So, Brother Max was a street preacher in West Lafayette, Indiana. Or rather, he was a preacher who hung out on the commons of Purdue University. When the spring finally warmed things up, and students ventured outside to sit in the grass and talk and laugh and read and study, Brother Max would ride up in his converted truck. It was like a precursor to the tiny houses we see nowadays. He lived in it, even with a little kitchen area. And the outside was covered in bumper stickers warning in so many different ways of the utter damnation of just about everybody that wasn't Brother Max.
He would slide out of his truck, stalk up to the middle of the commons where the Free Speech slab was put and stand there, floppy Bible in hand, taking us all in. Then he would begin. Soft at first, reading from Romans. Those verses that listed off all kinds of sins. Those were always a good start.
Having warmed up, he would then being singling students out, shouting at them as they were sitting there, pointing out their iniquities of drinking and licentiousness and debauchery. Now granted these were college students, so he was probably more right than wrong, but still there was sort of an emptiness to what he was saying.
“Repent,” he would yell. “Repent.” Stop doing what you're doing, or you'll all burn in hellfire. A few students would mock him, and to his credit, he took their mockery. But most people just treated him like a fun little distraction. A day's entertainment. But after a while, loud as he was, he sort of faded into the background. An irrelevant non-entity, like a mosquito.
I sometimes think of Brother Max during Advent. I know he was trying to be like John the Baptist. I know he thought he thought he was standing in the midst of a bunch of adolescent vipers condemning them all to Hell. But there's something kinda sideways with Max. I think he missed John's point altogether.
So, here we are in the Gospel of Matthew
People are coming from all over to meet and listen to this guy out in the wilderness. The Pharisees and the Sadducees were coming out to John the Baptist to be baptized. That’s pretty stunning in and of itself, right?
And John roars, “You brood of vipers!” I bet that stops everybody in their tracks. After all, these are good solid citizens, holding Judea together, keeping it functioning day-to-day so the Romans don't just run roughshod over them. They have devoted their life to the system, supported the emperor, made excuses for him, gotten people to just settle down and go about their lives, trying to leave a better world for their children, because they are all children of Abraham.
But John tells them that their lineage doesn't mean anything at all. Stones could just as easily take their place. They thought their upbringing and good standing were an in with God. Their genes, their status.
They had chaired the parish stewardship committee. They taught Synagogue school every Saturday. They mowed the church lawns, they got their pledge card in ON TIME, and they even increased their giving. What else was needed. What could God possibly want from them?
John, tells them. Repent. Just like Max – Repent!!! Turn around, he means. Not just stop what you are doing – that just freezes you in place. But turn around, look and see what's out there. And go a different direction. Not out of fear, but out of desire for something better. Not because you are vipers, but because even vipers are welcome in Isaiah's vision of a brand new peaceable kingdom where all, even us vipers are welcome.
Turn around and imagine that new world that's there for us. John, in his clunky way, is inviting us to imagine a new world that we can help to build.
And that's the difference that Max didn't get. Max wasn't interested in building the better world. He only wanted to condemn the current one. He wasn't interested at all in true repentance, in bringing those young people along. He just wanted to shout for the sake of shouting. He loved his Romans, but only certain parts, and it would never have crossed his mind to “Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” Somehow he missed it when Paul wrote that.
But John, crazy as he seemed, had hope. He saw people producing the fruit of love. Giving out of abundance to people who needed so much. He saw people working for justice out of compassion. He saw people striving for equality for all because God's kingdom has room for all. Sloughing off the chaff in their lives, leaving behind the burdens of fear and greed and hatred. Moving in a new direction.
In a direction toward something that isn't even here yet, but is coming. A something that is a promise, but is more than that. A something that is a new way, but is more than that, too. Something that has been God's plan all along and it now coming to be. Something that always was, and always will be, but more than that. Always is, if we just turn around and see it.
See him.
John calls us to repent, not out of guilt, but out of need. And God loves us enough to provide it. John calls us to repent because we're worth God's sending that light, that son. And we're worthy of what that son will do for us.
John calls us to repent because we are so much more than we think. And we have so much more to share with the world if only we turn around and see, catch just a glimpse, of God's kingdom.
Max never saw that. John did. John was truly preparing the way, a new way, a way of turning. A way of anticipation. The way of Advent.
One day, I noticed Max wasn't on campus as usual. Nobody seemed to know why. But the next week in the school paper there was an article saying that his body was fund in his truck. He had died from a heart attack. The authorities were trying to find family to come and claim him. I don't know if anyone ever did. I think John would have claimed him. I think he might have ambled up to him, smiled at him and said, “You viper! Come, let me show you how to do this work. I see a lot of potential in you.” And off they would have gone, headed through Advent. Headed to that new Kingdom. Headed to the open arms of Jesus.
And it is in the name of John the Baptist that I am delighted to say to you all, “Repent! Repent, you brood of vipers! And welcome home.”