john-the-baptist

How Do You Recognize the Messiah?

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Matthew 11:2-11

Early one Friday morning a while back, a street musician took a spot by a trashcan in the L’Enfant Plaza Metro Station in Washington, D.C. He was nondescript – youngish, jeans, baseball cap. He took out his violin and threw a few dollars in the case so people would get the point. For the next 43 minutes he played six classical pieces while over a thousand people passed by on their way to work. Only seven people stopped. Twenty-seven people dropped change in the violin case, mostly on the run. So that morning, if you count the twenty-dollar bill dropped in by the one person that recognized him, Joshua Bell, one of the finest classical musicians in the world, made $59 for a 43-minute concert on his three-and-a-half million-dollar Stradivarius.

Why didn’t people recognize Bell? They would have recognized him at Carnegie Hall or Kennedy Center. They would have recognized him if they’d paid $200 for a ticket. But playing for free in a Metro Station isn’t what a world-famous violinist does. It wasn’t what they were expecting.

This Matthew passage raises the question: How do you recognize the one sent from God to save God’s people and God’s world? How do you recognize the Messiah? Once again, we meet John the Baptist. In last week’s lectionary passage when Jesus came forward to be baptized, John seemed to recognize him as the one for whom they had all been waiting. But now John is in prison where he’s had some time to think about it, and he’s not sure Jesus fits the mold. He likely wonders why that Roman puppet and tyrant Herod is still on his throne. He likely wonders why he, John, is still in prison.

This Sunday is just eleven days until Christmas, and this passage tells us not of angels or shepherds or mangers but of John the Baptist and his doubts and disappointment. “You aren’t who I was expecting. You don’t look like a Messiah.” But the thing is, if John could ask such things, we can, too. “If you are the one who is to come, why is my friend dying of cancer? Why does every generation seem to need to go to war? Why are so many kids hungry, neglected, abused? Why are there still people all over the world, like John the Baptist, unjustly held in prisons?” Many of us have friends who have asked, “How can you believe in a just, merciful, all-powerful God when the world is such a mess? If God exists, and if Jesus is as important as you claim, shouldn’t things be better by now? Why are there still diseases, wars, earthquakes, greed?” Wouldn’t the Messiah clean up this mess?

Many of us have asked those questions ourselves. We still wait for the fulfillment of the Christmas promise: peace on earth and goodwill among all. That very promise is the reason Christmas can be so difficult. The headlines and sometimes our own lives make it clear that peace and goodwill seem as scarce today as they were a couple of millennia ago.

Quoting Isaiah 35 and 61, Jesus tells John’s disciples, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

Twentieth century theologian Paul Tillich wrote, “We want only to show you something we have seen and to tell you something we have heard . . . that here and there in the world and now and then in ourselves is seen a New Creation.” Jesus says more is going on than John has noticed. Yes, John is still in prison. But Jesus is saying, “Listen. Look. God is at work here, maybe not with the ‘unquenchable fire’ that you were expecting (Matthew 3:12), but God is at work just the same,” here and there in the world, and now and then in ourselves. Jesus is both the fulfillment of the people’s hopes and something altogether different. Something no one was expecting.

This means a couple of things. First, Jesus hasn’t fixed everything. We don’t have any better answer for our non-Christian friends than, “You’re right. The world is still a mess. We aren’t claiming that everything is ‘all better’ since the advent of Jesus as God with us, only that now we have a clearer idea of how to spot that new creation, a concrete hope for its fulfillment, and a fervent prayer for the present time: ‘Come, Lord Jesus.’”

But it also means something bigger. When Jesus tells John, “yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than [John]” (Matthew 11:11), he’s talking about us. The only example of power Jesus will give us – serving, feeding, healing, giving himself away – is the same power that we have. It is because of that power that here and there in the world, and now and then in ourselves is seen a new creation. I know people who don’t want to have anything to do with a God who doesn’t solve all the world’s problems in a blinding flash of light or with fiery judgment. But what we celebrate this season, the coming of God into our world, this world, the real, human world is more along the lines of what Thich Nhat Hanh has said: “The miracle is not to walk on water but on the earth.”

