called out...

"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.'" (Matthew 3: 1-12)

Matthew's community of Antioch, notes Alexander Shaia, were a disparate Jewish collective traumatized by the sacking of Jerusalem and the razing of the Temple, God's holy dwelling-place. As people in crisis, they vacillated between despair and seeking for hope and meaning in these events, for a reason to go on, for a way to understand the incomprehensible. Some elements of the community advocated a renewed and vigorous Torah-centered faith not dependent on the Temple and its sacrifices, rigorous in its observance and very clear about who was in the community and who was out. This is a very human response to crisis and disaster and we see this reflected in many strict literalist or "fundamentalist" movements today.

Others, whom Shaia dubs "Messianists", were Jewish followers of the charismatic lay teacher from Galilee, believing him to be God's anointed. They not only struggled to make sense of the loss of the Temple, which they also held sacred, but were still making sense of their Master's horrible execution by the Romans.

To all these people Matthew tells his story of the powerful, enigmatic figure of John the Baptizer, embodying in his person the charisma and shock of the old prophets of Judah and Israel with something utterly new, a new proclamation. He calls all to leave Jerusalem, to leave the well-known holy city with its Temple, to an unnamed place "in the wilderness." The unnamed and the unknown place becomes the place of change and encounter. All are called to this change--to what end? No one knows! But as one preacher said, perhaps the people hearing John looked back towards Jerusalem and, in a moment of sacred disorientation, wondered if the familiar holy city really was "the wilderness", and whether this nameless piece of wild country was the sacred dwelling of God!

It is the officially "holy people", the Pharisees and Sadducees, who hear John's harshest words.

What is disrupted for us in our lives, in our church, in our world? What has us disoriented, reeling? From what familiar and even "sacred" place are we being called forth? What "familiar holiness" is being spoken to harshly by the prophet's words? And, in the question placed in the mouths of John's hearers, what are we to do?