This is the Sunday we dream of Peace as we prepare our minds and hearts to once again greet Jesus. And how can John the Baptist – “you pack of snakes”- bring us peace? Is John a peacemaker?

My youngest son, Elijah, who is not all that young anymore, is trying to teach me a video game, Superliminal. It is a slow moving game (at least how I play it) about perspective, curiosity, problem solving and creativity. I admit that I am not usually all that interested in video games.The coordination between my mouse hand and my WASD hand is lacking to put it mildly. But I decided to try this one since Elijah specially curated it for me: it is not timed, and it is not competitive and besides Elijah is a very patient teacher who doesn’t laugh at me too much. 

The “game” is a never-ending series of rooms where you encounter objects like chess pieces or pieces of cheese that seem out of proportion to the room. Through “picking things up,” getting closer or farther away from the objects, you change your view, your perspective, of them. I am not sure what the point of the game is though supposedly there is something about entering a dream state. (which maybe is supposed to be ironic?) Playing this game does help me see once again that understanding the perspective one brings, in a video game or to the biblical text, is important, maybe even essential.

My usual perspective on John the Baptist is that he is a prophet, not a peacemaker.  Prophets are not known for their subtly or nuance.  They are direct and often abrasive. John walks in the footsteps of other Jewish prophets, like Isaiah, Zechariah and Malachi. Prophets call the powerful to task and invite listeners to turn in a new direction.

Let’s listen to the prophet Malachi, just a short page turn from Matthew. Malachi is the last book in the Old Testament and Matthew is the first of the New Testament. Though these two books nestle next to each other in our modern bibles, 500 years separate Malachi and Matthew (and John the Baptist.) We mostly know the minor prophet Malachi because Handel set some of his texts to music and included them in Messiah. From Malachi 3

I am sending my messenger

to prepare the way for me;

the One you seek will suddenly come to the Temple,

the messenger of the Covenant whom you long for will come,

says YHWH Omnipotent.

But who can endure the day of that Coming?

Who can stand firm when that One appears?

That day will be like a smelter’s fire,

a launderer’s soap.

The One will preside as refiner and purifier,

purifying the children of Levi,

refining them like gold and silver – 

then they will once again make offerings in righteousness.

When I hear these words I can’t help but hear a powerful bass voice. (The Lord whom you seek shall suddenly come to his temple.) And then an alto (But who may abide the day of his coming) and then the whole choir, (and he shall purify, and he shall purify… the sons of Levi.) The way Handel treats this last part with all the fast runs trying to hold together, it is as if the choir itself is the children of Levi being purified and refined. When you get close up like that, putting the words in your own voice, your own body, there is a perspective shift. 

But what about John the Baptist who prepares the way?  He uses a different set of metaphors. There is no soap like in Malachi. And while Malachi’s fire is to purify or refine, John the Baptist preaches a fire that burns up, devours, the useless wood. This kind of fiery preaching is not very appealing (from my perspective.) I can’t figure out why people would voluntarily flock to the Jordon to hear this. Who wants to listen to these kinds of threats?

But people do hear these preachers, even 2000 years later. People tell stories of their experiences with fire and brimstone preachers. Maybe you even have one or two memories that still grip you in the belly. I personally experienced this kind of scary theology through movies rather than live preaching. The effect was still   terrorizing. 

And John the Baptist? Is he a harsh prophet or a passionate peacemaker? Depends on your perspective. If we get close up, like we did today with the scripture sketchers, we see the humanness of John, a man with a deep connection to God, the earth, and creation. We see a person who cares about his people and wants everyone to have a close connection to God as they humble themselves, recognizing the ways that they separate themselves from the Holy. That is one perspective.

Another perspective is John as the prophet who wears animal skins, eats bugs and honey, and yells at people, calling them snakes. In the gospel of Matthew’s perspective, John doesn’t yell at the whole crowd. It is only when the religious leaders come forward to ask for baptism that John loses it. When he saw that many of the Pharisees and Sadducees were coming to be baptized, John said them, “You pack of snakes! 