Still, during this season of festive excess, even that miracle can seem unattainable, unavailable, or simply not enough, to those who have experienced loss, trauma, ill health, economic setback, or fear what the future might hold. Some congregations offer a “Blue Christmas” or “Longest Night” service, a celebration of Christ’s incarnation and birth a few days ahead of December 25 and designed particularly for those who are dealing with loss, disappointment, grief, or depression. This reading, revealing that even intrepid John the Baptist had doubts and fears, might be an appropriate text for such a service. Doubt and grief are not unfaithful. Those of us who are feeling festive can stand in solidarity with those who long, who wait, who hope for something better; to assure them through our presence that God is with them, even if not in the way they might wish. It’s an opportunity to sing what David Lose describes as “that most honest of Advent hymns,” “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.”

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:

You can see a short YouTube video of Bell’s subway performance at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnOPu0_YWhw. 
Paul Tillich, The New Being (New York: Charles Scribner, 1955); http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=375&C=15. 
Mary Hinkle Shore, https://members.newproclamation.com/commentary.php?d8m=12&d8d=15&d8y=2013&atom_id=19021.  

Walter Brueggeman, Charles B. Cousar, Beverly Gaventa, James D. Newsome, Texts for Preaching: Year A (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995).


What Does “Repent!” Really Mean?

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Matthew 3:1-12

It’s unlikely that the folks who show up for church on the first Sunday in December are hoping to be compared to a brood of vipers and warned of “the wrath to come.” But every Second Sunday in Advent, we meet John the Baptist out in the wilderness. What does John have to tell us this year?

John preaches repentance. “Repent” is a word with a lot of baggage. I grew up with cartoon images of scruffy, bearded, street preachers carrying signs saying “Repent!” and maybe, “The end is near!” alluding to God’s eternal judgment and what some folks call “turn or burn” theology. These cartoons made repentance seem like a joke about religious extremism or even delusion. Some hear the word “repent” and think it means you’re supposed to say you’re really, really sorry and you will never do it (whatever it is) again. Which isn’t a bad thing, but it’s a pretty small part of repentance. I suspect most of us hear the word “repent,” and think, “Okay, now I’m supposed to feel bad about myself.” But here’s the thing: What “repent” really means is turn around. Go in a different direction. David Lose writes, “Repentance, in short, is realizing that God is pointing you one way, that you’ve been traveling another way, and changing course.” Brian McLaren writes “repent means, ’rethink everything,’ or ‘question your assumptions,’ or ‘have a deep turnaround in your thinking and values.’” Rather than a threat, what John is getting at is that what we’re doing isn’t working. It isn’t working, and we deserve something better. Everybody deserves something better. The whole world, the whole creation deserves something better. In order to experience that “something better,” we need to repent; we need to change course.

John doesn’t just say, “Repent!” He says, “Repent! God’s kingdom has come near!” His call to change course is connected to a promise. Something better for everybody is a real possibility. Matthew calls that something the “kingdom of heaven.” Mark and Luke call it the “kingdom of God;” they’re the same thing. What John is announcing is life on earth lived as though God is the ruler of our hearts and minds, a new life that stands in stark contrast to the kingdoms of Caesar and Herod, known for domination, injustice, exploitation, and oppression. This new kingdom, this new life is about God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven. It’s about God’s love and compassion, a better kingdom for everyone.

A chapter later, Jesus speaks these same words at the beginning of his own ministry. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matthew 4:17). In the next chapter, he gives us a glimpse of what God’s kingdom looks like in the Sermon on the Mount. Blessed are the poor. The meek shall inherit the earth. Love your enemies (Matthew 5-7). So, if we want to be part of this other kingdom, this new life, it means going in that direction, living in that direction. God is pointing us one way, and we’ve been traveling another way. When John says, “Repent,” he means “Move in the direction of God’s love, for ourselves, for others, for our neighbors, for the world.” This change in direction isn’t about punishment; it’s about love because God is love, and you are God’s beloveds. You deserve something better than injustice, oppression, revenge, greed, and the suffering they produce. The whole world deserves something better.

But – “the wrath to come,” and “unquenchable fire”? “You brood of vipers”? Yikes! John isn’t trying to make friends here. Matthew’s John, like any prophet worth his salt, speaks truth to power. Power appears out in the wilderness in the form of the Pharisees and Sadducees who come to be baptized along with everyone else. John warns them that a baptism of repentance really means repentance. It isn’t enough to get dunked in the river. It’s time to walk the walk without relying on some special status as descendants of Abraham to give them a pass.

