What Would Jesus Judge

Today on the Second Sunday of Advent we encounter a forbidding story from Matthew’s Gospel describing an exceedingly strange, cranky character known to us as John the Baptist or, more accurately translated, John the Baptizer. John was a stern fellow, hardened by life in the wilderness, a man whose convictions were so consuming that his message burst forth in demanding, unforgettable images: an ax lying at the tree’s root, unfruitful trees thrown into the fire, and most powerfully, the coming one who will clear the threshing floor and burn the chaff with unquenchable fire. Not the kind of guy you want to come to a elegant dinner party with your dearest friends.

The Baptizer’s message seems stereotypically “turn or burn.” Get right with God or God’s going to get you. That appears to be John’s message and he insisted that the one to come, that is Jesus the Messiah, would have the same message. Jesus’ judgment, said John, will be with unquenchable fire. That is not a message we like or want to hear from God or anyone who purports to speak for God, especially at this time of year.

But we need John the Baptizer during Advent or we don’t know Christmas. What keeps Christmas from being just a sentimental baby story is that the church doesn’t get to Christmas until it hears John. For John tells us in unmistakable terms that Christmas isn’t just about a baby. Christmas is about the kingdom of heaven coming near to us and if we want to be a part of the heavenly kingdom, then we’ve got to … repent. Let’s read it in Matthew 3.

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said,

Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 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.

“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.”

John said that the one who is coming, Jesus the Messiah, would bring a judgment of unquenchable fire. So my sermon title asks, what would Jesus judge?

We begin an answer to that question by saying that we want judgment. In a certain, deep way we know there needs to be judgment and we want it. I think that’s why people flocked to hear John’s message long ago. They were weary of their lives. The world frightened them and knowing about a God who holds the world accountable brought them comfort and hope.

So it is with us. We are wearied and frightened and we know this world is not right. I found a clipping in my note file about a teacher in New York City who asks her class in January on Martin Luther King Day to write about their dreams. (I’m not sure when I first read this story. Probably a few years ago.) These are some of the kids’ “dreams.”

• Marcia dreams that she can stay in this house, and the judge won’t make her go back to “the one where you are always scared.”

• Perry dreams that people will stop selling drugs so the cops will stay away.

• Ashley and Ralph “don’t have time to dream because ‘living’s hard work.’”

By the way, these are six, seven, and eight-year-olds.[1] The world seems like a horrible place and some mornings I’m almost afraid to open the newspaper to see what else has happened.

When we see the world’s evil — when that evil gets right up in our face — then just like John, we long for someone to come who will sweep all the evil away and set things right. “Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.… [The] chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” Sounds good to me. Oh, that God would judge and sweep away a world where six-year-olds dream about being killed. We want judgment and we certainly need judgment.

But here’s a difficult question that takes us to the heart of what I’m trying to say today. Did the Messiah, did Jesus Christ do what John the Baptizer said he would do? Does Jesus judge with unquenchable fire?

The answer is yes and no. Yes, Christians believe that Jesus Christ did overcome and decisively defeat the power of evil. But that’s a spiritual truth and on a practical level the answer is different. John expected the Messiah to make things right. If anything, the world is in even worse shape now.

This presents us with what I call the divine ambiguity. You see, it appears that the will of God is not, at least so far, to overwhelm the world with crushing power. It appears God’s will is to win the world with suffering love. We don’t want that. We want Jesus or somebody to come along and beat up the bad guys who are doing so much that is wrong. John wanted the Messiah to do that. But the way of Jesus Christ was the cross and the way of his obedient followers still today is the cross.

Will we follow the way of the cross? I think what Jesus judges most in us is our unwillingness to do that, to go God’s way rather than our way. In other words, what Jesus ultimately judges in us is our unwillingness to repent.

That was John’s message too. “Repent,” said the Baptizer, “for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”[2] Repent. Much Christian teaching and preaching misses the point here. Too often the Christian message has been IF you repent, THEN God will come near. As if the sovereign God who created and sustains the very universe needs us to do something before drawing near us. John says, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” Repentance doesn’t cause the kingdom to come. Repentance happens when see the kingdom and want to live in its light.

I got out my Greek New Testament to work on this sermon. There was a time that I was pretty good at understanding the New Testament in its original Greek. But with the pressures of time over the years, that ability has slipped quite a bit. I’m not proud or happy about that, but it’s true.

