What John the Baptist Said and What Jesus Did

Second Sunday in Advent

December 5, 2010

Isaiah 11:1-10

St. Matthew 3:1-12

Ruskin Heights Lutheran Church

When old John started preaching, people were ready for an old time prophet of thunder.

And John was that.

Because that’s what the time required.

All of Palestine was in turmoil and people were fearful, anxious, disoriented. Everything they believed in seemed to be falling apart at the seams.

They had been occupied for most of century by this time. Most of the farm land was held in large estates by absentee landlords. The real farmers in Palestine were sharecroppers.

The old faith was fragmenting. The Pharisees tried to practice a non-political piety — there were Zealots bent on violent revolution — the Sadducees collaborated with the Roman occupation — the desert monks, called Essenes, simply said a pox on everybody, we’ll stay in the desert. The Temple, said the Essenes, was defiled by greed and politics.

It seemed clear to many people that God was either going destroy Israel, or save it.

One or the other.

Half measures would not do.

So when old John started whipping up the crowds, sloshing through the Jordanian waters, he delivered a simple message with great energy.

It was the kind of message people expected to hear — given the times they lived in.

He simply announced they way things were in ways everyone could understand.

And he also said what to do.

“Straighten up and straighten out.”

Think of him as Harry S Truman. Truman remarked, “People think I give them hell. I don’t. I just tell them the truth and they think it’s hell.”

It was a message that was no different from every other prophet from Isaiah on.

Simple.

Direct.

Blunt.

Get ready.

He’s coming. Soon.

John said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is coming near!”

But how is the kingdom coming?

What will that king do when he gets here?

Ah, now, there’s a rub.

Because — what John said isn’t what God did.

John sees the Day of the Lord as something to dread.

God’s gonna lay an axe to the root.

No careful pruning here, but cut out completely and tossed away.

But in Isaiah, it is the root in which Gentiles hope.

John delivered bad news.

Isaiah foresaw good news.

John lamented.

Jesus rejoiced.

John, Jesus once said, sang a funeral dirge.

Jesus led the alleluias.

John ate locusts and no bread.

Jesus blessed bread for all.

John would not drink wine.

Jesus made an estimated 380 gallons of it for a wedding — and after drinking it, says the Gospel of John, they all “rested” for three days.

John came neither eating nor drinking, and was said to have a demon.

Jesus came both eating and drinking, and was called a glutton and a drunkard.

John warned everyone.

Jesus invited everyone.

John dressed in scratchy camel skins.

Jesus had a fine cloak with no seam — so fine that soldiers gambled to own it.

John said God was like a crazed forest ranger chopping dead trees.

Jesus said God was a patient cultivator who could wait an entire year for a fig.

John said God was wrath, anger, vengeance.

Jesus said God was a fussy little widow seeking a lost coin, and overjoyed to find it.

John said God could walk off and leave you.

Jesus said God was like a father waiting for his child to come home.

Toward the end of his life, John the Baptizer did an odd thing.

He sent a message to Jesus, asking, “Are you the one?”

Jesus did not say, Yup, you betcha.

What Jesus did do was quote another prophet, Micah:

“Go and tell John: the blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cured, the deaf hear, and good news is preached to the poor.” (Matt 11:1-18)

And then Jesus added, more or less in these words:

“And three cheers, John, for anybody who can swallow this without choking.”

But of John, Jesus did say, there was no greater man born of woman

— even though the least in heaven is greater than John.

John preached what everybody expected, because the times were so bad.

But — because the times were so bad — Jesus preached what nobody expected.

But it was exactly what we needed.