I happened to be perusing Polk’s Wikipedia entry recently, because when you have a Southern father you can’t help but get interested in this stuff, and discovered an even more interesting ancestor: Polk married the great-granddaughter of Jonathan Edwards, a Puritan preacher in mid-1700s – one of the greatest preachers in American history, who is credited with sparking the Great Awakening, a movement of spiritual renewal that is considered to be one reason that America is such a religious country even today. That’s right folks, and not only that, Edwards is famous for having many descendants who are also famous preachers, as well as university professors, college presidents and other well-known speakers. (Never mind that my actuary spouse did a few calculations and determined that Jonathan Edwards is likely to have approximately one million descendants alive in the United States today, so it would be surprising if he didn’t have a number of clergypersons and preachers among them. Who has time for math when we’re talking about the Bible?)
So I have obviously inherited preaching genes from Jonathan Edwards, which means you’ll be hearing a lot more hellfire and brimstone from me! Because Edwards’ most famous sermon, a work which is a classic of early American literature, is the immortal “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” in which he provided detailed descriptions of the tortures of hell. And guess what – John the Baptist throws me a softball today, with his talk of wrath and chaff and unquenchable fire – I can hit this one out of the park with “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God!”
Now I can see you all shifting in your pews and checking your watches and remembering important appointments you need to get to – because who wants to hear about wrath and unquenchable fire?
And yet – something brought all those crowds out to hear John preach, to repent and be baptized. What is the attraction of this angry man with the odd wardrobe and the unbalanced diet, preaching fire and brimstone and the wrath of God?
First, we need to understand that there are three groups of people present here: Pharisees, Sadducees, and everybody else. And when John shouts “Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” – he is talking to Pharisees and Sadducees, not to the ordinary people.
So who were these Pharisee and Sadducee people? Very good question – I’m glad you asked. The Sadducees were the leaders of Temple priesthood; they took care of Temple sacrifices, and were appointed by the corrupt King Herod with consent of the Roman occupiers. What this meant was that they were collaborators with the corrupt Jewish King and his corrupt counselors, and with the Romans who oppressed the ordinary people, terrorized them and kept them in poverty.
Sadducees didn’t believe in an afterlife or any notion of judgment. As a result, they felt free to do whatever they liked in this life, and many of them grew very wealthy because of their corruption. In effect, they gave lip service to God, took part in Temple ceremonies, but for practical purposes, acted like God didn’t exist – they were functional atheists. John warns the Sadducees that they will stand in front of God and be accountable for their actions – and because God's judgment would come one day, they should change their ways.
Pharisees are a different order of people altogether, the opposite extreme. We have to be very careful when we critique the Pharisees, because they were good observant Jews who centered their religious life on reading and discussing the Torah, and carefully observing the law – and these are good things. But like any good thing, when taken to an extreme, it can become a harmful thing. And evidently, by the time of John the Baptist and Jesus, extreme Pharisees had become rigid observers of the law, all 613 rules, who left very little room for God’s love or grace, and had a tendency to judge harshly anyone who didn’t meet their religious standards.
What John and Jesus critique in Pharisees is their tendency, taken to extreme, to judge others, and their literal interpretation of scripture – these are biblical fundamentalists who want everyone else to behave the same way they do. These are people who are pretty sure they’re on the fast track to heaven – and John is beside himself with frustration over it – he wants them to think again. He warns them that those who judge others will be judged themselves. And their genealogies won’t save them.
Now when we look around our world today, we see plenty of Pharisees and Sadducees. Fundamentalist extremists spring up in every religion – certainly there are Christians who spend lots of time judging others and forget to look at themselves – taken to extreme, we see people like Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church, the group that goes around picketing soldiers’ funerals with signs that say “God Hates America,” and other, worse, things I won’t repeat in church. To those who want to point fingers at others, John says they need to look at themselves first.
Sadducees are even more common in our world, I think. Our society is filled with people who may or may not give lip service to God, but who live as if God didn’t exist and they can do whatever they want to in this life. Whether or not they say they believe in God, they act as if God doesn’t care how they treat others, or what kind of business ethics they pursue, or how they spend their money. They are functional atheists, and to them, John says watch out, judgment is coming. They will one day be accountable to God for how they lived their life.
And if we want to be honest with ourselves, we have to admit that there’s a little Pharisee and a little Sadducee in each of us. We all would rather pass judgment on other people than on ourselves. And we all have times when we are tempted to live for our own benefit and no one else’s, forgetting Jesus’ command to love God and our neighbor. And so if we’re really honest, we listen to what John is saying and we ask God to help us separate this chaff from the wheat in each of us, ask God to remake us into the loving human beings God created us to be.
But note: there is a third group of people in this gospel story – the people in the middle. And really, most of us are somewhere in the middle – sometimes tipping a bit in the Pharisee direction, sometimes tipping a bit in the Sadducee direction. But most of the time, we’re ordinary people muddling our way through life.
Matthew tells us that ordinary people like us are coming from all over Judea to hear John preach, and that they’re confessing their sins and being baptized. Matthew doesn’t tell us that John screams about God’s wrath to these ordinary folks – he tells us that John preaches a very simple sermon to them: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.
Now you and I may hear this simple sermon and say, that sounds a lot like a sermon that could be titled “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” We hear these words, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near, and we hear them as a warning that violence and terror are going to descend on us if we don’t bow down before a God who wants to scare us into submission. But it is really important to understand – this is not what John is talking about.
John is talking to ordinary people who live very difficult lives in the middle of an oppressive empire that cares nothing for their troubles. These ordinary people are waiting for God to act, hoping for God’s justice, longing for a new and better world to come. To a people with little hope, a people who live in longing for salvation, John brings a glimmer of light: a hope that something new is around the corner, a hope for salvation and new birth and new life.
The word John uses that is translated as repentance is a Greek word: Metanoia. This word comes from “meta” – beyond, above – and “noia” – knowledge, understanding. A metanoia is a reorientation, a fundamental transformation of outlook that changes everything about how we see ourselves and the world. John is telling them to open their eyes and see the new kingdom that is coming, brought to birth by love and living by the law of love. It’s a vision that Isaiah describes for us in our Old Testament lesson today: a world governed by the Messiah, who judges with righteousness and equity for the poor and meek, and rules a creation that has been remade. John is lighting for the people an Advent candle: a candle of hope.
Every year, while the world around us dissolves into the overwhelming stress of a holiday season that seems to bring more and more obligations all the time, we come to church and hear instead this Advent vision of a new world, anchored in the peace that passes understanding, ruled by Christ, the Messiah. And every Advent, we ask God for metanoia – we ask God to help us change. We ask God to help us give up on the things that are keeping us separated from God – our self-righteousness, like Pharisees, or functional atheism and our indifference to anything but our own wealth, comfort, and success, like Sadducees. We ask God to help us give up on our belief that a world of violence and power, where people live with poverty and oppression, is the only way the world can work, and begin truly to pray for a new world, God’s kingdom, to come.
So listen to John’s Advent call to us today: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near – and hear it as a sign of hope. Into a dark and troubled world, a Savior is coming. Let us prepare a way for him, a way through the wilderness of our hearts, so that in us, he can bring a new world into being – a world of love and grace.
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