Yet I did read today’s text in Greek, as best I could, and the word for repent is one I actually still remember quite well: metanoeite [metanoei√te]. It literally means to change one’s mind or to turn around one’s thinking. This is not to say that John thought redemption came about through intellect or intelligence. But in the Hebrew way of looking at things, the direction of our minds is the direction of our lives including all of our thoughts and words and actions. Repentance is to turn from our own way and align ourselves with God’s way. Repentance is not first of all about morality. It begins with connecting our lives — thoughts, words, deeds — to the reality of God. We all need to do this. Constantly. Metanoeite. Repent.

Think about that. Today is the Second Sunday of Advent. It says that in the bulletin but its importance goes beyond church bulletins. For as Christians we need to align our time with God’s time. In fact, it’s much more important for us to live in the light of the Second Sunday of Advent than it is to know that today is December 9th. I suppose if we were truer to who we are, we would not even put the calendar dates in the bulletin. Our calendars at home or our watches tell us today is December 9th. What we most need to know as God’s people is that this is Advent. It’s time to hear John get us ready again for the birth of our Lord. We’ve got to quit living with the world’s time — 15.5 shopping days until Christmas — and more and more live in God’s time. Metanoeite.

There is something else in the bulletins. Every week there is a paragraph about reading the Bible and the lectionary readings for the following Sunday. There are many different ways to read the Bible. But we need to read it because it is God’s Word. We don’t need to be Bible scholars who can read it in Greek or Hebrew. But we cannot align ourselves with God’s way, if we are not reading God’s Word. The bulletin tries to point that out. Metanoeite.

The bulletin also reminds us to pray. Most of the time there is a little blank space with the words “this space for sermon notes, prayer concerns, and reminders.” We all need to pray. God cannot speak to us and bless us if we do not speak to God and bless God. You say, “I don’t know how to pray, Bill.” I say, dear friend, if you know how to talk, you know how to pray. Just direct some of your talking to God. God will teach you the rest. Metanoeite.

When you think about it, the bulletin is just paper reminding us to repent. This is also what worship is all about and almost everything else we do. The kingdom of heaven is here. Metanoeite. Repent. Align ourselves with God’s way and God’s blessing will flood into our lives.

William Boggs describes a hot Carolina afternoon, on a visit home, when he and his family were driving along and they passed an orchard of peaches that advertised especially low prices if you picked the peaches yourselves. Boggs wrote, “I doubt that any bargain would be sufficiently attractive to me now to lure me out of my air-conditioned car and into a steamy afternoon to pick peaches, but we were younger then, poorer then, and in less of a hurry than we tend to be these days.” So they pulled over, paid their money, and selected a bushel basket to fill with fresh, ripe Spartanburg peaches.

“As we set off into the orchard, an old fellow — a little cranky — as wrinkled as a peach pit, who was tending the place, said, ‘If you want the best fruit, go deeper into the orchard; the peaches along the fringes are picked over, but deeper into the orchard, you’ll find the best fruit.’

“We walked a way, far enough along that I figured we had gone past the picked-over sections. But just as we set the basket down, he hollered sternly, ‘Go deeper.’ So we picked up the basket, went a little farther, set the basket down, and again we heard him shouting his advice, ‘Go deeper. The best fruit’s farther in.’

“Once more we picked up the basket and walked along, finally deciding that surely we were now deep enough, but once more as we prepared to pick the peaches, he hollered again, ‘Go on. Go deeper.’ This time we went a substantially longer distance, and discovered that indeed he was right. The finest, plumpest peaches were untouched and waiting for us.”[3]

John the Baptizer is like a cranky, wrinkled peach farmer. His message seems demanding but in reality he’s pointing us to Jesus. And Jesus’ judgment tells us that the finest, plumpest peaches, that is, the deepest joys of the kingdom of heaven, are untouched and waiting for us. All we’ve got to do is go deeper in. The pathway into the delights of God’s kingdom is repentance: aligning ourselves more and more with God’s way in the world.

[1] Others on the list included: Cheri dreams of food “a lot” and “a lot of it;” Monica dreams that Daddy really wasn’t killed so Mom can buy something that isn’t food; Chris dreams that he gets a new heart before this one stops; Tim dreams that someday he can be an artist and not have to fight.

[2] Matthew 3.1-2: ∆En de« tai√ß hJme÷raiß e˙kei÷naiß paragi÷netai ∆Iwa¿nnhß oJ baptisth\ß khru/sswn e˙n thØv e˙rh/mwˆ thvß ∆Ioudai÷aß [kai«] le÷gwn: metanoei√te h¡ggiken ga»r hJ basilei÷a tw◊n oujranw◊n.

[3] William Boggs, Sin Boldly: But Trust God More Boldly Still (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990) 101-102.