Preparing the Way
John the Baptist tells it like it is
John the Baptist comes up during Advent and then again this Sunday, when the Gospel reading is Jesus’s baptism. (That is, in churches that use the lectionary, the schedule of Scripture readings that follow the church year.) John, says the gospel writers, is the prophet foretold who goes before Jesus to “prepare the way of the Lord.”
Straight Paths
Matthew, Mark, and Luke all quote parts of Isaiah 40:3-5 concerning John.
As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet,
“The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.
Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall become straight,
and the rough places shall become level ways,
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”—Luke 3:4-6
My 21st-century imagination brings to mind the construction of a modern highway, where the trees and underbrush are torn down, the land is smoothed out, and the ground is paved over to accommodate vehicles. All obstacles—whether natural or man-made—are removed or flattened.
John the Baptist was charged with preparing the way for Jesus—with flattening down the obstacles, with smoothing the bumpy ground. Plain-spoken John is certainly capable of tearing out some underbrush:
But when [John] saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. —Matthew 3:7-10
John calls it as he sees it—the religious elite are resting on their ancestry and their legalism rather than relating to God with honesty and humility. He calls them and everyone else to repentance.
John was only one of a number of people (Simeon, Anna, the Magi, the shepherds, and his parents, among others) to recognize Jesus as Messiah. But John’s ministry of repentance and baptism (a cleansing ritual) is singular. He prepares the way for the Messiah by inspiring God’s people to face their sins and turn back to God.
Who Needs Jesus?
In Luke 5, Jesus says that he has not come for the healthy, but for the sick. He does not come for the righteous but for sinners (Luke 5:30-32). Of course, in Christian theology, all people are considered to be sinners, so what did Jesus mean?
Repentance—confessing one’s sin and turning away from it—prepares the way for a relationship with Jesus. In my Lutheran tradition, repentance is not a work we must do to be saved. Babies are baptized, after all, who have no sense of their own sinful nature nor any ability to repent.
Those of us older than babies, however, do not see a need to turn to God if we think we are already a good person (i.e., righteous). And every one of us thinks of ourselves as good people—especially the rule-followers, the ones who have never broken the law or hurt someone or been unfaithful to a spouse. Hey, no one’s perfect, but we’re “good enough.” That’s just a small part of the attitude of the Pharisees and Sadducees: they weren’t just “good enough”; they were righteous people in the line of Abraham, part of God’s chosen people. They followed the Law and beyond. They were both right and righteous. They had no need of repentance.
For we only turn to God when we feel a need for God. Those of us who live in relative comfort and security can deceive ourselves into thinking that we have everything under control. That illusion can stand in the way of the honesty and repentance that we so desperately need.
For you say, “I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing,” not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. —Revelation 3:17
Both John and Jesus attempted to disabuse the religious elite of the notion that they had no need to repent, usually with poor results. But the sinners who knew they were sinners, the tax collectors, the prostitutes, those rejected by or of low status in society, those who needed healing in body or soul—all of these people knew they needed help. They were willing to turn away from sin and toward Jesus. They could let down the facade of being a good person—or they never had that facade in the first place.
Repentance, then, is facing the ugly truth about ourselves and acknowledging that we need God’s help to change.
Fruit of Repentance
The people listen to John’s exhortations to repent and be baptized, but they have an important question: Now what?
And the crowds asked [John], “What then shall we do?” And he answered them, “Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.” Tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, “Teacher, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Collect no more than you are authorized to do.” 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.” —Luke 3:10-14
Again, John’s advice is straightforward and concrete: the fruits of repentance are sharing your resources and dealing honestly with others. Feeling sorry is only the beginning of repentance. True repentance changes our day-to-day lives.
When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent,’ he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance. —Martin Luther
You know what doesn’t happen overnight? Changing our character, our habits, our lives. We may find ourselves repenting again and again for the same sin, and only God’s forgiveness and the Holy Spirit’s work within us gives us the power to change.
The road of Jesus is paved with repentance. John the Baptist pointed at the obstacle of sin and helped his disciples tear it out and pave it over. With newly soft, repentant hearts, John’s followers could see clearly—to recognize their need for a Savior, and to recognize Jesus as that Savior. John helped build the road, and Jesus traveled on it, all the way to the cross. For John told God’s people to face their sin, but Jesus took it all on himself and got rid of it forever, opening a new way—the way of the kingdom.
