“The Message We Need To Hear”

Isaiah 11:1-9

Matthew 3:1-12

December 5, 2004

One day a couple of friends and I walked out of the student union at Georgia State University and headed into the concrete wilderness of downtown Atlanta. It was a weekly ritual for us to head out down the streets of Atlanta to our favorite hole in the wall, Chinese restaurant for lunch before our next class.

We walked down Edgewood Ave. making our way to Peachtree Street right in the heart of the city. As we got closer to the restaurant, I noticed a man standing near the restaurant. I had seen the man before. He wore a green fatigue jacket over a flannel shirt, his jeans were old and worn, and his boots were untied and filthy. His hair was disheveled and his face unshaven. He stood on an old, rickety, wood box and around him were a couple of hand painted signs that spoke of the coming judgment. As we got closer to him, I could here his voice booming, “Repent, for the kingdom of God has come near!” And then he would begin talking about the coming of the end of time.

People were around him, some walking, some standing, but I doubt anyone was really listening. His voice was just one more sound in the chorus of noise of city life. But he continued to proclaim his message, a message which he believed people desperately needed to hear. But, no one was really interested in hearing it. I sure wasn’t. The fire and judgment approach was not the message of the gospel that I knew, well at least thought I knew. People like this man were the fringe of the fringe, the radical zealots of religion, who had no place in my worldview of the church or of faith.

As my friends and I walked in front of him, I could not help but look at the man and roll my eyes at the words he was saying. As I past him, suddenly I felt it. I felt the silence on the hairs of the back of my neck. The man had stopped speaking. I stopped walking. Feeling the sensation of being watched, I slowly turned around and our eyes met. His piercing eyes were staring at me, directly at me. I was frozen in time, as if the whole world had suddenly stopped except for him and me. He looked down at me from on top of that old, rickety, wood box, and said, “I don’t know why you think this is not serious. Repent now, for the kingdom of God has come near!” He stared at me for several seconds, then broke his gaze and looked away. The world started up again, and I turned and walked away.

Driving home from school that afternoon, the encounter with this urban “John the Baptist” was spinning the wheels in my mind. I was more upset than anything. Upset that he would assume that I needed to repent. Upset that he would pick me out of the crowd and say what he said to me. Upset that I rolled my eyes at what he was saying. After all, I was a Christian. My mom and dad were Christians, and my grandparents were Christians. I grew up in the church. I was a member of a church. I believed in God at all that stuff. It’s not me that needs to repent. Repentance is for all those people who do bad things who do not believe. But, I’m not one of those people.

Every time I read this story about John the Baptist in the Gospels, I cannot help but think of my encounter with the “John the Baptist” I met that day in Atlanta. Just imagine some crazy, old hermit walking out of the mountain wilderness near us, up Hwy 608, to the South River and speaking about repentance and wrath and unquenchable fire. How many of us would go down to the river to hear him speak? We would probably more likely call the police. We would make sure he was locked up in a mental ward at Western State. We would consider him the fringe of society, a kind of radical religious zealot that had no place in the mainstream religious establishment. Then we would tell his story over and over again for a good laugh.

Whenever I hear John the Baptist single out the Pharisees and Sadducees, I imagine myself standing there in the crowd watching John confront them with his words of warning. After all, can we really say for certain that they came to get baptized for the right reasons? Maybe they were just toying with the idea of making a true change of heart. Maybe they just wanted a part the message of this strange evangelist, but not too much. Maybe they just wanted to clear their conscience and remove their guilt, just enough so that they could feel good about themselves again.

Certainly, we are not one of those people. They were part of the religious establishment. They had their religious heritage, religious doctrines, and religious way of life. For generations, their ancestors were part of the same faith tradition. They were good keepers of the Torah, confident that they were completely in tune with God’s will. They were the ones who presumed to be exempt from God’s judgment. So when I hear John speaking out against them, I cannot help but saying, “That’s right, you go John.” They are the ones who need to hear John’s message of warning, not me. But then it happens, suddenly I feel the stare of his piercing eyes and hear the words of his piercing message, and I realize that John the Baptist is not just talking to them, he is also talking to me.

Maybe the reason John the Baptist’s message makes us so uncomfortable is because in some way it speaks the truth to us. Deep down we know that we need to repent and turn ourselves back to God. Deep down we know that we need to be prepared in a way that we are not prepared now. Within the depth of our soul, if we are really honest with ourselves, we know that we need to get our lives more in tune with the coming kingdom of God and prepare the way of the One who is coming with the winnowing fork in his hand.

Do we not also have our own religious heritage, our own religious doctrines, and our own religious way of life? Are not a majority of our ancestors believers? Do we not also try to be good keepers of God’s Word? Are we not also pretty sure about ourselves and think we have a good handle on things? Surely, we don’t need to hear John’s message. Surely, we don’t need to hear John’s word of warning. Surely, we don’t need to repent. Or do we?

John’s message of warning about the need for repentance is a message that we not only need to hear, but it is a message we must hear. The truth is that there is not one of us here in this sanctuary who is able to flee from the coming judgment of the One who is greater than John the Baptist; to think that there is something we can do to escape it is foolish and naïve. The only thing we can do is be prepared for it and bear fruit worthy of repentance.

John the Baptist reminds us that the coming Kingdom of heaven is not just a trivial matter, but a matter of the utmost importance, because the kingdom that has come near in the person of Jesus Christ is a kingdom that will radically transform all that there is through him. Like a sponge that soaks up all that is spilled, the kingdom of heaven is even now absorbing up all that is out of order in creation and transforming it in a radical way. The One who is coming is more than just a baby in a manger; he is the coming King of kings, and coming Lord of lords, the coming Savior and Judge, who is bringing with him the new world reality that we so desperately crave, a new world reality that will be so radical that even the animals themselves will behave and live in a new relationship just as Isaiah said they would.

Hearing John’s warning to repent and acting on it is the way in which we begin to embrace the truth of this new world reality in the coming kingdom. By repenting, by turning ourselves back to God and living in the way God has called us to live, our lives become a witness and testimony to the promise of God’s future, to the hope of God’s coming judgment, and to the new peace of God’s coming kingdom.

Hearing John’s warning to repent and acting on it requires a decision that is both daring and costly. It is daring because it puts the final fulfillment of the coming kingdom in God’s hands, and it is costly because it means that we can longer remain unmoved and unchanged in the way we live our lives of faith and obedience. Being God’s people means that we must act like God’s people by making real and concrete decisions, life changing and heart changing decisions to reorder our life in the ways that are appropriate to God’s intention for life itself. Advent is the time to consider those decisions. Advent is the time to begin to bring our daily life into sync with God’s coming reality so that we may be prepared for the day when Christ comes to judge the world.

During this season of Advent, will God’s people simply walk on by and pay no attention to this wild-eyed evangelist from the wilderness, or will God's people stop and listen to the message of this prophet of God and truly embrace it, receive it, and act upon it? Will God’s people carry on with life believing they will be able to flee from the wrath that is coming or will they truly repent and prepare themselves for the coming of the Messiah? Maybe these are questions we can really only answer for ourselves. But one thing is for sure, I know more now than I did back then, and I’m not rolling my eyes anymore. Amen.