MATTHEW 3
Thunder in the desert
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| Change your life. God's kingdom is here. |
Thirty years have passed. Thirty cold winters
and harsh summers lived through. Matthew pans the camera of our imagination
across a new epic scene. Crowds have streamed from Jerusalem, Judea and the
surrounding countryside to a river in the desert. They have come to hear a
simple and austere preacher, John, known as the Baptiser. He has burst on to
the scene and is calling on all who come to hear him to change their lives and
be baptised as a preparation for God’s kingdom – the new Promised Land, we
might call it; a land without borders or geographic landmarks and boundaries
(hence the Desert), but rather a way of life whose centre of gravity is a
person not a place.
What are we to make of this abrupt
announcement? Within a few short verses the reader has been transported from
the story of a refugee family to the wild claims of an unknown prophet and
outsider of the religious establishment; a prophet who clothes himself in camel
hair and wears the mantle of Isaiah. His blunt preaching gains popularity:
‘Change your life. God’s kingdom is here.’ It also gains notoriety. And Matthew
more than hints that there are already enemies of this kingdom who have shown
up ‘for a baptismal experience because it was becoming the popular thing.’[1]
They are the Pharisees and Sadducees. They
get the rough edge of his tongue. He brands them snakes. He will not pour water
over them because he judges that their change of life is only skin-deep.
Even as he baptizes and berates, John
can sense the pull of a powerful new centre of gravity approaching. It is as if
the magnetic force of Jesus is already turning the compass needle of John’s heart
towards the one who was worshipped as a babe, rescued from slaughter and hidden
away in Galilee until now.
And yet it is the Holy Spirit who John
first talks about, not the Son of God. Already John knows that this energy or
life-force that has a powerful magnetic attraction will line up the compass
needles of myriad hearts and point them to the Beloved One. Already John knows
that this Holy Spirit will prepare hearts and minds to receive the Beloved One.
The Holy Spirit is the ‘go-between God’ in the story Matthew tells. In Chapter
1, the Holy Spirit has been the go-between God for Mary, the one who ‘overshadowed’
her. And here, at the point of Jesus’ baptism, the Holy Spirit appears like a
dove coming down from heavens and landing on Jesus.
And so, after all the build-up, Jesus is
announced as the one who is ‘marked by God’s love, the delight of my life’. He
is the Beloved – not because of anything he has yet done or signified or
achieved. He is wholly loved and accepted. He is the model of how we, too, are
created for God’s complete acceptance and delight, marked by love. Thunder in the desert leads to a deluge of endless grace.
Drawn to the desert places! How often are we, too, drawn to step aside from the activities, the things and even the people that fill our busy lives and find our own desert place. This can be any spot where we find inner peace to reflect and experience the presence of God. It doesn’t have to be a hot desert place; it may be anywhere, indoors or out, as long as we can be free from the busy-ness that occupies our minds. It may be at home, at prayer, or on a walk. Since God is everywhere, he always arrives before us and just awaits our coming. We just have to make the move and go there!
ReplyDeleteThe desert place is not just a retreat or an escape, a 'copping out'. It was a challenge to John, and especially a challenge to his hearers – a decision point in their lives. It was going be a challenge to Jesus in the next part of the story. And so it remains a challenge to each of us, to meet with God, to experience the Holy Spirit, and then to go back to the business of our daily lives, changed, inspired, renewed and strengthened by our desert experience with God.
John the Baptist is an uncomfortable character in that he never lets up on pointing us to Jesus. His whole attention is on Jesus, and his whole purpose is to turn our lives to Jesus, in other words to repent. In the wild, chaotic and desert places of our lives we need to hear again his message to turn to Christ, and to be strengthened by the Comforter, the Holy Spirit.
ReplyDeleteZechariah, a priest in the temple in Jerusalem, played a key role in God's plan of salvation because of his righteousness and obedience.
DeleteA member of the clan of Abijah (a descendant of Aaron), Zechariah went to the temple to carry out his priestly duties. At the time of Jesus Christ, there were about 7,000 priests in Israel, divided into 24 clans. Each clan served at the temple twice a year, for a week each time.
Luke tells us Zechariah was chosen by lot that morning to offer incense in the Holy Place, the temple's inner chamber where only priests were allowed. As Zechariah was praying it was the angel Gabriel who appeared at the right side of the altar. Gabriel told the old man that his prayer for a son would be answered. Zechariah's wife Elizabeth even in her old age would give birth and they were to name the baby John. Further, Gabriel said John would be a great man who would lead many to the Lord and would be a prophet announcing the Messiah.
So reading this John the baptist came from a priestly clan while Elisabeth was the daughter of Aaron the high priest. So John would have been very well versed in the Tanakh and would have been aware of the predictions there in.
Then this is interesting...... John’s baptism was an adaptation of the mikvah, or ritual immersion bath, that had been part of Jewish life for generations and symbolized a spiritual cleansing. It was part of the preparation for undertaking a new beginning. Jewish men took a mikvah each Sabbath in preparation for the new week. Women took a mikvah after each monthly period as a spiritual cleansing. On Yom Kippur the High Priest took 7 mikvot (plural of mikvah) during the ceremonies in preparation for entering the Holy of Holies. Jesus came to John for a mikvah at the beginning of His ministry.
The reason John had people take a mikvah was to show that they had changed their minds (repented) about their need for a Savior and were taking a new direction regarding their salvation. No longer would they focus on keeping the Law but would look instead to the coming redeemer whose arrival John was announcing. Today, baptism is no longer an act of spiritual cleansing in preparation for a new direction, but a public declaration that the spiritual cleansing has already happened and the new direction has been taken. I'm living and learning.
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DeleteSome scriptures that come to mind
ReplyDeleteRomans 6:3 Or don't you know that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death?
2Corinthians 5:5 Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and given us the Spirit as a deposit , guaranteeing what is to come.
Ephesians 1:13...Having believed , you were marked in him with a seal , the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit, guaranteeing our inheritance....
1Cor2:9 and 16
"No eye has seen, no ear has heard no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him", but God has revealed it to us by his spirit.
" For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?"
But we have the mind of Christ.