John then warns that the one who is coming – Jesus – will have “[h]is winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” (Matthew 3:12). This punitive and harsh separation isn’t how we experience Jesus in Matthew or elsewhere. What we see instead is inclusion, healing, acceptance, love, but also an unequivocal condemnation of hatred, hypocrisy, and greed. Could it be that John was expecting a different kind of messiah, a scarier messiah? This might explain his confused question from prison several chapters later: “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?” (Matthew 11:2-3)

So, what do we need to repent at the close of 2025? So many things are not working for humanity right now. We still try to solve problems with war and violence. Like that ever worked. We still haven’t figured out how to share the earth’s bounty so that everyone can thrive. We still hoard power, wealth, resources, even knowledge. We still believe the next technology will solve all our problems instead of creating more. We’re still terminally tribal, forgetting that diversity is so very obviously God’s plan. We still haven’t figured out that we’re part of creation, part of the natural world, and that our very survival depends on our understanding that and living that truth. We are still driven more by fear than by love.

There’s a lot to repent, right? And repentance isn’t easy. Changing course is never easy. Rob Bell writes starkly and poetically about repentance:
“It will require a death,
a humbling,
a leaving behind of the old mind,
and at the same time it will require an opening up,
loosening our hold,
and letting go,
so that we can receive,
expand,
find,
hear,
see,
and enjoy.”

It will require a death. A humbling. Ouch. Although I suspect most of us know this death, this humbling. Maybe you felt in when you finally gave up a grudge, or a resentment, or an addiction. When you figured out that what you had been doing was creating a hellish reality for yourself and others. When you figured out that things didn’t have to be the way they always have been, and on the other side of letting go of the way things were was freedom, and even joy. As Frederick Buechner writes, “To repent is to come to your senses. It is not so much something you do as something that happens. True repentance spends less time looking at the past and saying ‘I’m sorry,’ than to the future and saying, ‘Wow!’”

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Brian D. McLaren, We Make the Road By Walking (New York: Jericho Books, 2014).
Catherine Sider Hamilton, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-of-advent/commentary-on-matthew-31-12-7
Shannon Kershner, “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven Is Near!” December 4, 2016, https://www.fourthchurch.org/sermons/2016/120416.html
David Lose, http://www.davidlose.net/2016/11/advent-2-a-reclaiming-repentance/
Rob Bell, Love Wins (New York: HarperOne, 2011)
Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC’s (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1973; revised and expanded 1993)

Turn Around and Do Something Different

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Luke 3:7-18

I don’t blame any preacher for choosing the Philippians passage over the Luke passage this week. “Rejoice!” feels so much more Christmas-y than “You brood of vipers!” But it’s Advent; it’s not Christmas yet, and John the Baptizer is all about preparing the way. In spite of his harsh and scolding tone, there are some great Advent messages in what John tells the crowd.

The word “repentance” feels like a reprimand even without John’s brood of vipers indictment. As I wrote last week, to repent just means “turn around.” Go in a different direction. There is good news in recognizing and accepting that what you’ve been doing isn’t working. There is good news in making the decision to turn around and do something different. This good news is the beginning of healing, for ourselves and for our society.

What we’ve been doing isn’t working, or at least, it isn’t working for a large portion of the population of our world, and it certainly isn’t working for our planet. When the people ask John, “Okay, so what do we do?” his blunt and fairly simple instruction is to stop acting as though they live in a world in which their actions don’t impact others. Stop being greedy and dishonest; start sharing the wealth.

John seems to threaten that when the Messiah comes, just as in the song, “Santa Claus is coming to Town,” you’d better watch out. We learn when we encounter Jesus that he doesn’t wield a winnowing fork or threaten anyone with unquenchable fire. But like John, Jesus preaches that a life realigned with God’s purposes is good news. Luke is known for “good news to the poor,” and certainly this realignment is good news for the poor. But Jesus proclaims that it is good news for everyone. Years ago, author Barbara Ehrenreich was asked in an interview what she would give up to live in a more human world. She answered, “I think we shouldn’t think of what we would give up to have a more human world; we should think of what we would gain.”

John tells the people who come to be baptized by him, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” Those with enough, and particularly those with more than enough, should share with those who do not have enough. As simple as this is, it is countercultural in our society, especially at Christmas. Even with Santas ringing bells on street corners and “Giving Tuesday,” most of our Christmas celebrations are shaped more by our consumption-driven culture than by the nativity story. The forces behind our patterns of consumption are complex and entrenched, and we will not solve anything by scolding people in the pews. The way we consume is a systemic issue, built into our economy and culture. However, systems are created and supported by individuals. We can go along, or we can turn around and try something different. So we might hint that we are challenged, or perhaps even called, to figure out what is “enough.” We might suggest that the reason some people want more and more stuff could be because they don’t think that they, themselves, are enough. We might assure them that our things are not what make us enough, or good, or important, or valuable. Every one of us is precious – just because we are who we are, the way God made us. And we might point out that this planet on which all of us – ALL of us – depend, is suffering from our consumption patterns.

