Matthew 3:1-12
Speaking of John the Baptist, It
seemed a priest and a minister were putting up a sign alongside a
road. It read, “The End is Near! Turn Yourself Around Now!
Before It's too Late!” A man drove past them and turned to his
companion and said “Those crazy religious fanatics!” and he
pushed down on the gas pedal and barreled around the corner. There
was a loud splash, then silence. The priest turned to the minister
and said, “Maybe the sign should have just said 'Bridge Out'.”
Today we meet John the Baptist
baptizing, of course. And when the Pharisees and Saduccees come to
be baptized, he gets angry. “You brood of vipers, he says, who
told you to flee from the wrath that is to come. Clearly no way to
make friends. Now we have to ask, why were they there to be
baptized? And why did John get mad at them? We are very early into
the Gospel of Matthew and Jesus hasn't even appeared on the scene.
The reason for the baptism is not hard
to understand. It was not a sacramental baptism; it did not free
anyone from original sin. John and other baptizers of that time
would go down to the Jordan river where Joshua and the Israelites had
crossed to enter the promised land. When that happened, the tribes
that had wandered in the desert finally became a nation. The nation
which had once been prosperous and powerful was now reduced to a
small fragment of what it had been, under the control of the Romans.
The prophets blamed this on the fact that the people had lost their
way, that they had abandoned God and begun following idols. To be
baptized was to dedicate yourself to what Israel stood for – it was
an outward sign of your intention to take your faith seriously, to
become one with those ancestors who had kept the faith. John says to
the Pharisees and Saduccees, “If you are serious about your
repentance, show it by bearing good fruit.” The word repentance,
though is better translated as “change of heart” or “change the
way you have been thinking”. John sees through them; even though
they are on opposite sides of many issues, the Pharisees and
Saduccees both insisted that they were the true Jews; they were the
ones who carried on the faith most completely. The Pharisees by
keeping every last point in the law of Moses, and the Saduccees by
their adherence to the temple rituals of blood sacrifice. And John
knows that they might be completely sincere in wishing to show their
solidarity with their ancestors. But he also knows that they will go
into the water and come out unchanged – because they have no motive
to change.
That's a problem with religious people
in general, and I include myself. We don't like to change; we don't
even think we should change. After all, I have an active prayer
life, I study my faith, I think I'm generous with my time and my
money, and I try to follow the Golden Rule. What more could God
want? If God grades on a curve, I'm okay.
But John is basically saying that the
Pharisees and the Saduccees and Me and maybe you are missing the
whole point. Jesus is coming into the world to create a new people,
and if we want to be part of this new creation, we have to become
intentional disciples. That's the change he's talking about. That's
putting on a new mind, that's repentance.
So what is an intentional disciple? I
remember in college when I signed up to learn German. My class was
8:00 in the morning, and since I was away from home and living in a
dormitory, I did not get to bed at a decent hour; we spent a lot of
time discussing profound things. So German class almost always saw
me dozing off, telling myself that I would have no problems with the
exams because many of the words were kind of like English and I could
probably guess the rest; and besides, I had a lot of harder subjects
to master. Our mid-term came along and I did very poorly in German.
At that point I decided to take it seriously and spent time studying
every day. I became an intentional student of German.
An intentional disciple is someone who
decides that the most important thing in life is to learn what God
wants of me and to carry out God's will for me. Unfortunately, that
means we have to work at it every day, all the rest of our lives. We
have to learn to distinguish between God's will and our own will. We
have to allow God to rule over more and more of our lives, instead of
the part we allow him to rule over. And it's like learning German;
you have to learn what God wants, do it, then learn some more. You
have to recognize when your actions are flowing from your own will –
and they might be good actions – but if they aren't what God wants,
we are missing the mark. And that process never ends, which is why
John can tell each of us every day to repent, to convert, to change
our minds. Being an intentional disciple is not to become a member
of a club, like the Pharisees or the Saducees or the Saint Mary's
parish. Don't get me wrong, that's important. But being an
intentional disciple is a process, the process of surrendering
everything to God. Saint Augustine said that our hearts are restless
until they rest in God. We are designed to be filled up by God, and
we go through life trying to fill up that space with other things.
And as long as there is anything else in this space, there is no room
for God.
Advent is the beginning of a new year;
we are reminded that Jesus is coming to make all things new. John
invites us to not be left behind. How do we respond? What steps
will we take to become intentional disciples?
