Matthew 3:1-12 (NRSV Updated Edition)
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,
‘Prepare the way of the Lord;
make his paths straight.’”
Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region around the Jordan were going out to him, and they were baptized by him in the River Jordan, confessing their sins.
But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Therefore, bear fruit worthy of repentance, and 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; therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.
“I baptize you with water for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is more powerful than I, and 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.”
~
"How is the Presence working on us? Once again the liturgy gives us three different prods into life. And as the sound of portentous thunder diminishes, without disappearing yet, so we start to find ourselves being trained towards perceiving a somewhat different shape to the One who comes than our fantasies and our fears had constructed for us.
"A hypnotist summons a temporary new conscious self into being, by getting us to concentrate on something outside ourselves while, below the level of that of which we are conscious, the set of relationships which cause us to think and perceive as we do are worked on. In liturgy, the jostling together of the different voices from Scripture while we are summoned into concentrating on One who is coming, enables us to continue our journey of re-birth. Our new self is quickened into existence as the Spirit awakens in us someone who we didn’t know we were, but who turns out to be more ourselves than we thought we knew. So the jostling and the puncturing continue apace.
[...]
"[We] have John the Baptist, the last of the prophets, pointing to the fulfilment of his own work. And yet he too is out of focus. He knows that only a change of heart and mind will enable people to begin to perceive the shape of the One who is to come, for with our current mindsets we cannot imagine the shape of the Presence. He also knows that between his preparation of people, and the shape of the Presence to come there is an incommensurable distance. Yet even he who was of priestly family can scarcely understand that his rite of public penance and purification would also be the rite of ordination of the Great High Priest who was to come, and thereafter of all of us who are to have our access to the Holy of Holies laid open by his Sacrifice.
"Why his hostility to the many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism? He knows how dangerous apparent goodness is, that is all our grasped goodness, and the sense of entitlement which comes with it. He was aware of how dangerous to such goodness was the One who is to come, but [...] he seems unable to grasp that the One who is coming will turn out indeed to be the bearer of all that dangerousness, only because of the fear and resentment of those in whose midst he will be. Not because there is any violence or vengeance in himself.
"We have not yet undergone the extraordinary shift in perception and imagination which comes upon us when we understand that in the One who comes, there is no violence at all, no vengeance, no desire for retribution, only a longing for us to be fully alive. And that all our fears, our desires for revenge, our stumbling blocks, which we so easily project onto God, are ours, ours alone, and able to be undone, let go, forgiven, by the One who is coming in."
- James Alison, from "Reflections on Advent: A Jostling Fulfilment (Second Sunday of Advent)" (https://www.facebook.com/JesustheForgivingVictim/posts/pfbid02aMpottGmS3WZK3xzHUHhr8m3ffNuq5tySGxjX1PUyf6sjo8dVt8XiNdpzHncWXH9l)
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"So here we have John coming in, indicating, if you like, the threatening nature of what's going on, and people knowing that they must do something to change, and already there being all sorts of political [and] religious reaction of the sort to which we're entirely accustomed. As we live this, how do we hear this? What would it be like for someone to come and occupy one of our liminal spaces, someone who has proved themselves capable of speaking wise words, [...] someone who has, let's say, acquired credibility, so that they're not perceived as enacting cheap cosplay but are actually able to say a word?
"What would it look like for us to feel moved by that person, to say, 'gosh, yes, there's a point there, something must be happening'? [...] What would it be like to hear the words and start to repent? What would it look like, then, to start being discerning [about] what the one coming in is bringing? How will we know? How will we be able to follow? How will we recognize and be recognized? That's how our Advent journey is developing."
- James Alison, from video "Homily for Second Sunday in Advent 2022 A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWtQvHN1g4o)
[For analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday, see also: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/advent2a/]
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