A handful of resources you might use for a gentle but critical delivery of this good news:

1) An excellent 20-minute video entitled, “The Story of Stuff,” a fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM
2) A terrific children’s picture book by Kaethe Zemach that isn’t just for kids, entitled, Just Enough and Not Too Much (New York: Scholastic Press, 2003).
3) An oldie but a goodie: Jo Robinson and Jean C Staeheli, Unplug the Christmas Machine: A Complete Guide to Putting Love and Joy Back into the Season (New York: William Morrow Paperbacks, 1991).
4) John De Graaf, David Wann, and Thomas Naylor, Affluenza: How Overconsumption Is Killing Us – and How to Fight Back (Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2014).

The Word of God Came to a Nobody

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Luke 3:1-6

   After listing seven of the powers that be of the time, Luke concludes with “the Word of God came to John, son of Zechariah, in the wilderness.”  Compared with the seven names mentioned just before, John is a nobody.  He’s in the wilderness, where no sensible person wants to be found, so he’s a nobody who’s nowhere.  Yet this is precisely where the Word of God went.  Not Jerusalem, or Athens, or Rome, or any of the other centers of culture and power, but to the margins.  And maybe that’s often where the Word of God shows up: just where we’d least expect it.

   This isn’t our first introduction to John in Luke’s gospel.  Mary’s cousin Elizabeth is miraculously pregnant beyond the normal years of childbearing.  When Mary visits Elizabeth with the news of her own miraculous pregnancy, Elizabeth’s child, John, does a cartwheel in the womb.  From the beginning, Luke’s gospel tells us that God is working to change the world through the weak and small – babies and barren women and unwed teenage mothers and wild-eyed prophets and itinerant preachers and executed criminals.  During Advent, we look not to Christmas but beyond, to the time when God’s work on this earth will be completed.  We just have to look around to know God isn’t done yet.  John reminds us that even today, God continues to work through unlikely characters to announce God’s good news of shalom, the Hebrew word that includes not only peace but justice, healing, love, and hope. 

   When you’re a minister, you end up telling your “faith journey” over and over, in seminary and to ordination and church calling committees and so on. When I tell my story, I always mention Bill Anderson.  I’d quit going to church in college.  My father’s rule was, “As long as I go to church, you go to church.”  That pretty much guaranteed that my sister, brother, and I would quit going to church when we moved away from home.  Even more than an expression of adolescent rebellion, however, it seemed to me that Christianity was all about who was getting into heaven and who was not.  I found this focus absurdly speculative, but even worse, it is mostly used to divide people, to manipulate people, to create insiders and outsiders; not to heal or bring people together. 

   When my older daughter was four, out of the blue she announced that she wanted to go to Sunday school.  I think she’d figured out that Sunday school was a chance to play with other kids one more day of the week, with the bonus that she could wear her Mary Janes.  I’d been raised Presbyterian, and a little church near the Marin County suburb where I lived at the time was the closest Presbyterian church.  I figured I could take her to church once, she’d get it out of her system and that would be that.  Sunday school was before the worship service and I wasn’t willing to leave my 4-year-old while I headed for a nearby coffee shop, so I stuck around for adult ed., which was held at the same time.  Adult ed. was a series on exploring things the church could do to help change the world.  That, by itself, was a surprise, but the guy who set the hook and reeled me in was Bill Anderson.  He was older than my dad, and he said Christianity was a social reform movement, a way to change the world – this world – to make it more just, more loving, more peaceful, more like God intends it.  Today I’d say, yes, it is that and so much more, but back then I’d never heard it put that way and it was exactly what I needed to hear. 

   During World War II Bill had been a military engineer who led troops onto Omaha Beach the day before D-Day.  His company was to secure the beaches to the extent possible before the actual invasion.  Bill wouldn’t talk about that day.  He’d get just so far into the story and then stop.  But it wasn’t Omaha Beach that caused him “to grow up fast and hard,” as he put it.  What really changed his life was being part of the military team that liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1945 and 1946.  It spurred him into the work of resettling refugees, which he did on and off, including after the Vietnam War.  He also served as a Witness for Peace in Nicaragua.  He went on three walks for peace in the Soviet Union, making connections with ordinary people who wanted peace and did not want to continue living under the threat of nuclear annihilation just because the Tiberiuses and Pilates and Herods of the world couldn’t let go of a grudge.

