This morning’s Gospel reading is Matthew 3:1–12:

John the Baptist appeared, preaching in the desert of Judea and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” It was of him that the prophet Isaiah had spoken when he said: A voice of one crying out in the desert, Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths. John wore clothing made of camel’s hair and had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey. At that time Jerusalem, all Judea, and the whole region around the Jordan were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the Jordan River as they acknowledged their sins.

When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones. Even now the ax lies at the root of the trees. Therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. I am baptizing you with water, for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is mightier than I. I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand. He will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

How many readers have ever had the unpleasant shock of discovering that you studied the wrong chapters for an upcoming school test? In fact, we don’t need to limit this to school. For those in the arts, maybe you practiced the wrong musical piece for an audition or performance, or memorized the wrong part of the script. Maybe we can even include writing a work presentation and discovering the boss had another topic in mind entirely.

Or heck, just being a parent qualifies here. We all go into parenthood with all sorts of ideas of how it works, only to be unpleasantly shocked at how little control we have over it.

It’s the assumptions that trip you up in life.

That lesson comes through loud and clear in today’s Gospel message from Matthew. John the Baptist came as a prophet, with a message similar to that of most of the prophets: You have lost your way. The Lord sent the prophets to convince His people to return to Him, only to have them decide over and over again that they already were passing the test, so to speak.

John the Baptist’s specific accusation against the Pharisees and Sadducees makes this explicit. As we know, the Pharisees and Sadducees together represented the Judean religious authority at the time, ostensibly dedicated to the Lord and the Law. The Pharisees were its theological force, the Sadducees controlled the temple, and there was significant overlap between the two. If any groups of people could think of themselves as already “preparing the way of the Lord,” the Pharisees and Sadducees had to be chief among them.

And yet, they go into the desert to hear the words of this rumored prophet of the Lord teaching about repentance and forgiveness, only to hear themselves called “a brood of vipers” and warned to start producing good fruit. The prophet himself lived off the land rather than present himself in any finery, unlike their own ideas of authority and wisdom. Furthermore, the Baptist threatened them with disinheritance and worse for their failures, when they themselves would likely have considered themselves faithful servants to the Law and the Lord — at least in their own conception of their “assignment” and of the “test” to come.

The Gospels suggest that at least a few of these became converted and baptized, but likely not many. The cognitive dissonance would have been overwhelming for some — but just as importantly, their own self-serving conceptions of salvation and redemption blinded them to the truth of John the Baptist’s warning. They were trapped in the blindness of materiality — the Sadducees especially, but the Pharisees as well. They saw the Messiah strictly in material terms, as a mighty warlord who would re-establish the Davidic kingdom in Jerusalem and drive out the occupiers. They did not see the Messiah in His true terms, at which our reading from Isaiah 11 strongly hints will not take place in this fallen world:

Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child to guide them. The cow and the bear shall be neighbors, together their young shall rest; the lion shall eat hay like the ox. The baby shall play by the cobra’s den, and the child lay his hand on the adder’s lair. There shall be no harm or ruin on all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be filled with knowledge of the LORD, as water covers the sea. On that day, the root of Jesse, set up as a signal for the nations, the Gentiles shall seek out, for his dwelling shall be glorious.

Isaiah’s prophecy sounds almost fantastic. Not only will the nature of the world change, but so will Nature itself. A warlord messiah would not be able to do this; even in David and Solomon’s time the world was a dog-eat-dog place. This speaks to a new order of Creation entirely, one that would take us back to the Garden of Eden and in relation to the Lord as He originally intended. Isaiah speaks of a salvation from fallen materiality for all of the Lord’s creation, rather than a command of fallen materiality for just His people chosen to be priests and prophets to all.

In other words, everyone crammed for the wrong test. John the Baptist’s mission was to get them — and us — to prepare for the real test.

Make no mistake: we fall into the same trap of blinkered context and predilection for material affirmation as the Israelites and Judeans repeatedly did as well. We recognize the spiritual dimensions of salvation but remain trapped by our desires for pleasure and power in this world. We too often use the Law to our advantage over others rather than as a means to lift each other up. Why do we think Isaiah prophesied about predators and prey living in peaceful harmony? That will literally come to pass in the new Creation, but that applies to us as well here and now. Even in faith we compete where we should collaborate, and rule where we should facilitate.

And that’s because the seductive nature of a fallen world teaches us to compete, to rule, and to prey, rather than to love one another as God loves us. We all become broods of vipers in one way or another, because that is the context of the only material reality we know. We have not yet learned to trust in Isaiah’s vision of the gifts that await us in salvation if we repent of these ways and embrace our potential as children of the Lord. Instead, we have made our ways crooked and cannot find Him.

John the Baptist preached preparation of the way of the Lord, but not for the Lord’s sake. We need to prepare ourselves to follow the way of the Lord — to transcend our crooked paths, our blinkered vision, our sinful attachments to power and gluttony. The Lord will come whether we prepare or not, and whether we cram for the wrong test or not, too. Instead of preying, we need to get busy praying so we don’t flunk.

The front-page image is a detail from “Saint John the Baptist Bearing Witness” by Francesco Granacci, c. 1506-7. Currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Via Wikimedia Commons. 

“Sunday Reflection” is a regular feature, looking at the specific readings used in today’s Mass in Catholic parishes around the world. The reflection represents only my own point of view, intended to help prepare myself for the Lord’s day and perhaps spark a meaningful discussion. Previous Sunday Reflections from the main page can be found here.