Matthew 3:1-12, pt. 3

For a guy who had spent his entire life hanging out with nature’s ruffians – a life closely mirroring that of Grizzly Adams or Gollum of Lord of the Rings fame – John was surprisingly adept at political repartée. He had little to prove and even less to lose. He was barely dressed for one thing; hardly presentable as a suitable dinner guest. It did, however, allow him, deftly and with nimble turn of phrase, to jostle and joust with the religious muck-a-mucks in ways that would have had my mouth duly soap-scrubbed as a youngster!

One wonders if this is the reason why Jesus so often insists upon his followers’ disavowal of worldly wealth in favor of the relative mobility and freedom promised by possession of little. Unencumbered by the often unwelcome and burdensome responsibilities of consumptive living, Jesus’ disciples are then free to move in and out of places, conversations and situations requiring the touch of God. Then they, like John, can float easily into unknown territory rife with uncertainty and even danger in bringing the prophetic but healing message of the gospel. Then they, like John, can speak truth in love without fear of reprisal in the way of property loss, theft, or impounded vehicles. Then they, like John, can spend significantly less time and resources on appearance, entertainment, security or insurance.

John the Baptizer as he came to be known is best understood as our very first Desert Father. Before Abba Antony of Egypt was John of Judea. As the Jewish leadership walked the sharp edge of a knife wobbling between capitulating to Rome’s insidious charms, including her deadly Pax Romana, or throwing in their lot with Zealot revolutionaries, the spiritual malaise left in the wake made for thirsty, disillusioned souls. Many of these stood ripe and ready for the kind of radical removal from Roman rot John enfleshed. Say Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw of John: “He invited people from the centers of civilization to the desert, to the margins, to find God. All of Rome’s dreams were made irrelevant as he ate locusts and made his clothes from camel skin. And folks didn’t go to the desert simply to escape the world; they went to the desert to save the world” (Jesus for President, ©2008 by the Simple Way, pg. 78).

Rome: just another empire claiming a unique place in history – special, gifted, envisioned, blessed by “god” and triumphing over “evil.” To fall under her spell was only too easy given the awful alternatives. Many succumbed only to sell their souls to the prevailing militarized political reality that appeared sparkly and dizzyingly arrayed in the best the ancient world had to offer. She was the newest version of Babylon.

Hence, when John comes, preaching a bold message of repentance on the margins of the empire, its allure was complete. He spoke freely, unfettered by the weight of Roman economic detritus, inviting all who heard to come and take a dip with him in the Jordan. How mythical. How transcendent. How authentic. He offered a new way to think about life and how we live it together. “People went to the wilderness to get Rome out of them, purging themselves of empire and seeing the world stripped of the fabrications of civilization” (Jesus for President, pg. 78). Is it any wonder Herod was at once fascinated and fearful of one whose life of freedom from the fears of a warmongering empire preached so loudly to so many?

Matthew 3:13-17

John’s weapon of choice: Baptism. What a strange way to reveal a person’s intentions. Only a God of utter mystery with a lot of secrets would conjure this up. Anything but neat and tidy, baptism forces dry, respectable people to become soggy, vulnerable people. As a former Baptist, now Presbyterian, I have seen baptism from more than one angle and I can safely say that, regardless of dunk or sprinkle, lake or font, bathtub or teacup, baptism is an odd practice at best.

It is surprising to me just how clear a picture John had not only of his ministry but of Jesus’ ministry as well. John’s baptism was rather like the promissory note that hinted at the banquet to come. It was like the wedding invitation on paper before the personal invitation from the bridegroom’s own lips or perhaps like the ticket to the concert yet to begin. Although John was rather more than mere ticket-taker, he was fully aware of his preparatory role in this strange unfolding of much anticipated but little understood events…(wait for the final segment yet to come).

Matthew 3:1-12, pt. 2

As a boy growing up in the Canadian province of Alberta it was a common summer occurrence for me to visit my cousin, Lance, in the rattlesnake infested prairie city of Medicine Hat. The two things I readily recall about this place were the extreme summer heat and copious amounts of snakes and bugs. It had all the makings of a Texas panhandle, Canadian style. Sometimes Lance and I would spend all day snooping around in a local swamp for tiny frogs we would stuff into plastic bags and even our pockets to use as food for his sundry pet snakes.

Snakes make for hours of macabre afternoon fun for young boys. The other neighborhood kids thought us especially daring as they observed our coolly maniacal method of placing live (well, mostly) frog bait into the glass snake enclosure and watch the even more diabolical process of a bull snake swallowing them whole. The unsuspecting frog instantly became one with the body of the snake as it slowly ingested, without chewing of any kind, the poor little bugger. Lance told me that the snake could live for weeks on that one amphibious morsel.

Lance and I would take his twin Garter snakes, wrap them around the handlebars of our bikes and ride through the neighborhood hoping to attract praise for our daring and courage. However, for how cool this was, something snakes are not is a guarantee of fully comfortable parental units or girl-attractors. The latter would scatter at our approach with throaty screams of horror. The former, specifically Moms, were aghast to discover frog guts in the washing machine after running our pants, frogs still in the pockets, through the wash cycle.