John reserves his most “prophetic” language for the religious leaders who have decided that they want to see what all the fuss is about by the river. John doesn’t trust their motivations, doesn’t believe they are really repentant. Give me some evidence that you mean to reform! And don’t pride yourselves on the claim that you come from a long line of faithful people, that your ancestors are Abraham and Sarah. You have to bear fruit, prove that you have a change of heart. (As we read further on in Matthew, we see that this approach of shouting and name calling does not necessarily work well on the religious leaders.)

As we know, each gospel writer has their own perspective on the story of Jesus, and the story of John the Baptist.  Matthew (and Mark) depict John the Baptist in this scene by the river, calling the religious leaders a pack of snakes and hypocrites. But Luke tells it differently. In Luke, John the B calls the whole crowd a brood of vipers. In Luke, no one is safe from John’s fiery preaching (and God’s) wrath. And as Luke tells it, John softens a bit and takes questions from the crowd about what it looks like to repent and bear good fruit.

But this second Sunday of Advent is not when we dream of the ‘anger of God.’ We light the candle of peace, we dream of peace. How do we find the peace perspective? Can we, like in that video game, get curious and creative as we seek a new perspective on John the Baptist? A new perspective on what peace might mean?

John invites people to the river, outside the city walls, to hear some new things about how God works. In a new environment, outside the temple, John’s preaching opens ways for people to find fullness of life even while living under Roman occupation and oppression. No wonder people flock to hear him. He is asking people to change their hearts and change their understandings. John invites them into the river to wash off the old ways of being and embrace new dignity in God. Isn’t that a kind of peace? An inner peace that leads to outer change.

The problem is, word that people are finding a new way to understand the tradition and faith makes its way to the religious leaders. This different kind of thinking with a strange prophet in the wilderness might be a threat; it must be examined first hand. So the religious leaders also make their way to the river to see John. And when John sees the religious leaders, of whom his father was one, John doesn’t trust them. He doesn’t believe that they truly want to find this kind of peace. He wants to see fruit, their changed lives, before he baptizes this “pack of snakes.” 

As Anabaptists, we follow this idea closely, that one chooses a life of the peace of God and then receives baptism. We humbly pride ourselves as people of peace. Mennonites came to this land, promising to be quiet and peaceful. We stayed away from war and rumors of war. 

But quietness is not the same as peace. While we prided ourselves on being peaceful, “non-resistant,” not rocking the boat, we kept only ourselves safe in what might be called a false peace. It took a long time but in the past 100 years, we have begun to realize that we need to enlarge our perspective. We are learning that peace is not just for ourselves in the church community but for our neighbors near and far – and the earth as well.

I am grateful that Mennonites are finding the “peace” of John the Baptist which doesn’t avoid the hard stuff but challenges the people and the powers. We are expanding our understandings of peace beyond just being nice, or avoiding conflict. While peace is the absence of war, it is also personal and interpersonal. We are finally paying attention to the ways that are not peaceful in the church and our families, calling out physical, sexual, emotional – and spiritual abuses. 

Our perspective is widening as we understand that a “peace witness” goes beyond just saying no to war.  We are part of systems that perpetuate injustice and deprive everyone of peace. Systems like the criminal legal system and the immigration system that have white supremacy, racism and heterosexism baked into them. Being peacemakers means working to undo these systems even if that seems like an impossible dream. 

The “peace” of John the Baptist confronts the inconsistencies, the dead wood, and dreams of new ways to define peace. Peace is no longer just refusing to serve in the military. Peace calls us to pay attention to how our taxes and investments impede and prevent peace. The peace of John the Baptist call us to move from non-resistance to non-violent resistance. Mennonite Action will be here next week, taking it one step further teaching ‘non-cooperation.’ Peace as non-cooperation? This is one we will have to carefully teach our children. 

(I haven’t yet heard theologians or Mennonite activists recommend that we follow John the Baptist all the way and use name calling as a tactic, though no doubt there are Mennonites among those who are yelling at ICE agents as they kidnap people off the street.)

It is a bold and curious claim to say we follow in the way of John the Baptist, and even more, we follow in the way of Jesus – that calls us to peace. Yet, we make this claim together, with our spiritual ancestors, that we are people of God’s peace. Let us pray that we can live into this dream of peace with our hearts and minds open – and prepared – that we can like Malachi says, make our offerings in justice and righteousness.