repentance in his tradition. Incredible as it may sound, some biblical scholars still believe that before his public ministry, Jesus himself was one of John’s disciples.
3 Czeslaw Milosz, “Gift” in Teaching with Fire, Sam M. Intrator & Megan Scribner, editors (Jossey-Bass Pub., San Francisco, CA, 2003), p. 159.
4 Op. cit., a line from a poem by Bettye T. Spinner entitled “Harvest Home” in Teaching with Fire, p. 165.
5 Another legitimate translation of Isaiah 11: 3b.
6 What a difference punctuation makes in this phrase! Is it “a voice crying out in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord!’” or “a voice crying out: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord!’” I like the latter interpretation. But, as my professor of New Testament Greek, Mickey Efird, used to say, “Pay your money and take your choice.”
7 Op. cit., Naomi Shihab Nye, “Shoulders” in Teaching with Fire, p. 163.
8 Op. cit., the closing line from a poem entitled “The Summer Day,” by Mary Oliver, in Teaching with Fire, p. 145.