When I was an
undergraduate, there was a campus preacher named Hubert Lindsey, but everybody
called him “Holy Hubert.” He got his start at Berkley in the 60s, and got beat
up over 150 times, most notably by the leadership of the Black Panthers.
Nevertheless, he was responsible for bringing a lot of young people, a lot of
“hippies,” as denizens of the counterculture were called in those days, to
Christianity. He had a knack of showing up at protests and turning the talk
toward Christ; then-governor Ronald Reagan quipped that the State of California
owed him millions in crowd control and, of course, he was darkly accused of
being a tool of the State because of it. And though he was seen by students as
something of a joke, he nevertheless is considered to be one of the fathers of
the West Coast Jesus movement.
I saw him on the campus
of the University of Washington in the early 70s. He’d stand in front of the
Husky Union Building—the HUB—and draw big crowds of students, who would
joyfully heckle him as he preached. I say “joyfully” because there was no
malice in it, from either side, really. He would say outrageous things—“bless
your dirty little hearts!” and “everything about you is evil, everything about
you is defiled”—and the students would eat it up, they’d laugh and throw verbal
jabs back at him, attempting to best him in debate, which, of course, they
never could. But there was no animosity in it, and if you go back and look at
some of the videos—YouTube has some, just search under “Holy Hubert”—you can
see the compassion underneath all the fire.
I think of Holy Hubert
every time I read about John the Baptist—it’s almost like, in my mind, he’s a
spiritual descendent. Every time I read John’s taunt—you brood of vipers!—I
think back to Hubert calling the students “You little devils!” And predicting
hellfire for each and every one. The difference is, of course, that John was
the forerunner, he was heralding the coming of Jesus into the world, and Hubert
was an evangelist, trying to save souls after the fact, more akin to John the
Gospel-writer than John the Baptist.
But stylistically, at
least, they have something in common. Like Hubert, who preached up and down the
West Coast, John preached up and down the Jordan. Like Hubert, John minced no
words: “You brood of vipers!” he’d spit, “Who warned you to flee from the wrath
to come?“ Like Hubert, he preached of repentance, urging his listeners to turn away from their sins. And I
wonder—if you were to get into a time machine—maybe H.G. Wells’, I hear it’s
not being used at the moment—if you were to get into a time machine and go back
to watch John the Baptist there on the rocky Jordan banks, what would you see?
Did the locals taunt the hair-shirted prophet? Did they fling jibes and insults at him like the
modern kids did Hubert? Did the Jordan prophet fling ‘em right back, did he
seem to enjoy the game as much as 70s preacher?
One thing I’m sure of
is that underneath any playfulness he might have had, underneath any compassion
he might have shown, there was the same resolve, the same overwhelming sense of
mission. Just as Hubert was deadly serious in his desire to see students
brought to Christ, John the Baptist was serious about his calling as the forerunner,
the messenger, the harbinger
of Christ. “I baptize you with water,” he’d say, “but one who is more powerful
than I am is coming, and I’m not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals.” In
other words, he’s saying, he’s not worthy to be Jesus’ slave.
If it was important to
John that he not be mistaken for the one whose coming he foreshadowed, it was
equally important to the early Gospel writers. Disciples of Jesus that they
were, they wanted to make sure their readers knew that Jesus was the one, not John,
the followers of whom may have been still around. In fact, some Biblical
scholars think there may have been a rivalry between the followers of
John—beheaded by Herod for speaking truth to power—and those of Jesus,
crucified for doing the same.
Well. Be that as it
may, it’s important to note the content
of John’s message. “You brood of vipers!” he’d say. “Bear fruits worthy of
repentance. Don’t tellnme
you have Abraham as an ancestor. God can make children of Abraham out of those rocks over there. That’s not
gonna cut it any more. It’s not about ancestry
it’s about the fruit
you bear. In fact, even now
the ax is on the tree, it’s on the tree of Israel, the leafy ancestors of
Abraham, ready to cut it down if it doesn’t bear fruit, ready to cut it down
and feed it to the fire! As we’ve seen, John could be a just a bit over the top . . .
And his followers would say “If it’s not about
our ancestry, if it’s not enough to be sons and daughters of Abraham, then what
shall we do?” And it’s as important to notice what John doesn’t say as much what he does. He doesn’t say “just
believe in the one to come,” he doesn’t say “you must follow the one named
Jesus.” He tells them that they have to reform their behavior. Whoever has two
coats must share with anyone who has none, and whoever has food must do the
same. It’s not enough to mouth platitudes, it’s not enough to just believe,
you’ve gotta change your behavior, you’ve gotta put some money where your mouth
is.
It’s a theme that runs
throughout the whole New Testament, from the Gospels to the Epistles. Over in
Matthew, Jesus tells a parable of a king (clearly meant to represent himself)
who separates the sheep from the goats according to how they take care of the
poor—whatsoever you’ve done to the least of these, the king says, you’ve done
to me. In John, Jesus says that he has come so that we might believe, Paul is
the avatar of salvation through faith, but the author of James insists that
faith without works is dead. There is a tension
in the New Testament between being and doing, belief and action, faith and
works.
Here, John comes down
squarely on the action side. How do the Israelites avoid the ax and the fire?
Give clothes to the naked and food to the hungry. Don’t take more than is your
due, especially if you’re a tax-collector. Don’t use your power to extort money
from folks by threats or false accusation, and don’t be greedy, be happy you have a job, for Pete’s sake.
Traditionally, John is
seen as an avatar of the old, the last of the hair-shirted prophets, preaching
hell-fire one last time before the coming of grace, and there’s certainly
something like that going on. But I think he represents something else as well:
an acknowledgment that the Gospel is to be practiced, not just believed. John
was the forerunner of Christ, all right, but he was also the forerunner of a
new social order, which combines prophetic action—you will be known by your
fruits—with forgiveness by the grace of God.
And there’s one other
thing John was a forerunner of, and that’s Christianity as a whole. He prepared
the way for the entire Christian enterprise, that begun with the coming of the
one whose sandals he was not fit to untie. He prepared the way for the apostles
and St. Paul. For Benedict and Augustine, St. Francis and St. Teresa. He
prepared the way for John Calvin and John of the Cross, for Martin Luther and
Billy Graham, for all the evangelical preachers right down to good old Holy
Hubert. And last, but certainly not least, he prepared the way for the denizens
of Greenhills Community Church, Presbyterian—he prepared the way for us.
But not only did he he
showed us how to
prepare as well. Advent is a season of preparation, and not only did John the
Baptist prepare the way for Christ and every Christian to come, he showed us
how to do it as well. We’re to examine our lives, how we relate to each other,
how we conduct the business of living, how we relate to God. The meaning of
repentance is turning ones life around—each Advent we’re invited to examine ours and see what needs
turning. Amen.
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