"Still Small Prophetic Voices" | The Rev. Peter Sipple | December 12, 2021

SERMON – Advent III C (Dec. 12, 2021)

In the Gospels, John the Baptizer strides across the stage, larger than life.  Wild and wooly in appearance, fundamental and earthy, his tastes in dress and food seem more animal than human.  His vision of the future, stark and austere, focuses on God’s imminent judgment. Like the woodsman with raised axe, John enlists Isaiah’s imagery that the ground will be made level and the rough places plain.   The farmer with winnowing shovel separates wheat from chaff, another illusion to the Day of Judgment when God will do the same.  John’s predictions convey a moral earnestness and severity.  The coming crisis will see the mighty overthrow of ancient wrong, the settling of accounts on the basis of strict justice.  Facing such a prospect, the Jews are reminded that they must not claim preferential treatment on the grounds of their ancestry. As one New Testament scholar puts it, trees will be judged not by their roots but by their fruits.

John the Baptizer points to the racial and religious arrogance of Israel’s leadership and their smug confidence in the historic continuity of tradition.   He conveys God’s displeasure with the mindless observance of timeworn religious doctrine and indicts Israel’s reliance on the tried and true as a form of moral blindness.  As he might have put it, “You have become so immured in your familiar surroundings, depending on the predictable, loving only the close-at-hand, that you are obtuse when faced with conflict and suffering, the injustice and evil in the world around you! “ This moral myopia is not what God intended.  God went so far as to cause a great flood in order to eradicate self-centeredness and jump-start creation again.  This time the one escape from the coming wrath will be a baptismal cleansing, and even that will prove effective only for those who demonstrate the sincerity of their repentance by a genuine willingness to change.  John is intent on reforming the habits of the heart.

John the forerunner does not hold back!  There’s nothing like calling people a brood of vipers to get their attention.  He’s like the herald with a long straight trumpet who steps out before royalty and plays a fanfare, commanding a respectful hearing.  The musical Godspell opens as John, draped in lion skin and blasting on a rams-horn, sings “Prepare ye the way of the Lord.”  This is the earthy John, the one who introduces us to the roots of our Judeo-Christian faith.  Listen up! You’re about to hear some teaching, and if you’re open to it your life will undergo radical change.  But you must be ready to recognize your need of it.  So repent!

Paul tells us that the goal of prophecy is hope.  Repentance—replacing bad intentions with good ones—creates hope that the days ahead will bring more abundant life for all of humankind.  Paul recalled the poetry of Isaiah that presaged a peaceable kingdom where the mighty beasts lie in pastures with the weaker animals they now take for food.  Powerful predatory natural instincts are quelled; they will no longer hurt or destroy, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.  Now we’re prepared to hear and understand what Jesus meant by the Realm of God, that condition available to those who believe and then live their faith.  For here is God calling us again to make things over, to make them new and just, with a post-Eden and post-Flood rightness and straightness that human beings long for but find so elusive.  Throughout Advent we experience this longing for the prophecy to come true—that the crooked ways that tempt us will become straight and the roughness of life made more easily passable. 

So here we are, the recently baptized, still living in hope.  Must we camp out in the wilderness, dieting on locusts, or participate in blatant civil disobedience and spend time in prison? Perhaps, but far simpler and still central to our lives as Christians, we can raise our voices on behalf of what is right and just.  We can advocate for civil liberties and fairness, reconciliation and forgiveness, associating our names with the positions we advocate. And we can use our gift dollars to support social justice.  Most Americans want to see our country apply all conceivable diplomatic means to settle conflicts around the world, eschewing further warfare and bloodshed, urging those in power to legislate justice. They may be advocates for peace and harmony in their own family or in other communities.  Will their advocacy sometimes bring them into conflict with others?  Yes, of course.  Can good intentions occasionally make matters worse?  Yes.  But our model is Jesus, who showed us that the way to ultimate reconciliation and justice leads first through trial, conflict, and even death.  Courage and hope are the essential ingredients of advocacy for justice, and our faith provides the source of our courage and hope.

John cried out in the wilderness “make straight the path of the Lord.”  We’re not ignorant about what’s straight and what’s crooked.  Mainly we know the difference.  As Christians we are called to acknowledge that difference, using our own still small prophetic voices to call for what is right and our energies to help bring it about.