Advent 2

Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

           Virtuous Vipers: Why’d It Have To Be Snakes?

Has anyone ever seen the Indiana Jones movie Raiders of the Lost Ark? Remember that great scene when Indy and Sallah look down into the Well of Souls?           

Sallah: Indy, why does the floor move?

Indiana Jones: Give me your torch!

Indiana Jones: Snakes. Why'd it have to be snakes?

Sallah: Asp very dangerous.  You go first, Indy.     

The point is that even the great Indiana Jones — Harvard archeology professor, adventurer, and antiquities hunter — has a reaction to snakes. Even those of us who aren’t scared to death of snakes would still probably have to confess to an attentive, alert reaction to the presence of a snake. We’re just wired for that. And yet, that’s exactly how John the Baptist begins the welcome speech at his first baptismal preparation class at the edge of the Jordan River. Matthew’s gospel tells us that people from all over Jerusalem, Judea, and all along the Jordan were going to John to be baptized, confessing their sins, and John warms up the crowd like this:   

           You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

Bear fruits worthy of repentance… Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

Well, happy second Sunday of Advent to you too, John! What on earth is this viper rant about!? In Luke’s gospel, John addresses his warning to the whole crowd, while today in Matthew’s gospel, he singles out the Pharisees and Sadducees, but I don’t think that the rest of us — we vineyard workers, herders, farmers, or weavers — should take comfort in that. This is a message for all of us. 

Remember that the Pharisees and Sadducees were historic and respected sects of Jews who had studied God’s law for millennia and generations. They were not bad people. They were like the most engaged of us here at Emmanuel — we’re talking about the choir, the lectors, the ushers, the hospitality team — everyone who showed up for Bobby’s brass polishing party Monday night. 

A viper is a poisonous snake — an asp is one variety — and a brood of them is a reproducing family, like the scary, moving floor in the Indiana Jones movie. Asp very dangerous! You go first, Indy! Imagine Indiana Jones asking the writer of Matthew’s gospel — Why’d it have to be snakes and think again about the brood of vipers. A brood is a reproducing, growing, family of vipers. It’s true that snakes have been associated with Satan since the serpent recommended the fresh apple to Eve on that Farm to Table menu in the Garden of Eden. But that was a single serpent, not a brood, which is a growing family — struggling to survive in the way God made them. Vipers eat small animals and hunt by striking and immobilizing their prey with their venom, helping to keep the environment in balance and control diseases spread by the rodent population. 

John calls the Pharisees and Sadducees a brood of vipers, telling them to bear fruit worthy of repentance. This is about behavior, not birth, gender, race, religion, sexual identity, social class, education, or politics. There is nothing innately bad or wrong about the Pharisees and Sadducees — or any of the others who have come to John for baptism that day — or their roles in society — any more than there is in a family of snakes doing what snakes do to support the family. 

The Baptizer is telling the Pharisees and Sadducees in Matthew’s gospel (he says it to the whole crowd in Luke’s gospel) to check their privilege. Do not presume that just because you’re descended from Abraham that your work of repentance is done! God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham, Matthew’s John continues. Speaking of stones, that’s how Palestinian Christians are referred to in the Holy Lands today. They’re called the Living Stones. 

John’s point is, it’s not who you are but what you do. Even Jesus’s 17-verse genealogy in Matthew’s gospel is full of scoff-laws, renegades, and sinners — and even — shockingly — women and at least one prostitute. A brood of vipers is a surprising image, but John the Baptist made his mark on the world by shocking people out of their old ways of seeing and being. He shocked his parents, Elizabeth and Zechariah, by being born in their old age. He shocked the Roman establishment by appearing outside the power structure but in plain sight in the wilderness on the Road to Jericho, the main drag out of Jerusalem. 

So why is this fur-vested, bug-eating Baptizer preparing the way of the Lord? The quoted language from Isaiah at the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel is so intentional that we have to take a closer look. And the people all around John did take a closer look. John started his ministry of baptism on the bank of the River Jordan, about a day’s walk from Jerusalem on the road to Jericho. He’s off the beaten path, but even so, Matthew’s Gospel is quick to tell us that people from the whole Judean countryside

and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. This spot in the wilderness was set apart, just like John was set apart by his odd diet of locusts and honey and his camel clothing. People had to choose to go to John. They had to turn away intentionally from their activities in Jerusalem. They had to interrupt their work in their fields or vineyards in the Judean countryside. They had to consciously decide to turn to John — as odd as he was and as far from their former lives as possible — to be washed with water in forgiveness of their sins. Even the Pharisees and Sadducees, who would have understood themselves by their very identities to be sanctified.

In our times, we associate the word repent with a puritanical notion that sin is a synonym for drinking, card-playing, swearing, or even dancing, or really anything fun. [there’s a Southern Baptist joke that drinking is forbidden because it might lead to dancing] But the Greek word we translate as repent is metanoia, which is more about seeing things in a new way — changing our minds — than it is about stopping some activity human leadership has decided is sinful. Besides, it’s not usually the activity itself that is sinful. It’s the harm that comes from getting our priorities out of whack, or from letting our enjoyment of whatever it is hurt us or those we love. Repentance is about recognizing that truth and preparing for the tenderness and reconciliation that comes from that understanding. That repentance — or metanoia — is the comfort for God’s people that Isaiah’s prophecy proclaims. 

God chooses bug-eating, fur-vested John, an unlikely messenger who was set apart from everyone else in all visible ways, to prepare the way of the Lord and make his paths straight. Why? To show us that all it takes is a choice to see things in a new way. All it takes is an intentional turn from our habits and cultural assumptions to understand how our words, actions, and attitudes separate us from others. John the Baptist comes in the gospel of Matthew, as he comes in the gospels of Mark, Luke, and John, to make straight the way of the Lord, as Isaiah’s prophecy says, getting everyone ready for God's new plan of salvation. So while the second Sunday of Advent is not one of the four traditional days for baptism in the Episcopal Church, come on you wiggling, slithering, lovely family of vipers — you are all marvelously and wonderfully made. Let’s baptize Grace, and all of us, for repentance, praying for a new way to see and be with each other in the world. Amen

Baptism

“I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His 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.”  

           When we bless the water for baptism, the prayer says that in the beginning the spirit moved over the water, quoting from Genesis, but the drama in that moment is the sound of the water being poured into the font from a height of arm's length over the head. Except at Easter vigil as connected with the paschal fire, there is no fire or spirit imagery in baptism. At All Saints', we use the tongues of flame at Pentecost, 15-foot silk ribbons of red, orange and yellow on the end of fly rods) to lick out over the congregation during the processional and recessional to symbolize the holy spirit. We never use them at baptism, though. I wonder about this.