Winnowing

Second Sunday of Advent (Year A)

Matthew 3.1-12

St. Gregory’s, Long Beach

 

Today we are introduced to John the Baptist—the poster child for Advent. Generally viewed as one, if not the, key image of the Advent season, namely because of his message to “prepare the way of the Lord,” which is, after all, what Advent is all about. Preparing the way of the Lord, preparing for Christ’s coming, be it at his birth in Bethlehem on Christmas or at the end of the ages with his Second Coming. John’s message applies equally to both.

 

Before we get to John’s central message, a bit about John himself. He is, as my mother would say, “a bit of an odd duck.” In more ways than one. We are told that he “wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.” We also know that he hung out in the wilderness of Judea, in the region of the River Jordan. This paints an image of him, as is often depicted in artwork, as a sort of eccentric, scraggily, wild man living alone in the desert issuing his prophetic messages. To our modern-day sensibilities, it would be easy to dismiss someone like this as being just not quite right somehow. Raising the question: prophetic or delusional, if not downright crazy? The type that most of us would go out of our way to avoid. And yet, it is this same image of John that would have been very compelling to the people of first century Judea. The description of John—his physical appearance, his demeaner, his choice of habitation—would have all come together to create a completely different image of who John was. To the point that they sought him out.

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