Ironic Advent 2016 MediCATION #10: You Better Check Yoself Before You Wreck Yoself

John the Baptist

Here we are, the 10th day of Advent. I went ahead and spent $15 on a new Christian seasons calendar for 2016-17 (and retired my calendar from 2013), so I can confirm, independent of my meditations, that this is, indeed, day 10. Double digits. We’ve made it. I’d offer a poetic account of the weather to help set the mood, but there’s only so many ways I can think to describe cold and rainy. Walking outside literally hurts, and if that wasn’t bad enough, Mother Nature spits on my glasses. Hard times, daddy. Hard times.

We’ve spent more than a few meditations chewin’ on roots and kickin’ up dust so I thought we’d do something a little unprecedented and read the Bible (what? Don’t look at me like that). My calendar tells me to read Matthew 3:1-12 and I spent $15 on that thing so that’s what we’re going to do.

I won’t copy and paste it. Instead, I’m going to give you the highlights.

John the Baptist was a preacher-man, sort of a mix of Radagast the Brown and Hillbilly Jim (that’s how I pictured him in 7th grade) to go along with...let’s just say Henry David Thoreau - it seems too easy, but it works and I’m tired. He went about the countryside and the villages and bars telling folks, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This, according to Matthew, is who Isaiah was talking about when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” To make matters worse, John didn’t care much for fashion, and he wore camel’s hair and a leather belt to keep it all from falling down to his bare feet. He ate locusts, like Pumba, and wild honey, like that silly old bear (though I doubt he ever disguised himself as a rain cloud to steal any of that wild honey, he was probably on good terms with the bees, anyways).

The way Matthew tells it, John was a successful preacher, and many folks came to him to be baptized in the river Jordan (no relation to the guy on the futon from earlier this week). John, however, didn’t take kindly to the Pharisees and Sadducees. He’d tell ‘em, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance.” Or, as Eugene Peterson puts it (I’m paraphrasing his paraphrasing), “What do you snakes think you’re doin’ slitherin' down here to the river? Do you think a little water on your snakeskins is going to make any difference? It’s your life that must change! Not your skin!" (sounds like something Thoreau might say, er, did say). He warned ‘em that their family lineage don’t mean squat in God’s coming kingdom, that God could make children to Abraham out of a pet rock, and that God’s got an ax and he’s prepared to use it on every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit.

It gets worse. John told those snakes that while he baptizes folks with water, there’s a man coming who’ll baptize them with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Wheat and chaff, baby. Wheat and chaff. The wheat will be saved. The chaff will be burned with unquenchable fire! A little later on, in verses 13-17, Jesus comes to John and John baptizes him. Now, there are a couple details I haven’t mentioned. 1) When John told the Pharisees and Sadducees that the man of fire was-a-comin, he mentioned that he wasn’t fit to carry that man’s sandals, and 2) when Jesus did come and went to John to be baptized, John said it ought to be the other way around; only after Jesus insisted did John the Baptist live up to his moniker. The Bible doesn’t say if Jesus asked John to hold his sandals.

Here’s what I’m prepared to give you tonight: a little hard wisdom, in the words of that modern-day prophet, Ice Cube the Baptist: you better check yoself before you wreck yoself. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out what the hell that means for your own life. I’m too damned tired to save you from yourself and it’s a full time job keeping my own mind sane. Advent makes me wonder if Jesus really came to rid the word of hate, or if, perhaps, he came to teach us how to live in a world full of it. Maybe it’s a little bit of both. All I know is that I’ve got maybe 40 years left on this planet, and I have no doubt this place is going to be as hateful in 2056 as it is now (and I’ll probably still be too cheap to buy a liturgical calendar every year). I’m a self-absorbed ENFP and I could give a damn about your hashtags and your hysteria and your Orwellian “fake news.” Me, I want repentance. I wanna be baptized in the fire. I wanna hear that voice crying in the wilderness and I wanna listen to what it has to teach.

"Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near."

Okay, John. Lead the way.