Day 3: Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord!

In those days, John the Baptizer came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” For this is he who was spoken of by Isaiah the prophet, saying, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, make ready the way of the Lord. Make his paths straight.” Now John himself wore clothing made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey. Then people from Jerusalem, all of Judea, and all the region around the Jordan went out to him. They were baptized by him in the Jordan, confessing their sins. But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for his baptism, he said to them, “You offspring of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bring forth fruit worthy of repentance! Don’t think to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father,’ for I tell you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones. “Even now the axe lies at the root of the trees. Therefore every tree that doesn’t bring forth good fruit is cut down, and cast into the fire. I indeed baptize you in water for repentance, but he who comes after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will thoroughly cleanse his threshing floor. He will gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn up with unquenchable fire.” Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. But John would have hindered him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and you come to me?” But Jesus, answering, said to him, “Allow it now, for this is the fitting way for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he allowed him. Jesus, when he was baptized, went up directly from the water: and behold, the heavens were opened to him. He saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming on him. Behold, a voice out of the heavens said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

The third chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew has two sections: The Coming of St. John the Baptizer; and the Baptism of our Lord. The first portion has three times as many verses as does the second (12 and 4). There is much more that is known about St. John the Baptizer; but we learn that later, in the Gospels according to St. Mark and St. Luke.

If ever there was a prototype for the way a prophet should look, it could easily have been St. John. We are told that his clothes were made of camel’s hair, held on his body by a wide leather belt around his waist. He ate locusts and wild honey. Living in the desert, he surely had tanned, maybe even leathery skin, a shaggy beard and wild hair – an altogether grizzled look, with a fire in his eyes! His message was simple and direct: a call for people to repent. Why? Because the kingdom of heaven is near.

St. Matthew uses this phrase – the kingdom of heaven – where St. Mark and St. Luke instead say, “the kingdom of God” – a phrase St. Matthew uses only four times. Some scholars believe that the community for whom St. Matthew was writing his Gospel was Jewish in its background, rather than a community whose members had been drawn from the Gentiles. This is why, for example, the genealogy in the first chapter traces our Lord’s lineage back to Abraham, and no earlier. In the churches that arose from the Jews, these things would be far more important than to non-Jewish communities. This might also account for the difference in the way the kingdom is described. It was forbidden to speak the name of God; and there were euphemisms that were used in place of the name of God, which was too holy to be uttered by human lips. It would have been troubling, even scandalous, to refer to the kingdom of God among the Jews; and so we have instead the “kingdom of heaven.” Sometimes I’ll play some word games with our students, and ask, “Where does God live?” The answer invariably is, “Heaven.” Then I’ll ask, “And where is God?” The answer, because they already have been taught that God is omnipresent – that is, present everywhere in creation at every moment – is, “Everywhere.” Then the final question: So where is heaven? Usually, it isn’t too long before someone says, “Everywhere.” Not so simple now, is it, when St. John declares, “The kingdom of heaven is near?”

St. Matthew tells us that Isaiah had foretold that there would be a voice crying in the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord. The prophet spoke of this after King Hezekiah, who had been deathly ill, had been healed by God and granted fifteen more years of life. The king received envoys from Babylon, and showed them everything in his palace. Isaiah confronted the king, and told him that the result of this would be a time of peace, at the end of which the Babylonians would come and carry away everything and everyone from the palace, and all the wealth of the city as well, taking the most prominent people as captives into exile in Babylon. While the king was glad that there would be peace through his lifetime, the news of the coming time of troubles had to have been disturbing. But God speaks to His people, saying to them, “Comfort, comfort ye, My people”; and promises that there will be an end to their suffering and exile, and that they will return to Jerusalem and once more worship God in their midst, signified by the Temple. This is when the voice of one crying in the wilderness will be heard, calling on the people to prepare a way for the royal procession to come from the wilderness into the city. St. Matthew then identifies St. John the Baptizer as the one who has come to tell the people it is time to prepare for the coming of the king.

If we look at this in terms of being in exile from the Garden of Eden, where we lived in Paradise and in the immediate and intimate presence of the Lord, the coming of St. John is the announcement that the time of our exile is drawing to a close. The King is coming; the kingdom is at hand; and so it is time for us to prepare the way, to make straight in the wilderness – the wild and untamed condition – of our hearts a highway for our God to travel. This is accomplished by repentance and confession; and by baptism, which, as administered by St. John, was not a baptism of regeneration – that was still to come. Instead, it was connected with the ritual bathing for purity that accompanied the preparation for the Sabbath, and for the worship of God in the synagogues and in the Temple. The people who heard the call of St. John came to him, confessed their sins, and were “washed” clean of them by their baptism.

When the Pharisees and the Sadducees come to hear St. John, he speaks to them in a most direct, even blistering, way. It really isn’t possible to concoct a “positive” outcome from referring to someone as a “brood of vipers.” He asks them, “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” He uses the images of axes cutting down trees at the roots, and of the sifting of wheat from the chaff by the use of a winnowing fork to declare that one aspect of the coming of the King is that the great and terrible day of Judgment is also coming nearer. He tells them, “Bring forth fruits worthy of repentance.” As the saying goes today, “talk is cheap.” It’s easy to say, “I repent.” It is much more difficult, and extremely important, to make our deeds conform to our words. It is not enough to say, “I repent”; we must also “do” what demonstrates that our repentance is more than just an empty, meaningless statement. It is interesting that we do not hear of anyone from either the Pharisees or the Sadducees being baptized by St. John. He speaks of his baptizing with water; and that the one who will come after his ministry will not baptize with water, but with fire. We see this accomplished on the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles and disciples with the appearance of being flames of fire.

The account of the baptism of our Lord is straightforward, and those who attend church regularly are probably quite familiar with it. One important aspect is that, in the events that accompany the baptism of our Lord, there is a “theophany” (which is the name given to the feast) – God appearing to us – by which the Trinity is revealed most clearly. We are told that the actions of our Lord Jesus have the approval of God the Father, Who calls Him, “My beloved Son, with Whom I am well pleased.” In part, this is related to the dialogue between the Lord and St. John. We also should note that, with His baptism, the period of time in which our Lord ministers and preaches in our midst begins.

As the cousins meet in the river, the elder, St. John, says to the younger that it is not appropriate for the elder to baptize the younger, for St. John knows that the man before him is more than what he appears. He admits his own need for baptism. St. John also wonders at the Lord coming to be baptized because, after all, his was a baptism of repentance, with the cleansing of baptism following the confession of one’s sins, with repentance – only now One Who is without sin, a blameless Lamb, has come to be baptized, Who does not need to repent or confess. Our Lord asks St. John to baptize Him anyway, so that all the requirements of righteousness may be fulfilled. St. John Chrysostom points out that the way of righteousness is the keeping of all the commandments. Here again, we are reminded that the sin of Adam and Eve was that of disobedience to the command of God. By their disobedience, death entered the world. Christ has come to remove the curse. He does so by His obedience in every aspect of the Law, doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves – and this act of fulfilling all the requirements for holiness, done for us by the incarnate Word of God, includes being baptized. As requested, St. John baptizes our Lord; and, with the Theophany, He enters a time of preparation for what lies before Him.