   Luke’s outrageous claim is that the “Word of the Lord” comes to a nobody named John in that no-place called the wilderness, and that this is more important than all the important people and events of the day.  And what is truly startling is that this is still possible.  Bill Anderson was a nobody in the grand scheme of things.  And yet, during the eighth year of the presidency of Ronald Reagan, while George Deukmejian was governor of California, and Diane Feinstein was mayor of San Francisco, the word of God came to Bill Anderson in Larkspur, California, who shared it with me.  Bill would be the last person to describe himself as a prophet.  When I’d tell him that he was largely responsible for the path that led me to ministry, he’d say, “Don’t blame me!” 

   Unlike John, Bill wouldn’t have used the word, “repentance” to describe what we’re supposed to do in response to God’s love.  But repentance, as loaded a word as that is, is exactly what Bill Anderson lived and preached, although he would claim he never “preached” at all.  To repent means to turn around.  It means quit going the direction you’ve been going.  John is saying, “Stop doing the things that sew hatred and strife and injustice; stop moving away from God’s shalom; turn around and move toward it.”  Bill Anderson lived and taught this for everyone to see.  He lived the good news that God loves everybody, not just some of us; that a loving God wants shalom for everybody; and the way we are to respond is to pitch in where we can.  In other words, we are to repent. 

   God is still working through the nobodies in the nowheres of our congregations, neighborhoods, and communities.  I hear God’s word of shalom, regularly, from many people; in what they say, and in what they do, which is often so much louder than words. 

   Frederick Buechner wrote, “Turn around and believe that the good news that we are loved is better than we ever dared hope, and that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good news, is of all glad things in this world the gladdest thing of all.  Amen, and come, Lord Jesus.” 

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

A Rash Promise

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Mark 6:14-29

This is one of many stories in the Bible that make you wonder whether the folks who insist that the Bible be taught to school children have read the Bible.

The passage begins with people wondering who this Jesus is. His fame is spreading. Some speculate that he is John the Baptist returned from the dead. But what happened; why is John dead? Because Herod had John executed, and the story of how that came about is the rest of the passage.

The Herod in this story is Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great and one of eight Herods in the Herodian dynasty. He has married Herodias, the former wife of his younger brother, yet another Herod. Like George Foreman, I guess Herod the Great figured there wasn’t a better name than his own to pass on to both (all?) his sons.

John the Baptist wasn’t the only person to criticize Herod for marrying his sister-in-law. We don’t know if he was the only person punished for it. John was well-known and respected; maybe that made it especially important to muzzle him. But Herod fears John; he knows John is “a righteous and holy man,” so while he sends John to prison, he doesn’t have him killed, not at first.

The story continues with Herod’s stepdaughter Herodias (yes, the same name as her mother, the sister-in-law that Herod scandalously married) dancing for guests at a party. We don’t know how old Herodias is at this point. The Greek calls her a κορασίῳ, korasion, which could be young girl or maiden. Is she a child who has made her stepdad proud? Is she an attractive young woman? We also don’t know anything about the dance. Was it as chaste as Judy Garland tapdancing with Mickey Rooney? Or was it provocative, which would make this story truly creepy? All we know is that it must have been some dance. Herod is in such high spirits that he makes a rash promise, so rash that although the text says nothing about it, I wonder if Herod wasn’t drunk as well as impressed. He promises Herodias anything she wants, even half his kingdom, the kind of fairytale promise that you know is going to backfire. The girl asks her mother, who has no warm feelings for John at all, and the mother tells her to ask for John the Baptist’s head on a platter. The king apparently made an oath to keep his promise and so John is executed in prison, and grizzly paintings ever since remind us how brutal this wish was, and that power really can corrupt.

What is the moral of this story? What’s the lesson? I quote David Lose: “The rich and powerful are used to getting what they want; are willing to do most anything to keep or advance what they have; and those who stand up to them, advocate for the oppressed, or dare to inspire people to imagine that life can be different usually get trampled.”

Is this a lesson we want to teach our children? I doubt that those arguing that the Bible should be taught in schools would think so. But maybe that’s exactly what we should be teaching people in today’s political climate. It’s certainly a good reminder for adults, if we include along with it the lesson that God still stands with the oppressed, and whatever the cost, so should we. Isn’t that what Jesus did?

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Resources:
David Lose, https://www.davidlose.net/2012/06/mark-614-29/