Second Week of Advent

Matthew finds new meaning in the seven hundred and fifty year old text from the Prophet Isaiah and suggests that John is the forerunner to the coming of the messianic Lord at the end of the age. Matthew places John as the voice of a prophet crying out to his people from the wilderness. His image is intending to be both startling and unsettling. He is man who lives in way totally contrary to the way most people live their ordinary life.

John the Baptist criticizes the religious leaders of his day. He calls them a brood of vipers. He suggest that their interest in his religious movement is simply to avoid undesirable consequences for themselves. He emphasizes that fruits and a change of heart is necessary, not just participation in his rites. They seem to suggest that they have inherited the right tradition and the correct understanding of it. John on the other hand teaches that it is not enough just to have the right pedigree. By using the pun of children and stones (ben and ‘eben) he points out that in the future age the importance will be on righteousness and lives of integrity rather than lineage. He saw that the ax was at that very time being set to the root of the tree.

John was a voice announcing the arrival of another. He points out that the one who is coming will gather what is good and useful and sweep the waste away. While the baptism of John is of water, the baptism of the coming Lord’s will be with fire. The winnowing which he invokes will separate those who respond to the call to repentance and those who do not. John recognizes that he is not the one who will judge these things. John sees that the time of the one who is coming will be a time of redemptive and destructive judgement.
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What do the words “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” mean to you in this light?