What kind of Messiah are we celebrating?

Revised Common Lectionary, Advent Year 2A

• OT Reading: Isaiah 11:1-10
• Gospel Reading: Matthew 3:1-12

Over at Question the Text, Rev. Mark Stenberg wrote up some thoughts to help pastors think about different ways of approaching John the Baptist. What particularly got my attention was the following words:

“In our heavily revivalist, affluent, individualistic culture of success and achievement, with the all-responsible atomistic self at the center, have we not reduced this message to a word of purely personal repentance? What have you done with your life? Are you a success? Did you give your life to Jesus? Where are the fruits?

But the Bible was written from the underside. That’s what’s so hard for us to hear. These texts are a product of people who lived in fear, in anxiety, in the shadow of the empires of history.”

In preparing for our discussion at church, I flipped over to the Old Testament reading for the week found in Isaiah. What struck me in this passage was the second half:

⁶ The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,
and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;
and a little child shall lead them.
⁷ The cow and the bear shall graze;
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
⁸ The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,
and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den.
⁹ They shall not hurt or destroy
in all my holy mountain;
for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.

In our tradition this has most often been used as imagery of what things will be like in heaven. But in the context of the chapter, this is a parable or a metaphor, of what justice and righteousness looks like when the Messiah comes. (So in a sense, it does apply to the results of the Second Advent. In our discussion we observed that even when we apply the image to “heaven” we usually omit the part about the child playing with venomous snakes. We are selective in what we read.) We discussed what this metaphor might mean, especially in the light of the reality that Christians are already partially living in the Age to Come – the Kingdom Age. What I think this means is that peoples that were once opposed to one another, in conflict with one another, oppressors and victims, in the Church, are to come together in peace and harmony. Not only that but the Church as the earthly body of the Messiah (Christ) in the world today, we are to work to promote the kind of justice that John the Baptist and Jesus preached.

This brings us back to Matthew. Did John the Baptist and Jesus preach the same message or did Jesus preach something different from John? In Matthew 3:2 and Matthew 4:17, both John and Jesus are preaching the exact same thing: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

When we flip over to the Lucan account, additional details are found about the content of John’s message (Luke 3:10-14). This was in response to John’s indictment of the Pharisees and Sadducees that had come to John the be baptized.

¹⁰ And the crowds asked him, “What then shall we do?” ¹¹ And he answered them, “Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.” ¹² Tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, “Teacher, what shall we do?” ¹³ And he said to them, “Collect no more than you are authorized to do.” ¹⁴ Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages.”

As this makes clear, John’s message was against the sins of systemic social injustice. He was speaking out against hoarding, the accumulation of excess wealth, and the abuse of position and power. These were behaviors considered acceptable. These were what those in privilege believed they had the right to do and had to do in order to maintain and increase their privileges.

And that brings things back to us now. The modern American Christian with our privileges, is closer to the Pharisees and the Sadducees, denounced by both John and Jesus. In our traditional readings of passages like the one we have here, we try to soften it by first, identifying ourselves with the masses, and second, by treating the message as one of individual sins and repentance (as Rev. Stenberg noted in the excerpt at the top). But I believe that does violence (by neutering) to the force and thrust of the true nature of what Matthew intended by including John’s words.

As our discussion revealed, this message against systemic injustices is a hard one for us to swallow. We do indeed like our privileges. We like the system that allows us to have it. So what does it mean to live as citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, to espouse and live out its principles against social injustice? Offering compassion to the oppressed and marginalized is far easier than taking steps to change the systems that cause and perpetuate injustices. We can more easily swallow that Christians are called to the former, but what about the latter? Are we willing to go against the economic structures and civil policies, even if it means we might have to give up the very things that helped us achieve our privileges?

Many Christians punt on these questions by pointing to the Second Coming as the solution to all the world’s ills. But is that what Jesus really intended? Even if systemic injustice will never be eliminated, isn’t Jesus telling his friends – us – that part of our work is to make the effort to reduce injustice?

There are no easy answers. But these questions are ones Christians (myself included) need to really think about and digest.

In this Advent season as we are looking forward to the memory of Christmas, the arrival of the Messiah, we must ask ourselves, “What kind of Messiah are we celebrating?” A docile, inoffensive Baby? Or the Savior who has come to judge and destroy injustice and all who are support it?