Reflection on Matthew 3:1-12

 

The fire changed her life.  The fire changed everything about her.  Not only did she lose her home, but she also lost her face.  Before the fire, she was beautiful.  She was beautiful in the ways that models are beautiful.  She was make-up commercial beautiful.  And now, when she looked in the mirror, all she saw was a misaligned, plastic looking skin filled with scars.  All she saw was the woman who kids pointed at, and around whom mothers steered their children, as if she were able to spread the devastation to their little ones like a disease.  She rarely went out anymore.  When she did go out it took so long to get ready; she even needed to draw eyebrows on her face because they had burnt away for good.  The fire was devastating.  It changed her life.

Still, she discovered that there was a life after the fire.  It was a life that she had never known before.  She discovered that there were people who did not look away or walk away when she came near.  There were people who were drawn to her.  There were people for whom her face was an invitation to get closer, both physically and emotionally. 

These people were those who the Bible would describe as outcasts.  They were the people for whom connecting with others was hard because they too were not beautiful, or they had a disease, or they had an odd tick, or they just didn’t know how to relate to others in the same way as everyone else. 

They were the people with whom Jesus hung out.  There were the people with whom Jesus poured his attention and care.  And, they were the first people to invite the woman over to their table at the coffee shop, so that she would not have to enjoy her tea alone any longer. 

Life after the fire seemed to be so much more…authentic than life before.  It was less about looks and more about love and laughter with faulty but loving people.  The fire had taken so much, but on the other side it provided so much more.  It provided the people of God.  It provided love.  It provided a seat with Jesus Christ at the table in the Kingdom of heaven.

Fire does that.  It burns away all that you have previously known and either drives you into hopelessness, or it shows you what this life that God has given us, is all about.  It is this purifying fire, where all of the impurities are burned away until all that remains is pure, that John the Baptist is talking about when he says, “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” (Matthew 3:11).

And, this fire which stands between the common and the divine is a reality that is very, very ancient.  Way back in Genesis, at the beginning of creation, after the first man and woman had been thrown out of the garden, removed from the presence of God because of their failure to trust God, there is a sword of fire placed in between them and God.  The fire separates them, and if they ever dreamed of returning, they would have to walk through the deadly fire.

Some have walked through the fire and stood with the Divine.  It is this reverse process from the beginning of Genesis where you go back through the cleansing waters of the flood, step through the all-consuming, purifying fire at the gate of Eden, and only then do you find yourself in the presence of God.  Moses is one who steps through the fire when no one else dared.  When he does, and survives, he encounters God on the mountain where the Ten Commandments were given.  Only after going through the fire does he walk for a brief moment with God on the Eden like mountain. 

Continuing on in the Bible, Job’s story sounds so much like the woman’s story as fire falls and destroys all that Job once had.  Only after the fire, after refusing to break his trust in God, does God restore Job to a new life.  Job resides with God after the fire. 

And, the woman with the transformed face found the community of Jesus’ beloved outcasts after the fire.  Only after the fire burned away her idealized life of beauty did Jesus give the woman a real, authentic community of love, all drawn together by the Holy Spirit.

“He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Matthew 3:11).

John the Baptist is out in the wilderness preaching a word that is uncomfortable to hear.  It is time to “repent.”  It is time to change your mind completely.  It is time to prepare a highway for the Lord to come.  It is time to clear out everything that is getting in the way of the Lord’s arrival. 

“Bear fruit worthy of repentance,” John shouts at the Pharisees and Sadducees.  “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these tones to raise up children to Abraham” (Matthew 3:8).  Do not put your trust in everything that you have leaned on before.  We do not put our trust in Abraham!  We do not put our trust in governments!  We do not put our trust in our beauty or success!  God can take it all away, or replace it any time that God wants!  “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” (Matthew 3:10). 

This fire seems threatening and fearful, because it is.  This fire seems full of death and destruction, because it is.  And this fire seems like it will change everything for good, which it will.  It will change everything for the good.

It is God’s fire.  It is the fire that Jesus carries with him and pours over the heads of those he loves, just like John pours water over the heads of those who desire more than anything for things to finally change in this life.  It is the fire of the Holy Spirit which destroys all that we have known, but is also the purifying flame at the gate which allows us to walk in the garden with God.  It is the fire that God uses to open the gate of the kingdom to us.  It is the refining fire that burns away all of the injustice, hatred, unfaithfulness, violence, apathy, misdirected loyalties, unforgiving natures, and sin which keeps us from life in the kingdom of heaven with God.

It is an uncomfortable fire.  It is sometimes a devastating fire.  But, the Bible seems to be saying that the only way that Jesus has to draw us to him, to draw us away from the kingdom of this world into the kingdom in which he stands, is to drag us through the cleansing water and pull us through the purifying fires so that we can finally trust in his love.  Only then, stripped of the old, can we live in his new kingdom of love and peace, where the wolf lives with the lamb, where the leopard lies down with the kid, where children play near snakes but no one gets hurt.  Because, in God’s kingdom, on the mountain of God, in the land of Eden, there is no hurting one another and there is no destruction.  There is just the peaceful life that the Lord our God has given as a gift.

All of this is what death and new life in Jesus Christ is all about.  All of this is what faith and grace looks like when we encounter it.  All of this is being loved by God and then shaped into the person we were created to be.  All of this is being given the gift of living in the kingdom of heaven…the kingdom which has come near.