“Root of the Matter” (Matthew 3:1-12; Isaiah 40:1-10; Advent 2 A)
Rick Olson, December 9, 2007
A brand new pastor is preaching his first sermon during Advent . . . and he’s nervous as all get-out, he’s pacing around up on the dias, and he gets to the part where he says: “Behold! I am coming!” and he can’t remember what comes next . . . so he does what they told him to do in seminary – he was assured it never fails – and repeats the last line: “Behold! I am coming!” Nothing. He’s desperate now, and he’s even more nervous, so he repeats it one more time “Behold! I am coming!” And he gesticulates so wildly, he trips on the carpet, rolls down the steps and right into the lap of this little old lady on the front row. He apologizes profusely, and she says “That’s all right, young man . . . You said three times you were coming . . . I should have gotten out of the way. ”
Every year, all our lives, we’ve been told that Christ is coming, that he’s coming in a few weeks and, in that strange, triple-vision view of Advent, that he’s coming back again . . . we’ve been told so many times, in so many different ways, that sometimes I think we’re kinda numb to the whole thing . . . I know I get that way this time of year . . . all the sparkly lights, all the chestnuts roasting over all the open fires, and the thought that, here we go again, we’ve gotta figure out what to get Aunt Lucy who does nothing but watch TV and knit little comforters for the homeless cats in her neighborhood. And I have four brothers and sisters and ten nieces and nephews and a family who refuses to draw names, and so the pressure’s on to get thoughtful little gifts for every one of them, gifts of course you can magically get all the way to Seattle, Washington . . . And so – like the lady on the front pew – when I hear that Christ is coming, sometimes I’m tempted to just get out of the way.
It wasn’t like that for John the Baptist . . . or the prophet Isaiah, either. They viewed the coming of the anointed one with passion, with longing, with hope. And, in John’s case, a healthy dollop of show-biz razz-ma-taz. He was a wilderness wanderer, a pulpit-pounding, carpet-pacing, fire-and-brim-stoner . . . Repent, he cried, for the kingdom of heaven has come near . . . he’s the one whom Isaiah spoke about when he said “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘prepare the way of the Lord!’” John even dressed the part: hair-shirted and leather-belted, he ate locusts and wild honey, and I’ll bet that he was, how shall we say it, ripe . . . I don’t know if anybody would’ve come near him if they didn’t want to be baptized.
But come near him they did, and they were being baptized in droves, and Matthew says that even the Pharisees and the Sadducees were coming for baptism, a fact that seemed to tick ol’ John off, so much so that he called them a brood of vipers . . . and let’s stop right here for a moment and consider . . . can you imagine anyone calling the General Assembly Council of our Presbyterian Church USA a bunch of snakes? How about the board of directors of Exxon
And he calls them a brood of vipers, you understand, and so it’s a dangerous game he’s playing, he’s telling the most respected, well-off folks of their society that they’re going to you-know-where in a you-know-what. Don’t tell me, he says, that Abraham is your ancestor . . . God can raise up ancestors for Abraham from those stones over there, with one hand tied behind God’s back. What matters is what fruit you produce, what you do with your lives . . . even now the ax is at the root of the trees, and every one that doesn’t bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.
And . . . is it getting a little hot in here? Unquenchable fire? Where’s the brimstone? Matthew has more judgment-sayings – many in no uncertain terms – that all the other Gospels combined. My favorite kind of judgment sayings from Jesus are the ones that end up “and they’ll be thrown into the outer judgment where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth,” which is found three times in Matthew and nowhere else.1 Now, we’re not supposed to believe that everybody who’s under God’s judgment is going to be burning, or grinding their teeth, or that it’s going to be real dark there . . . any more than we’re to take Jesus’ words about heaven literally, like the ones in the story about the thief on the cross. Jesus uses images for judgment that his Jewish audience would understand, and this fits right in with Matthew’s readers, who were probably largely Jewish as well. The point is that there will be judgment, and that’s never really pleasant.
And of course judgment is the flip side of Advent . . . we celebrate with breathless anticipation the coming of our Lord, the hope that it brings, we look for his coming in the present and in the future, when spears will be turned into pruning hooks and the mountain of the Lord shall be the highest mountain . . . and yet, we are clearly told – over and over – that judgment will accompany that final coming. No wonder people go up on mountain tops and down into caves when they think that it has arrived . . . like the woman on the front pew, they just want to get out of the way. But it’s not gonna happen, we’re all subject to judgment, and I have no more idea what it’s going to be than when it’s going to come, and I haven’t a clue about that.
