The Prophetic Peace of John the Baptist

Malachi 3:1-6a; Matthew 3:1-12

What if John the Baptist showed up here at church? What if he walked into our beautiful sanctuary wearing his camel hair tunic, smelling like he had baked in the desert sun for a week, picking the locust leg out of his teeth. Would you move over and invite him to sit down with you? Would you show him where to find a hymnal?  Give him a Welcome card?  Offer him some hand sanitizer, a name tag? Would you keep an eye on him from a safe distance while mapping your route to the nearest exit? … just in case.

John the Baptist. People came to hear him because he was an amazing preacher. I suspect people came to hear him out of curiosity too – his strange clothes and bizarre diet, but also John’s Rizz (charisma for the people in the back) John’s preaching drew people from all walks of life, points of view, ends of the spectrum. Compelled by this wild-eyed prophet with his call for mass repentance, people came to hear him who would have sworn on their mother’s grave not to be caught dead with the other people in the crowd. But there they all were, drawn in by John’s appeal to their hopes – that the One they had long-awaited was indeed coming. And while God’s chosen people have been waiting for their Messiah since long before the days of Malachi, John instructs them on how to occupy themselves while they wait just a bit longer.

         John urges the crowds to examine their lives, to hold them up to the light. He uses the word repent. It’s a word that has been co-opted, hijacked by fundamentalists so much so that some of us are afraid to use it, to say it. Because some hotshots use the word, Repent, as a weapon. And we learned last week what we are supposed to be doing with weapons, right? Beat them into gardening tools. We don’t want to sound like those who point fingers telling everyone else that THEY need to repent of THEIR sins. To repent means, as the original Greek suggests, to change one’s mind, or to change one’s heart.[1] John offers it as a constructive idea to everyone – those from Jerusalem and all Judea, including the Pharisees and Sadducees – to turn and reorient their hearts and minds. And this call echoes forward to us. Whether we find ourselves too comfortable or too disillusioned or indifferent with the current state of the world, Advent’s invitation is to reorient ourselves.[2]

But reorient toward what?

Bearing the fruit of repentance? (3:8) Being baptized by fire? (3:11)
When John describes what will happen without repentance, the wrath to come and the ax at the root of the trees, it sounds very… threatening. Liddy Barlow writes that we are so accustomed to seeing the devil among the flames “that we cannot imagine being eager to enter the fire ourselves. An angry, flame-wielding Jesus sounds so different from the mild baby in the manger that we assume John has misunderstood the loving purpose of the incarnation.”[3]

But could it actually be true that the way to peace, the way to God’s dream of peace for his people IS actually through repentance, through the refiner’s fire?  I know that it is true for me, and I wonder if it is true for you – that I have mistaken comfortability and the absence of conflict for peace.

In 2008, Bill Bishop, a journalist wrote a book called The Big Sort. In it, he explains how Americans have sorted themselves by politics, geography, lifestyle and economics over the preceding three decades. And Bishop says that trend has only intensified in the [17] years since the book's publication.  By sorting ourselves, he means we are literally moving to cities and states where our religious, political, social ideas are more easily tolerated. We are sorting ourselves out of places where our viewpoints are challenged.  The thing is, Bishop says, "Groups of like-minded people tend to become more extreme over time in the way that they're like-minded.”  The more insulated we become the more our viewpoint intensifies. Therefore, “there are fewer people in the middle. And so politics becomes less about solving our problems anymore.” It's about rallying for your side – my way or the highway, turn or burn - kind of thinking. And then, we're stuck.[4]

I am fascinated by this! But don’t hear me preaching against political parties. And don’t hear me preaching against a person or a family making a life-saving, life-giving decision to move where conditions are better for their unique situation. What I’m preaching against is the sad truth that neighbors (brown/white, red/blue, etc) can’t coexist peacefully in 2025!! What I’m preaching against is Christians, so-called followers of Jesus, who have more allegiance to their ideologies than to their fellow human beings!! For those of us with, perhaps less at stake, isn’t our constant need to sort ourselves into like-minded social groups and organizations done in order to protect our peace? Can we call that real peace? If we are only ever associated with folks who look like us, think like us, believe like us – how does that help my neighbor? What has the big sort done to the common good? And what good are Christians, completely divided, and how is launching verbal grenades at each other good for the Kingdom of God?

Peace without justice is falsehood.  More than 20 years ago now, Greg and Helms Jarrell moved into the West Side of Charlotte, NC where they live among neighbors who by all appearances were very different from their demographic, but whose basic needs are exactly the same – as all humans’ are. The Jarrells intentionally moved INTO the community so that they could be literal neighbors as they sought to “cultivate community for the common good.” They have raised their family with all the other families in the neighborhood. They started something called QC Family Tree in which they integrate their faith into their main initiatives of providing affordable housing and equitable living conditions... They are peace-making through art and cultural projects that inspire connection and social change; all while working toward a just, sustainable economy.[5]

The Jarrells are living in resistance to the “big sort.” They are living what Martin Luther King Jr. meant when he said, “True peace is not the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.”  The bible describes it as peace that surpasses all understanding.

 The verses from Malachi were given to us today to reorient our ears, I believe, toward true repentance. Listen to verse 5: The Lord’s messenger will prepare the way for the One who is “swift to bear witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired workers in their wages, the widow and the orphan, against those who thrust aside the alien.” This repentance, John calls his hearers to, is a sharp turn of hearts toward just practices, just living with our neighbors. I wonder if we would go out to hear John preach? Would we let the wild-eyed prophet’s words reorient our hearts?  open our eyes to where injustice is happening in Huntsville? Would we answer Malachi’s call to hold the oppressors accountable?[6]

We cannot sleep on this gospel, friends. We cannot get distracted by a false sense of peace  – maintaining the status quo, and protecting our comfort, building walls around ourselves and everybody like us.

Just like John, we are called to prepare the way, as John did, clear the path for Jesus to come into people’s lives where he will toss our regrets and our missteps, our petty faults and our awful blunders and keep what’s best in us,[7] so that we can dream a new dream. We are not in this alone.

Gathering around this Lord’s table is meant to remind us of that. This great leveling table, where all come equally in need of grace and peace.

[1] Illustrated Ministry Commentary Advent 2 Prophetic Peace

[2] ibid.

[3] Barlow, Liddy Christian Century In the Lectionary, Dec 7 Second Sunday of Advent

[4] https://www.npr.org/2022/02/18/1081295373/the-big-sort-americans-move-to-areas-political-alignment

[5] https://www.qcfamilytree.org/

[6] Illustrated Ministry Commentary Advent 2 Prophetic Peace

[7] Barlow, Liddy