The Unreasonableness of Hope

Matthew 3:1-12

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the
wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

Having hope for our world seems all too often to be an unreasonable expectation.  And yet, having Hope for our world, particularly when hope seems entirely unreasonable, is what Advent is all about.

  

Hope often seems unreasonable because… well… have you seen this world?  It feels like the brood of vipers is bigger than ever!  It all too often feels like that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indiana Jones and Marion are at the bottom of the Egyptian tomb surrounded by snakes with just a torch… the torch is going out… and Nazis are sealing them inside.  There is so much slithering and venom spewing around us these days, and frankly, that would be enough… but we've even got Nazis again!

Hope seemed unreasonable in John the Baptist's time too.  He stood in the desert and called out the snakes that had locked the world in hopelessness.  Some came out and committed to doing their best to NOT live that snake-like way any longer.  Others denied there even was a snake problem at all!  John the Baptist preferred it when people saw how they contributed to the hopelessness of the world and committed to live differently.  But John the Baptist also KNEW that no matter how they would try... a permanent fix for hopelessness was beyond them. 

He told them, "Look, we all are like little orchards, not individual trees.  No one is made up entirely of trees that make bitter, mushy fruit and no one has trees that only make sweet and crispy fruit either.  My advise to you",  John the Baptist told them "is to feed the trees that make the good fruit and not the ones that make the garbage fruit.  But remember, a permanent fix will only arrive with the ONE who is coming with an axe. It's only that ONE who can change the mix of trees in your orchard for good.  We are now both Saints and Sinners, Hopeful and Hopeless.  Both impossibly entangled together like chaff around the grain."  

John the Baptist KNEW that for us to be fully transformed we needed “One more powerful” than even the bug and honey fueled John the Baptist.  For us to be able to hold onto Hope even in the pitch black darkness of the world surrounded by snakes and Nazis, we needed the One who’s sandals John was not worthy to even carry.  For Hope to live and Hopelessness to die we needed the One who would Baptize, not with water, but with the Holy Spirit and with fire!  

"The Good News" John told them is "THAT one is coming!  THAT one will cut the dead wood out of our orchards.  That one, with his own death, will pull hopelessness down and lock it away in hell, and rise to new life with an unconquerable hopefulness!  It is an absolutely unreasonable expectation to have Hope for this world, when we look around us and see no further than the darkness and the vipers.  Hope, however, becomes more than just possible... it becomes a forgone conclusion when we look to the One who has so many times before before, is now, and will continue to do the unreasonable, the unlikely, the impossible, the improbable, and the unbelievable work of changing the world from what it is, into what God envisions it to be.  

Advent reminds us to look beyond the end of our noses.  To look beyond the endless darkness.  To look beyond what all the snakes of the world say is inevitable and see the God who has always been there… the God of love, the God of life, the God who makes the unreasonable and impossible happen in truly the most unbelievable and unlikely ways.  Advent calls us to look beyond hopelessness and see the hope for all of creation in what God has done, is doing, and promises yet to do.  Amen.