Well, ho, ho, ho! Isn’t this a cheery Advent thought? What a pleasant thing to talk about at this special time of the year. And yet . . . maybe we shouldn’t think about it so negatively. Maybe we should embrace it instead . . . recall that scripture talks about establishing a just rule on earth . . . and so maybe we should think about what God’s ongoing earthly judgment would look like. And that’s where our passage from Isaiah comes in . . . he envisions a very terrestrial judgment. . . he says that a shoot from the stump of David’s father Jesse – a sapling from a tree that has been cut off, a adventitious shoot from a truncated dynasty – shall spring forth from the dead wood, a new branch, ready for leaves, ripe for fruit, and the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, and that’s ruach in Hebrew, the same spirit that blew across the waters at creation, the same spirit that drives Jesus into the wilderness, and the spirit shall be upon this strong root of Jesse, and it will be a spirit of wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and fear of the Lord. The spirit of God will power this branch from Jesse’s roots, it will enable him to judge as God would have him judge . . . and first we are told what he shall not do, he shall not judge by what his eye sees, he shall not decide by what his ear hears . . . it’s not important to the Lord what you look like, how well you are dressed . . . the color of your skin does not factor into the judgment of God . . . neither does the language you speak or the accent you have. In fact, where you are from is of little import in God’s equation of judgment. . . all the things that separate us as humans – language, dress, social class . . . how much money we make, how much stuff we have, how much political clout we wield . . . none of that makes any difference in the way God looks at us, God does not judge by what he sees. And I don’t know about you, but I think that’s pretty good news, don’t you? If that’s what God’s judgment is like, then I say bring it on.
In most parts of the world, money buys a lot of justice, doesn’t it? The statistics for our own United States are shocking . . . the poor are more likely to be arrested for any given crime, if arrested they’re more likely to be convicted, and if convicted, they are more likely to serve hard crime. It works all the way down the line . . . but in God’s way of judging, none of that makes any difference, does it? God does not judge by what he sees, nor decide by what he hears.
And how does he judge? With righteousness . . . with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and with equity he shall decide for the meek, and the rod of his mouth – the very Word of God, mind you – the rod of his mouth shall strike the earth, and with the breath of his lips – there’s that word ruach, again, breath – with the spirit of his lips he shall kill the wicked. And who are the wicked he will punish so severely? Well, if he judges with righteousness – with made-right-ness – if he decides with equity for the meek, then the wicked must be those that got ‘em that way . . . that’s how I’d interpret it anyway . . . the wicked must be the oppressors, the folks who create the poor and meek, that keep them down, that amass wealth at their expense, they must be who Isaiah means by “the wicked.”
In a classic western, the town is in the grip of evil men who hold the citizenry in thrall . . . they’ve cowed the Sheriff – or maybe bought him outright – and they own the streets, and it’s not safe for anyone, much less women and children – the western equivalent of the meek and the poor. And then a stranger comes to town . . . and at first the people don’t know him, they’re not sure who he is, and he hates violence, he really does, but they push him into it, there’s no other way, so he confronts the bad guys in the end, shooting them all and riding off into the sunset.
And it’s tempting to use this as an analogy for our stranger’s return, the second coming of Wyatt Earp . . . Christ will come again and set things right . . . and if he’s gotta kick a little rear to do it, blow a few bad guys away, so be it. The problem is . . . that’s the scenario of the world, the scenario of those who think that – in the end – violence will be the key . . . but that’s not the Christ that visited the earth at the first Advent so many years ago . . . that Christ was born in manger, humble like a field hand or a kitchen worker. He was raised as a carpenter, a gentle craftsman working at his father’s side . . . and in the end, as a last resort, he didn’t resort to violence . . . instead of bullets, he used his own body to save the world, he used his own blood to effect the change . . .
I have no idea how the judgment will happen, or what it will look like . . . John the Baptist said we will be judged by our fruit . . . Isaiah implied the same. And Christians are just as capable of doing bad things to the poor as anyone else . . . history certainly bears this out. What I do know is that judgment means to set these things right, to make things OK . . . it means to fulfill God’s vision of a good world, where all have enough to eat, where the world will be safe for widows and orphans, where the poor and the meek will be cared for, not exploited. Judgment – judging by God’s standards and then making those standards the world’s is what we wait for at Advent, what we yearn and hope and pine for. And so I say again: Come, Jesus, Come. Amen.
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