In those days John the Baptist appeared, preaching in the desert of Judea 2 [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 is not the Word but a voice, yet as Augustine points out, in order to be a voice he must first have the word within him. “A word,” he says to his congregation in Hippo, “is in the heart before it is in the voice, so the Word, Christ, is before the voice, John,”. Just as Jesus says to his opponents in John, “before Abraham was, I am” so is he, as God’s Word, present and active in John the Baptist.
John is the forerunner. In John, the whole of the old covenant cries out for its fulfillment. God gave his people John to prepare the way for his Son so that his people could see the first covenant shine forth once again in its original brightness. He is its embodiment not just in his message, but through his profound obedience. His dwelling place, in the desert, his diet, locusts and wild honey, his manner of dress, camel’s hair, and a leather belt, all evoke the history of the relationship between God and his people Israel. Yet these would mean nothing if they were not grounded in a heart and mind that was pure and free, wholly at the service of the word and its demands. God needs him to be the appearance of his divine glory in its old covenant form to get his people ready for the appearance of his divine glory in the new covenant form, in his only-begotten Son, the Word made flesh. He continues to play that role for us today.
By heeding the word of John and surrendering to the act of baptism in repentance for their sins, the people have been marked by grace. While not liberating them from the slavery of sin in the fullness of the sacrament of the baptism of Jesus, nevertheless insofar as their repentance has been genuine, this experience has marked them in a way that will remain in them always and can never be fully shed. They have been claimed anew by God and stamped by his truth as his own. In the voice of John, the yearning of the people has been awakened, it holds them in a heightened state of alertness and readiness, in suspended expectation for what is to come.
From within this indeterminate crowd emerges a smaller group, the religious leaders, Pharisees, and Sadducees, who have also come to John, not to be baptized but as representatives sent to investigate.
As such, they remain detached observers. Instead of exposing themselves to the power of the divine word given through John, and surrendering themselves to it in the necessary humility, faith, and love, from the start, they place themselves outside and above it, calculating, judging, and weighing according to a scale they themselves have contrived from within the confines of their religious system. From within this configuration of laws and rituals, they believe they can survey the whole and make a judgment regarding any particular part. Whereas the message of John demands that one place oneself under judgment in sincere repentance and desire to renew one’s life, they have set themselves up as its judge.
John calls them “a brood of vipers.” Jesus himself uses this term in Matthew. Twice in fact. The first is in the context of the healing of a blind and mute demoniac. There we find two responses to Jesus’ miracle: on the one hand, “All the people were amazed, and said, “Can this be the Son of David?” Confronted with such an extraordinary and unheard-of event, their response is spontaneous: astonishment, wonder. They have been caught up in the mystery of what they have seen and heard. In this state, all horizons are opened up. Astonishment naturally flows into a question, which is, at the same time, an act of praise, which has been shaped and then articulated in speech from their experience. They know that such healing can only be of a supernatural origin. So they ask, “Can this be the Son of David?” Their hearts and minds are again in a state of heightened expectation, disposed to hear more, ready to receive the next revelation and to follow where the question takes them. They are ready to enter upon a journey or, better, they are ready to be led on a journey to places they’ve never been before, into a world that they did not know, that they could not imagine, was possible, because their present categories could only point to the Word made flesh and never arrive on their own at what God has done in Jesus. Only God can reveal him, and only then can it be seen that indeed all the images and lines of the old covenant point precisely to him, and nowhere else. In him, all the flights of human speculation are infinitely transcended. In him the heavens are opened, the mystery of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is made known, and we are welcomed into the divine life. Their question, borne of amazement, frees up Jesus to disclose all that he has come to reveal to them of his Father. Unlike other marvels, the source of this one is truly from above. No amount of questioning will ever exhaust its mystery. On the contrary, every answer will only open another entryway into the ever-greater mystery of the inexhaustible exchange of divine truth and love in the One God.
On the other hand, there are the Pharisees, who also respond, but with a judgment, not a question, and a negative one at that, a swift and authoritative declaration: “It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this man casts out demons.” In the place of astonishment, of being filled with joy and wonder, we have a calculating spirit born of fear. Like the crowd, they know that the healing of a blind and mute demoniac can only be the work of a supernatural power so since they cannot deny its power, they question its source. Alarmed by the messianic language, they are determined to stamp it out. Thus they muddy the waters and sow confusion and doubt where there was only joy at the obvious truth of what everyone had seen. They shift the debate to the realm of personal abuse and character assassination. They are out to destroy Jesus’s credibility in the eyes of a crowd ready and disposed to believe. Their accusation shows they have already made a fundamental choice to take sides against Jesus. In this context, Jesus says “You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” By their judgment, they have themselves come under judgment, from truth itself.
The expression “brood of vipers” appears again in chapter 23, this time in the midst of the seven woes Jesus addresses to the Pharisees and scribes. The flawed religious understanding that appeared at the beginning has now shown itself to be no minor thing but has continued to blind them to the divine plan as it’s been unfolding before their eyes. Not only are they blind to it, the more it is revealed to them in Jesus, but the more their response also becomes hardened resistance, then outright opposition, and finally the desire to kill him. Our expression “brood of vipers” occurs in the seventh and final woe, in which we hear these terrible words: "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the memorials of the righteous, 30 and you say, 'If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have joined them in shedding the prophets' blood.' 31 Thus you bear witness against yourselves that you are the children of those who murdered the prophets; 32 now fill up what your ancestors measured out! 33 You serpents, you brood of vipers, how can you flee from the judgment of Gehenna?
The harshness of these words is difficult, but the consequences that follow from the response to the witness of John are serious. John is pointing the way to becoming a genuine child of God and remaining a child of God, by accepting the revelation of the Father of his Son and believing in him, and following him. This is the Father’s will. This is no imposition, no impingement on personal freedom, but an utterly gratuitous act of pure love, an offer of true liberation and genuine intimacy that will last forever. We are to make space for this Son in every corner of our souls. Wherever our heart is closed off to God, we are no longer his children. Sin cannot claim an origin in God, but only in the evil one, the father of lies. When we sin, we have surrendered to his deceitful voice. He is the father of our actions, and we are his sons. He is a viper, and we are his brood. This mystery goes back to the beginning of the human story. By means of lies and deceit, he robbed Adam of the Lord’s original promise of immortality. He is thus a liar and a murderer.
John is pointing the way to truth and life. The words of these difficult passages are meaningless unless we are willing to apply them to ourselves in this way; to see them as an invitation into the real, and to change our lives. And we can only do this if we ourselves see according to the whole, that is, that God is love, that he, therefore, never says or does anything outside of love, and that he never rejects anyone who turns to him in their need.
“His winnowing fan is in his hand.” Our sins weigh us down like heavy chains but, in reality, they lack all substance and so are light as air. The divine glory on the other hand has weight, it is the weightiest of all things and has the most substance, yet by its weight we become light, the lightness of freedom, knowledge, and love, ready to be lifted up into the heavenly kingdom. The Lord is waiting to blow our sins away like chaff, assigning them to oblivion, and leaving nothing but persons heavy with the indwelling light of divine glory, friends of the Son, born of the same Father, united in his will. But he is awaiting our permission, our “Yes”. “Can this be the Son of David?” Yes, indeed. And we know that this Son has come, and yet in hope we await his coming, yet at the same time, he is present to us now, in our midst, in this Eucharist.
Saint John the Baptist, c. 1230, North Portal, Chartres Cathedral. Today's homily by Father Timothy.