With these pictures in mind I must admit to more than a modicum of surprise in John’s choice of descriptor for the religious leader looky-Lous as they came out to spy on the strange goings on surrounding this desert hermit. With precious little concern for their high position or mind-your-manners politeness my parents would have insisted upon, he barks at them, branding them a “brood of vipers.” Far from the rather mundane characteristics of a bull or garter snake, by comparison vipers are insidious creatures. They are remarkably fast and poisonous possessive of hollow fangs and a mouth that can open almost 180 degrees. They paralyze their victims with both of these advantages and then proceed to swallow them whole. They enjoy the further benefit of special eye-slits that allow them to see in any light and make them particularly ominous at any time of day. Finally, the term “viper” derives from a pair of Latin words, vivo for “I live” and pario, “I give birth.” Vipers do not lay eggs like most reptiles. They give birth to live babies. Delightful.

Hence, as John sees the approach of Pharisees and Sadducees among the unwitting crowd he accuses them of being those who quickly poison others around them with a brand of teaching designed to paralyze them, denying freedom and life, and which draws them to their ultimate, slow demise. They stalk at night, the time when people have their defenses down and are most vulnerable, pouncing with the full weight of their religious machinery and, without the protective mechanisms of time and deeper consideration, give birth to more like them.

Only someone as unencumbered by the comforts of civilized life, “normal” food, regular bathing, nice breath and otherwise polite appearance would dare to be so disrespectful of their authority as John. He had nothing to lose for he had nothing. As such he was free to reveal the darkly sinister reality of their voyeuristic presence among those hungry souls of simpler pedigree coming to be baptized, freed from the weight that bound them. John’s modus operandi was hardly “gaining friends and winning influence.” Yet, that is exactly what he did despite the lack of bleached white teeth and dress-for-success power tie.

John’s ministry wasn’t an end in itself. It was preparatory. Had the gospel message ended here we would have had simply another Old Testament style prophet who proclaimed a return to the Law and obedience to it. The message and the preparation would have been one and the same. No, John is arming us for something. He is pushing people into the murky Jordan for more than good fireplace mantle photo opportunities or a short-term conscience cleanse. John was in the repentance business. He had spent his entire life, withdrawn from polite society, preparing for this moment. He had nothing to lose, literally. He would let nothing stand in the way of his ministry; certainly not these do-gooder pretender-monkeys whose idea of religious life included dividing up mint, dill and cumin like lines of cocaine with at-the-ready noses in the air all the while flinging theological feces at each other and worse, at us.

I’ve watched snakes being snakes. Cousin Lance and I could say a thing or two about John’s indictments here…I think I get his point.

John the Baptizer was a strange character indeed, certainly not the kind of emissary one might send to the front of an important parade. He might have been the equivalent of the dorky computer nerd of the Ned Flanders variety donning a leisure suit, white socks and sandals acting as ambassador to the Pope – not exactly the type of Wall Street trader, briefcase-toting, pinstripe 3-piece one would expect to herald the arrival of Donald Trump. Yet, here he is; skinner than a flagpole, unkempt, dried honey on his fingertips, locust parts stuck in his beard, boney ass peeking out from under flea-infested animal skins smelling worse than a fish packing plant and shouting like a madman, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

John’s arrival on the scene is poignantly picturesque of the bigger narrative taking place with the One he is proclaiming as the living recapitulation of the ongoing “out of Egypt” motif God is so fond of. Instead of forty years of wandering born of disobedience, Jesus, would later face and defeat his demons in forty days; a feat worth trumpeting on any level! It is God saying, “alright, since this didn’t work so well the first time with my national people, let’s try this at a deeper level through a chosen group from everywhere in the name of my son.”

What is rather apparent is just how ready for John the Israelites were. With little question they came in droves to see and hear him and allow his grubby hands to baptize them in the Jordan. This tells me that this was one thirsty people, primed and ready for the Elijah-styled prophet whose radical nature and message was the stuff of lore; of the Torah. It tells me that this was a people well aware of God’s very loud silence for such a long time. For them, to hear a voice, any voice, was to hear the Voice.

The message of John was the same as that of Jesus: the kingdom of God – a kingdom immanent and hopeful but ominous. A kingdom suggests many things. One is confronted with the reality of the One to whom is owed allegiance, property, relationships – the stuff of life. It also tells me that whoever this Jesus is, he doesn’t come merely to molly coddle our pre-existing ideas about ourselves, the world, God and how all of these work together. No, John is telling us that our tiny, insignificant ideas about life are about to be stretched to the breaking point. The kingdom of God is the wake created by the ocean-liner of God brushing up alongside the dingy of our heavenly imaginations; overwhelming, subsuming them. And, if God was primarily interested in helping us understand, he would have sent a more well read and respectable Pharisee to explain rather than a grimy holy man to evoke. God doesn’t want students as much as followers.

At the time of writing the world sits poised with necks craned and eyes scanning the horizon for the apparent return of Jesus-or at least says radio announcer, Harold Camping. He is only one of many to do similarly. Is this really the sort of questionable character God wants as mouthpiece? If we think Camping to be some insane doomsday wacko, imagine what we would think John the Baptizer to be. He, too, is confidently trumpeting a prophetic sounding message that sounds eerily similar. Apparently, the God of the universe is fine with less than stellar representation.

This has been the case throughout history. When we scan the backwards horizon, it is filled with buffoons, power mongers, horny old men and troublemakers all who claim the name of Christian but whose contributions to kingdom life were dubious at best. And yet, if God is quite happy to be so strangely represented, seen in the same prophetic picture, as John the wild-eyed-scraggly-one, what might God think of me?