I think a good illustration for my sermon this week will be to turn somthing on its head, maybe a kid. It illustrates the act of repentance as well as apocolyptic inversion. I didn't see the connection until the image hit me.
This song would be a great puppet song this week if anyone could understand it.
I remembered this story from a book I read before preaching on making straight paths several years ago. This amaizing feat of engeneering involved great loss of life to make this passable. Perhaps you can find more information at your local library.
Simplon: "[Napoleon] recognized the fact that the Simplon is the shortest connection between Paris and Milan and wanted to use it for his expansion plans. In September 1800 he ordered the construction, from 1801-1805 the road was established. The engineer Nicolas Céard led the construction and despite all problems with his subordinated engineers, with the disputes between the Italian and French workers and engineers and also with the topography in the Gondoschlucht the new road over the Simplon could be opened on October 9, 1805. However this was too late for Napoleon, who had to select the Mont Cénis for the return of its coronation as king of Italy. After the end of the Napoleonean empire the Valais took over the road. For the people of that time it was a technical wonder with its bridges, galleries and with its width of at least 7.2 meters: the Simplon got a certain touristic relevance. "
“John had some seriously mistaken ideas about who Jesus was and what he came to do…” writes Sarah Dylan Breuer. “John spent his life teaching and baptizing to distinguish wheat from chaff, and he expected that Jesus would be dealing out blessings and punishments accordingly. John had it half right: Jesus came to bless…”
How does this expectation of the Messiah, which John presents the people, prepare the way for the Lord? Doesn’t it bear the confusion that the Messiah would be a warrior freeing them from Roman oppression? That he would immediately destroy those who didn’t line up for him?
John’s call to repentance is certainly inline with an apocalyptic coming of the Messiah. Cliff asked at our ministerial today, “Did that man come?” The Jesus we read about seems very different from the Jesus John describes.
Following the line of apocalyptic inversion that makes mountains low, raises valleys, and brings order to Chaos, John cries out, “an age is ending! One is coming who will baptize with Spirit and Fire!” Everyone was looking for the mountains to crumble and mighty terrible signs. They flooded to the Jordan to repent before this Righteous and Just one came.
And he came, this rod of Jesse. Embodied in him was the essence of apocalyptic inversion. He brought a state of being for mankind to a close and ushered in a new life, an event that continues moment by moment, devoid of time and space. He turned Jewish thought of what Messiah would be on its nose. Even John was surprised by the way he lived. Jesus was the inversion of John eating and drinking. He was the inversion of society proclaiming radical idea. He was the inversion of the religious system bringing grace, Spirit and intimacy to the impotent millions.
All these things John foretold were hidden in Jesus, and expressed themselves in ways no body but the heart of the Father could have guessed. We can only see it in the way the scriptures have been opened to us in light of the resurrected Christ. A suffering servant, a man of sorrows, a King of kings and a Lord of lords, God clothed in human flesh! Who could have guessed?
"Make straight the way for the Lord!" John cries in the apocalyptic strain of Isaiah. For this to happen the mountains must be brought low, the valleys raised up, the rough ground leveled and the rugged places made a plain.
Apocalyptic inversions bring order to chaos and chaos to order. They bring justice for the poor and oppressed, and strengthen week arms. Righteousness and Justice rule in the one that brings order. They allow the lion to lie down with the lamb, for him to eat straw like the ox, for his brother snake to no longer terrorize the child. Peace reigns on the Holy Mountain.
HEB 12:22 But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, 23 to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, 24 to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
